Luxembourg, 9 December 2010

The W3C has published a draft of the charter for a Government Linked Data Working Group.

The mission of the Government Linked Data (GLD or GovData) Working Group is to provide standards and other information which help governments around the world publish their data as effective and usable linked data. The group, a part of the eGovernment Activity, will collect and make available information about government linked data activities around the world, then use that information and the experience of its participants to develop W3C Recommendations for Best Practices and for RDF Vocabularies necessary for publication of government data as linked data.

The group will develop standards-track documents and maintain a community website in order to help governments at all levels (from small towns to nations) share their data as high quality ("five-star") linked data. This group is exclusively focused on data publication using Semantic Web standards, deployed on the Web following linked data principles, as introduced by Tim Berners-Lee in 2006, in Linked Data.

The Working Group will construct and maintain an online directory of the government linked data community, containing deployments, vendors, contractors and end-user applications as well as optionally research groups, advocacy groups and training materials.

The working group is expected to start in March 2011, and continue until March 2013. All proceedings will be public.

Related Links:

W3C Spain Day on Open Data

Linked Data Cloud Diagram Updated