Linked Government Data

Governments around the world have realized the importance of publishing government data on the Web using open standards. In 2009 the government of the United States [1] and of the United Kingdom [2] committed towards this direction. At the same time several initiatives have been established in the United States (e.g. data.gov), Europe and Australia.

In June 2009 Tim Berners-Lee published a document entitled “Putting Government Data online” [3] where he invited governments worldwide to put government data on the Web as Linked Data. In addition, a year ago (June 2008) W3C eGovernment Interest Group [4] was chartered and according to its recently published draft charter [5] Open Government Data is its most important topic area of interest.

The Linked Government Data research theme aims at identifying and developing models, best practices and approaches to support governments:

• To put data (raw governmental data as well as information about public administration) on the Web as Linked Data; and
• To develop Web applications using linked government data.

For more information, please contact one of the following:

Dr. Vassilios Peristeras
Evangelos Kalampokis
Nikos Loutas
Fadi Maali

Prototypes

Faceted data.gov

A faceted browser for the data.gov catalogue, built using SIMILE Exhibit