World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

• Leading the Web to its Full Potential
  
• ... or in plain words from a colleague:
  
  • “we keep the Web going”

W3C

• Founded by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee (1994)
  
• W3C Provides the Vision and the Standards to Lead the Web:
  
  • from a Web of Documents... toward One Web:
    
    • of Data and Services
      
    • on Everything
      
    • for Everyone

Where’s eGov?

Keeping it simple

• eGovernment
  
  • “the use of ICTs, and particularly the Internet, as a tool to achieve better government”
    
  • example: citizen-centric Government
    
    • one-stop shops

Where’s eGov? (revisited)

Where’s eGov? (revisited)

Where’s eGov? (revisited)

Where’s eGov? (revisited)

It's behind the scenes!

A Big Picture

Why W3C cares about eGovernment?

• The Web has become the main channel for Governments to deliver services to citizens
• Web technologies are crucial in the relationships between Govs, and Govs and Industry
• Use of W3C Technologies in eGov is increasing
  • W3C standards named in laws (e.g. Web Accessibility)

Role of Governments

• The purpose of the Web is to help foster open communication and information sharing and we believe Governments should participate in open communication and information sharing
• We think Governments have some unique requirements (e.g. to demand and enforce certain policies about information privacy) and we want those requirements to be reflected in the standards we produce

eGovernment efforts at W3C

• Series of discussions to better understand the needs of Government in deploying current Web standards and the directions that future Web standards should take to best address delivery of Government services.
  
  • European Symposium on eGovernment, Gijón, Spain, 1-2 February 2007
  • Toward More Transparent Government: Workshop on eGovernment and the Web, Washington DC, USA, 18-19 June 2007

Improving eGov using Open Web Standards

• Openness
• Interoperability
• Privacy, Security and Trust
• Bridging the Digital Divide

Openness

What Open Standard means?

• Transparent process
  
• Open participation
  
• Technical Consensus
  
• Running code
  
• Free and Persistent Specification
  
• W3C Patent Policy for Web Technologies

Why Open Web Standards?

• Open Standards increase innovation and competition
• Increase citizens and market trust
  • not tied to proprietary solutions
    
  • avoid vendor lock-in
    

Best Practices and Methodologies

• The development of standards-based interoperable frameworks improve efficiencies and increase the value of IT investments
  
• Accessibility as an example: 
  
  • adherence to standards makes it easier for the content providers to serve browser-independent content
    
  • Government leadership is important in getting the technology vendors and the content providers to do the right thing for all citizens

Interoperability, Data Integration

Basic Interoperability

• What about Web pages that can only be accessed using a given browser?
• New technologies, old problems, e.g.:
  
  • accessibility (think multi-channel delivery)
    
  • mobile phones as enablers of Government services (e.g. in developing countries)
    
  • difficult to build an interoperable solution (too many devices, browsers...), see the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) work

Semantic Interoperability

• Lots of initiatives and interoperability frameworks built or in the works
  
  • usually work only in a given context (national, regional...), hard to interoperate between them yet
• Producing XML does not mean to be interopeable
• Interoperability is not (only) a technical issue

A real example

Data Integration

• Use Semantic Web technologies
  
  • allows mixing data from very different sources
    
  • no need to thrown away your existing data or systems, just build on top
    
  • share, publish, use standards (RDF, OWL, SPARQL...), plan for unexpected reuse
    
  • use IDs (URIs)
    

Privacy, Transparency, Trust

Creating a Trust Context

• Opacity vs. Transparency
  
  • use the data for the purpose it was collected
    

Bridging the Digital Divide

Mobile Web in Developing Countries

	Same issues already mentioned plus new ones (eg. infrastructure) W3C Goal: to make the Web accessible, relevant, usable and useful for under-privileged populations and rural communities The Mobile Web is the most promising platform for low-cost large scale development, deployment and adoption of ICTs More about ongoing work at: http://www.w3.org/2006/12/digital_divide/public.html
(Photo Source: Der Spiegel)

Conclusions

• eGovernment Services increasing sophistication, but “good old problems” not solved yet
  
• The use of Open Standards can help
  
• Need cooperation and skip reinventing the wheel, e.g., use cases and best practices
  
• Governments should be involved in development of Open Standards
  
• eGovernment should be accessible to all

Food for thought (not mine)

"The big vendors had their chance and blew it. Now it's time for the demand side of the equation to pickup the pieces and go for the universal interoperability demanded by a real world convergence of information systems needing to perfect the high fidelity exchange..."

Gary Edwards and Buck Martin, LinuxWorld

Thanks

• José M. Alonso <[email protected]>
• Slides at http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/1017-UPM-JA/