OSLO: Open Standards for Linked Organizations
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This document summarizes the OSLO (Open Standards for Linked Organizations) program, which aimed to facilitate data exchange and interoperability between government organizations in Flanders through semantic agreements. The program was initiated in 2012 as a public-private partnership and supported by various government levels. It focused on developing common interfaces and domain models for contact information, public services, and locations. Working groups formalized specifications that were implemented in pilot projects. The program demonstrated that both political support and semantic agreements are needed to break down information silos and shift toward open, interoperable government.
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OSLO: Open Standards for Linked Organizations
- 1. OSLO: Open Standards for Linked Organizations Laurens De Vocht, Raf Buijle, Dieter De Paepe, Ruben Verborgh and Erik Mannens Mathias Van Compernolle, Peter Mechant, Ziggy Vanlishout and Björn De Vidts DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS IMEC - IDLAB (FORMER IMINDS - MULTIMEDIA LAB)
- 2. 2 1. Introduction 2. Political Context 3. Semantic Interoperability 4. Discussion 5. Conclusions
- 3. 3 1. Introduction 2. Political Context 3. Semantic Interoperability 4. Discussion 5. Conclusions
- 4. How can local and regional governments in Flanders (i) manage the structure and description (ii) of the data they publish (iii) so it leads to reusable data exchange (iv) ?
- 5. OSLO (i) political support and adoption (ii) semantic agreement (iii) once-only principle (iv) interoperability
- 6. OSLO: Background Started February 2012, ended 2015 Result of public-private partnership initiated by V-ICT-OR (non-profit Flemish ICT Organization) Supported by wider community: local, regional and federal administrations Brought in-line with ISA, EU initiative for interoperability (between EU Member countries and regions)
- 7. OSLO: A Program OSLO Program Political Support and Adoption Semantic Agreement Once-only Principle Interoperability
- 8. OSLO Program: Supporting Common Interfaces Citizens Businesses Other Governments Federal Government Regional Government Local Government OSLO Program Search for (linked) public or governmental data Common interfaces
- 9. European Interoperability Framework (EIF) Legal Interoperability Organizational Interoperability Semantic Interoperability Technological Interoperability Political Context Promote Interoperability
- 10. Citizens and businesses provide information only-once Facilitate aggregation of information from different e-government information systems and existing services to create new ones Enable machine-readable reusable public service descriptions OSLO Program: Goals
- 11. 11 1. Introduction 2. Political Context 3. Semantic Interoperability 4. Discussion 5. Conclusions
- 12. Governmental Levels in Belgium (simplified model) 12
- 13. Bottom-up and Top-down 13 The local governments ‘promoters’ of OSLO created the necessary support at the local level co-funded the initiative initial sponsors: Flemish ICT service providers; major cities and Informatie Vlaanderen The promoters created a coalition of willing administrations at various government levels. Working together with the ISA Program to get a more stable outcome fits in/corresponds to EU-level governance more authoritative standards as result
- 14. 14 1. Introduction 2. Political Context 3. Semantic Interoperability 4. Discussion 5. Conclusions
- 15. Contact Information: People and Organizations Public Services Localization Focus on Thematic Domains
- 16. Domain Modeling: Process Overview Semantic Agreement Domains Entities + Relations + Attributes Steering committee Working groups per domain reporting validation formalization feedback
- 17. Semantic Agreement on Structure and Descriptions
- 18. Semantic Agreement on Structure and Descriptions
- 19. People Memberships Localisation Public Services Businesses and Organizations Semantic Agreement on Structure and Descriptions
- 20. Maximal Reuse of Existing Vocabularies Core Public Service Vocabulary OSLO Vocabulary Regorg OrgVCARD Ontology Core Location Vocabulary FOAF Vocabulary Terms/Metadata Vocabulary
- 21. Formalization and Implementation 21 Result Where to find? Specifications and Developer Documentation http://purl.org/oslo Knowledge Base (in Dutch, incl. policy and governance guidance) https://www.v-ict-or.be/kenniscentrum/projectfiches/OSLO/OSLO-2 Mapping Guidelines https://github.com/v-ict-or/oslo-mapping-guidelines RDF and XML serializations https://github.com/v-ict-or/oslo_xml_schemas Namespace purl.org/oslo/ns/localgov#
- 22. 22 1. Introduction 2. Political Context 3. Semantic Interoperability 4. Discussion 5. Conclusions
- 23. Pilot Projects The ‘Shared catalog for local public administrations’ pilot [DeVocht2014] is a pilot on contact information related to products and services disclosure between governments and towards citizens. The ‘Local Council Decisions as Linked Data’ [Buyle2016] demonstrates a method to create a new (distributed) base registry for public mandates of local governments. . 23 [DeVocht2014] De Vocht, L., Van Compernolle, M., Dimou, A., Colpaert, P., Verborgh, R., Mannens, E., Mechant, P., Van de Walle, R. 2014. Converging on semantics to ensure local government data reuse. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Semantics for Smarter Cities. CEUR-WS. 1280. 47–52. [Buyle2016] Buyle, R., Colpaert, P., Van Compernolle, M., Mechant, P., Volders, V., Verborgh, R., Mannens, E. 2016. Local Council Decisions as Linked Data: a proof of concept. In Proceedings of the 15th International Semantic Web Conference: Posters and Demos. CEUR-WS. 1690. Paper 71.
- 24. Characteristics 24 Result Where to find? Ownership Interest group of public servants active as IT practitioner at local government level organized as non-profit organization (V-ICT-OR). Vocabulary Alignment Alignment with EU initiatives such as ISA and general Web recommendations by W3C Adoption Public tenders on local level Embedding in policy on regional level Adaptation Focus on commonalities rather than differences Governance Self steering approach with one chair/facilitator Business owners as invited experts
- 25. Findings OSLO enforces the principle: ‘first clarify and then digitize’. often there is a lack of political support to cope with this principle. Bottom-up and top-down approach created the necessary political support. OSLO was built on consensus, rather than on a legal framework. unique situation where different government levels worked towards this consensus could stimulate future uptakes of core data models by other administrations Characteristics (prev. slide) could change to stimulate adoption at local and regional level: the transfer of governance and lifecycle management of the program would be better at the higher level; embedded in within a governmental public body or policy domain with power to ‘force’ the uptake instead of in a non-profit organization that relies more on voluntary participation of municipalities. 25
- 26. 26 1. Introduction 2. Political Context 3. Semantic Interoperability 4. Discussion 5. Conclusions
- 27. Conclusions OSLO Program covers political support and semantic agreement for e-government in Flanders: involving both public administrations and private partners on people, organizations, localization and public services increased awareness ISA-based-methodology led to semantic convergence Bottom-up organized working groups delivered a reusable formal specification serialization of domain specific models. The semantic process of OSLO showed/demonstrated that both ‘Political support’ and ‘Semantic Agreements’ are essential step stones to soften the existing information silos to make a shift to an open, interoperable and citizen-centric government. 27
- 28. Laurens De Vocht E laurens.devocht@ugent.be @laurens_d_v Raf Buijle1, Laurens De Vocht1, Mathias Van Compernolle2, Dieter De Paepe1, Ruben Verborgh1, Ziggy Vanlishout3, Björn De Vidts3, Peter Mechant2 and Erik Mannens1 1 {firstname.lastname}@ugent.be 2 {firstname.lastname}@ugent.be 3 {firstname.lastname}@kb.vlaanderen.be
Notes de l'éditeur
- Avoiding repetitive tasks! Until now, each local government developed applications with the same purpose for their own audience, thereby repeating similar tasks such as data aligning, modeling and transformation over and over, leading to wasting time and resources. When building reliable data-driven applications for local governments to interact with public servants or citizens, data publishers and consumers have to be sure that the applied data structure and schema definition are accurate and lead to reusable data. To understand the characteristics of reusable local government data, we motivate how the process of developing a semantically enriched exchange standard contributes to resolving this issue. Each government level uses its own different information system. At the same time citizens expect that these governmental levels adopt a user-centric approach and provide instant access to their data or to open government data.
- Therefore the applications at various government levels need to be interoperable in support of the ‘once only-principle’: data is inputted and registered only once and then reused. Given government budget constraints and the cost and complexity of (re)modeling, translating and transforming data over and over, public administrations need to reduce interoperability costs. This is achieved by semantically aligning information between the different information systems of each government level. Semantical interoperable systems facilitate citizen-centered e-government services. This paper illustrates how the Open Standards for Linked Organizations program (OSLO) paved the way bottom-up from a broad basis of stakeholders towards a government-endorsed strategy. OSLO applied a generic process and methodology and provided practical insights on how to overcome the encountered hurdles: political support and adoption; reaching semantic agreement. The lessons learned in the region of Flanders (Belgium) can speed-up the process in other countries that face the complexity of integrating information intensive processes between different applications, administrations and government levels.
- OSLO started in February 2012 and the first phase has ended in 2015. The project was the result of a public-private partnership initiated bottom-up by the Flemish Organization for ICT in Local Government (V-ICT-OR), and co-funded by Flemish ICT service providers and Flemish Government Administrations. The project was also supported by a wider community, including Local, Regional and Federal administrations, non-profit organizations, academic partners and the European Commission program Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA).
- One of the most widespread e-government best practices is the ‘once-only principle ’ which states that citizens and businesses have to provide administrative information only once to a public administration, avoiding administrative burden. To achieve this, administrations must be able to share and reuse this information across different applications and processes. 1 A good example are Local governments in Flanders, which provide over 800 different products and services. To support their processes and service delivery, they use back-office applications from different software vendors. These domain specific applications are organized as vertical processes, requesting administrative data from citizens and business which often cannot be reused by other applications, causing data silo’s. 2 The Open Standards for Linked Organizations program (OSLO) transformed IT-service delivery efforts in the Region of Flanders (Belgium) in fundamental ways. Its strategy focuses on semantic agreements and machine readable data which softens the existing data silo’s on various governmental levels and facilitates the once only principle.
- Interfaces directed to other governments, citizens and businesses
- The ISA Programme promotes interoperability across multiple interoperability levels between Member State’s borders and public service sectors, see Figure 2. One of its key components is the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) . EIF is a set of recommendations which specify how administrations, businesses and citizens communicate with each other within the EU and across borders. These interoperability levels are defined as legal, organizational, semantic and technical within a political context. Each interoperability level cannot go without the appropriate political context. The OSLO program focused on semantic interoperability. Semantic interoperability “enables organizations to process information from external sources in a meaningful manner. It ensures that the precise meaning of exchanged information is understood and preserved throughout exchanges between parties” . The project had two main tracks: (i) gain ‘political support and adoption’ and (ii) develop the ́‘semantic agreement’. Political support is essential, for collecting sponsoring and gaining authority and engagement. Semantic agreement is expressed in a domain model.
- OSLO is an interoperability facilitator. Data cannot pass by default through different applications, because each application models the ‘real world’ from a (slightly) different
- In Flanders there are various governmental levels with their own jurisdiction, presented simplified in Figure. Each level has their own data sources. But for some types of data deep levels (II) and (III) have to follow higher levels (I) and (II)
- Terms appointing the structure of data and representing real world or abstract concepts might have an ambiguous meaning or multiple interpretations. ‘What do we consider as an address? Is it a residence or a domicile, or the place where someone works?’. The context determines the meaning of each term. Contact information of a person might contain other data, depending on his/her capacity (e.g. responsible in an enterprise, representative of an organization, or as natural person). The OSLO semantic agreement focuses on three domains: Contact Information, Localization, and Public Services. Each of the models are local extensions of the ISA Core Person, Business, Location, and Public Service vocabularies created at European level in the context of ISA. These four core vocabularies are simplified, reusable, context neutral and extendable specifications for information exchange
- Immediately after the kick-off of the program, OSLO working groups created an inventory of the challenges and use-cases related to the exchange of information for local public administrations in Flanders. This resulted in three main modeling domains of interest: (i) persons and organizations, (ii) locations, and (iii) public services, see Figure 3. The specification for OSLO was developed by a multidisciplinary Working Group, with a total of 58 people from 28 organizations (all of them are listed in the specification). The working groups followed the same approach, with one workgroup per topic, integrating the domain working group and the data entity subgroups.
- OSLO is introduced to converge on semantics as an agreement between the various stakeholders. The specification of OSLO, was the result of our implementation of a public-private partnership. Authentic sources (legally enforced) Local enrichments (very often authentic sources are inaccurate or not up to date) So gov’s benefit because: Exchanging contact information, documents, reports and services benefit from such semantic convergence as well as all descriptions enriched with information annotated by other data publishers.
- OSLO is introduced to converge on semantics as an agreement between the various stakeholders. The specification of OSLO, was the result of our implementation of a public-private partnership. Authentic sources (legally enforced) Local enrichments (very often authentic sources are inaccurate or not up to date) So gov’s benefit because: Exchanging contact information, documents, reports and services benefit from such semantic convergence as well as all descriptions enriched with information annotated by other data publishers.
- OSLO Domains in detail. OSLO defines and reuses semantics for the following domains.
- However, thanks to the flexibility that the RDF data model offers, local governments extend standards to serve their “custom needs” without diverging from the originals. Specific to OSLO are the vocabularies that describe specific properties related to the authentic sources that provide data about people and their legal relations (marriage, civil state, family) The Dublin Core vocabulary15 was used for the basic metadata properties, the Friend of A Friend (FOAF)16 ontology to bind the information on titles and descriptions and to enhance the content of the generated dataset. We used the OSLO vocabulary17 and the W3C Organization vocabularies: Organization Ontology18, Registered Organization Ontology19. For contact information we relied on the VCARD Ontology20.
- OSLO offers documentation for various target audiences and has a knowledge base with details on the specification (both human and machine readable):
- - An extension on OSLO was developed as a convergence between various stakeholders in local government data. The extension enriched OSLO vocabulary with threas Linked Data proof of concept, demonstrates a method to manage Local Council Decisions as Linked Data, and aims to create a new base registry for mandates. This project from the Flemish Agency for Domestic Governance, has used the OSLO-methodology. The project extends OSLO with two new concepts: one for metadata of decisions made at a local governmental level and one for describing public mandates. By publishing decisions that are automatically in a machine-readable format, in line with international vocabularies, they are suitable for reuse by third parties (Linked Open Data) without additional efforts e new entities: Channel, Activity and Product
- OSLO offers documentation for various target audiences and has a knowledge base with details on the specification (both human and machine readable):
- To reach ‘Semantic Agreements’ the described process and methodology created a setting where the stakeholders focused on their commonalities rather than on their differences. In an early stage, consensus building and a meet-in-the middle approach is essential for a broad support of a semantic standard. Political support is essential to realize sustainable semantic standards through authority, engagement and sustainable sponsoring. To ensure a broad adoption at all government levels, it is important to put a more governmental authority in charge of the formal governance and align the authoritative government sources on the agreed semantics.