Opportunities and Issues for e-Government initiatives

1. Semantic technologies opportunities and issues for e-Government initiatives A talk by Yannis Kalfoglou at Monday, 18 th June 2007

3. Background Article ( to appear ): “ Knowledge society arguments revisited in the Semantic technologies era”, Y.Kalfoglou, International journal of Knowledge and Learning, 3(3/4)., special issue: “ Knowledge society: a roadmap for Government consultation”, 2007 Dagstuhl seminar on Semantic Interoperability and Integration, 04391, Sept. 2004, organised by Y.Kalfoglou AKT legacy: 6 year, multi million pound, multi site interdisciplinary research collaboration CS AKTive Space,3store, e-Response demonstrator, AKTivePSI Background Semantic technologies Knowledge society Opportunities Issues Experiences Conclusions 3/18

7. Semantic Technologies maturity Background  Semantic technologies Knowledge society Opportunities Issues Experiences Conclusions The Gartner Hype Cycle (7/06) – time to “plateau of productivity” (Public) Semantic Web: trough of disillusionment  5-10y (Corporate) Semantic Web: peak of inflated expectations  5-10y Web 2.0: peak of inflated expectations  2-5y Web 2.0 More visible Large end user base (Public) Semantic Web Invisible to the end user Infrastructure (Corporate) Semantic Web Better information management Visibility to end user is not an issue 7/18

9. Knowledge society an example case Background  Semantic technologies  Knowledge society Opportunities Issues Experiences Conclusions Social media No moderation or censorship; two-way communication Individuals’ contributions clearly acknowledged; anonymity discouraged Spin and attempt to control are discouraged Pull system – let people bring to them the content and relationships they want Highly distributed, not centralised Adopted from Dion Hinchcliffe’s web site Participation powered by the network effect Low cost People in charge (use and control) Benefit of global scale syndication Democratisation and change of ground rules Shift from institutional control to consumer control 9/18

11. Opportunities better information access, querying, integration Background  Semantic technologies  Knowledge society  Opportunities Issues Experiences Conclusions E-Government initiatives my.ecitizen.gov.sg - Singapore (personalisation) direct.gov.uk – UK (services) eEurope2005 action plan – EU (interface with the electorate) e-Petitions & e-Voting Direct dialogue with the public – e.g., 1.8M emails to PM wrt. anti-toll petition Voting and electorate management services Blogs Campaigning and rallying (e.g., B.Obama’s campaign in the US) Gauge public interests Engage the public Policy and consultation Intra-governmental (unit2unit, dept2dept) Inter-governmental (government2government) Voting and electorate consultation services 11/18

12. Opportunities semantic technologies at work Background  Semantic technologies  Knowledge society  Opportunities Issues Experiences Conclusions Communities of interest Formed up and interact via social networking Common interests and CoP modus operandi Extract semantics monitor and extract semantically rich information from these interactions non-intrusively and openly (tags) Emergent semantics a computational model of these communities technology for processing semantics in place Regulate input regulate and classify that knowledge before we reason about it Provide services use these inferences to better inform and deliver services to the public 12/18

19. Semantic technologies opportunities and issues for e-Government initiatives A talk delivered by Yannis Kalfoglou at Monday, 18 th June 2007 Thank you