icegov2012 proceedings

Not without reason therefore that the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), an international consortium that aims to
develop Web standards, defines government data as open: the
publication and dissemination of public sector information on the
web , shared in raw format and open, understandable of course, to
allow its reuse in digital applications developed by society [27]. In
addition, the W3C considers that governments should encourage
citizens to use the open data available by governments, ie, they
should be encouraged to reuse the data according to their needs
and wants. The [23] summarizes the purpose of this incentive:
"There is value in providing open government data if the company
has no interest in re-use them".
Likewise, the Declaration on the Public Service Open Europe
believes that public bodies must provide the government data: in
open formats and reusable, public institutions should seek to act
as a platform for building of public value. Public organizations
should offer citizens the ability to solve problems for themselves
by providing them the proper tools to do so [17]. Protection of
open data as a promoter of transparency is due to the possibilities
of making government records accessible to eliminating all
restrictions concerning technology, accessibility and legislation to
International Initiatives of Portals of Open Government Data
Worldwide, activists, international organizations and governments
are thinking about access to public information from the data
open. Although the discussion on this topic is new, there are
already some experience of government provision of open data.
Several national and subnational governments now provide their
data from the orientations of open government. Among the
countries that have policies of open data include: United States,
United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand [26, 17]. These
countries have developed national policies on access to public
data and created web portals that provide public information in
different formats. Moreover, they often encourage citizens to
create new applications and ways of using information published
in their portals.
2.1.1 The Australian, New Zealand and United
Kingdom Portals of Open Government Data
The Australian government created the portal Data Australia in
February 2010. The objective of the portal of transparency is to be
the database of public information government of this country.
They encourage us to use the information contained within the
portal to create gadgets and computer programs by users who do
social control of all information within the portal. The website of
the New Zealand government was created this year to offer
information and intelligence agencies and public bodies of
government. It has space for discussion through forums that may
be proposed by citizens.
The example of the United Kingdom intends to offer data and
information to citizens in public administration for the expansion
of government social control. It has space for the wiki, online
community, and sends in new web applications, among others. In
2008, Britain ceded public information to a competition to
develop solutions to public data named Show us a better way.
2.1.2 The United States Portal of Open Government
Data
The flagship plan for adoption of open data is the U.S. Initiatives
in this country can also be found in the sub-national governments.
According to [26], Washington DC was one of the pioneers in
developing the incentive to collaborative work between
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government and society with public data. President Obama early
in the mandate, set policies for the promotion of transparency that
encourages the provision of government data in open format.
The memo sent by the president on January 21, 2009 to all heads
of government called the Federal Transparency and Open
Government. This memo pledged to create "unprecedented levels
of openness" in government. The president called the
representatives of the executive to work to ensure trust and
establish a system of transparency, public participation and
collaboration. The opening will strengthen democracy and will
promote efficiency and effectiveness to government "[20, 26].
The Open Government Initiative policy aimed to guarantee the
realization of this memo. Among its actions, is the portal
Data.gov, created in May 2009. The aim of Data.gov, portal
transparency of the federal government is offering information
and expand the creative use of government data through web
applications, encouraging innovative ideas to provide greater
transparency of governmental actions. The site contains
information about hundreds of government agencies and offices
separated by organ. Statistics tell visitors monthly, daily, yearly. It
also has space for participation of citizens wishing to express their
will.
2.1.3 Private Portals of Open Government Data
Besides the government experiences, there are already nongovernmental
organizations that seek to promote and support the
adoption of open data policy. For example, the Sunlight
Foundation and Project Open Government Data, Access the Open
Knowledge Foundation Info. These experiences advocate in favor
of adopting the policy of open data by governments and perform a
variety of activities from research to encourage the creation of
solutions and standards for open formats. In short, despite the
recent discussion of existence and availability of open government
data, there are already examples of governments that adopt this
theory as a public policy to promote transparency and
collaboration between government and society.
2.2 How to Measure the Level of OGD in
Governmental Portals?
One of the methods to measure the level of OGD in governmental
Portals was created by Tim Berners-Lee. It was denominated the
five stars of open linked data [27].
Actually, this method was created to “(…) categorise the
publication of open data on the Web in levels of increasing
usefulness, that encapsulate the present shared vision of the
Semantic Web as a Web of Linked Open Data, and that
individuals can use to rate their own data publication” [27].
It was divided in five categories [28]:
1) One star: available on the web (whatever format) but with an
open licence, to be open data.
2) Two stars: available as machine- readable structured data
(e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table).
3) Three stars: as (2) plus non proprietary format (e. g. CSV
instead of excel).
4) Four star: all the above plus, use of open standards from
W3C (RDF or SPARQL) to identify things, so that people
can point at your stuff.
5) Five stars: all the above, plus: link your data to other
people’s data to provide context.