Delft: 11 August 2008

The Comité Européen de Normalisation (CEN) has announced a workshop on the Discovery of and Access to eGovernment Resources. The workshop will take place in Madrid on the 11 September 2008 the day before the ePSIplus third standards meeting. The objective of the Madrid CEN/ISSS WS/eGov-Share workshop is to formulate and draft recommendations in a multi-part CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA). A further meeting will be held in Rome on the 20 October 2008 to the CWA.

The announcement states:

“It is often considered axiomatic that eGovernment will be a major cost saver for governments across Europe as well as a key competitive factor. Less obvious is how existing eGovernment resources - services, documentation, standards, processes etc. - can be used and reused with maximum benefit for the common good, particularly across politico-administrative boundaries. Discovery of and access to services is often difficult, often for sheer lack of classification, correct terminology or missing descriptions of services (in a wide sense), but also for lack of language or other semiotic skills.

• Current obstacles to widespread access to and reuse of eGovernment resources include:
• Lack of a comprehensive, yet easy to use standardized metadata schema for their description;
• Lack of easily accessible administrative terminology for use in these descriptions;
• Lack of awareness of cultural diversity issues including users' language skills and other semiotic faculties.”