Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web

Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web
W3C Working Draft 10 March 2009

This version:
    http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-egov-improving-20090310/
Latest version:
    http://www.w3.org/TR/egov-improving/

Editors:
    José M. Alonso (W3C/CTIC)
    Kevin Novak (The American Institute of Architects)
Authors:
    José M. Alonso (W3C/CTIC)
    Oscar Azañón (Gobierno del Principado de Asturias)
    Owen Ambur (Invited Expert)
    Daniel Bennett (Invited Expert)
    Kevin Novak (The American Institute of Architects)
    John Sheridan (The National Archives)
    more authors

Copyright © 2009 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply.
Abstract

Status of This Document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

This is a First Public Working Draft of "Improving Access to Government through Better use of the Web".

This document was developed by the eGovernment Interest Group, and is a working document to which all can contribute. Please send comments about this document to public-egov-ig@w3.org (with public archive). The Interest Group will make every attempt to address any comments received by April 26 in the final document.

Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.

This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. The group does not expect this document to become a W3C Recommendation. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
Table of Contents

    * Introduction
          o Background
                + Usage of Web Standards
                + Transparency and Participation
                + Seamless Integration of Data
                + Relationships and Collaborations
    * Definitions
    * Trends and Modalities of the Web and the User
    * eGovernment Issues
          o Participation and Engagement
                + What Is Participation and Engagement?
                      # Participation
                      # Engagement
                + What Public Policy Outcomes Are Related to Participation and Engagement?
                      # Enabling Citizen Choice and Improving Public Services
                      # Providing Advice and Support to Citizens to Achieve Public Policy Outcomes
                      # Changing Behaviours and Establishing New Social Norms
                + What Are the Main Benefits to Using the Web for Participation and Engagement?
                + How Can Participation and Engagement Be Achieved?
                      # Access of Public Servants to Web Sites that Citizens Are Using
                      # Clear and Simple Rules for Public Servants
                      # Training, Support and Cultural Change
                      # Allow Comments on Policy Documents
                + What Are the Main Issues and Limitations with Using the Web for Participation and Engagement?
                      # Representation Boundaries
                      # Relationships
                      # Ownership and Use of Third Party Services
                      # Inclusive Access to Information
                      # Authoritative Sources
                      # Interoperability and Data Portability
                      # Archiving Challenges
                      # Metrics
          o Open Government Data
                + What is Open Government Data?
                      # What Data?
                + What Public Policy Outcomes are Related to Open Government Data?
                + What are the Main Benefits of Publishing Open Government Data?
                      # Multiple views, not just one
                      # Reuse
                      # Improved Web Search
                      # Data Integration
                + How Can Open Government Data Be Achieved?
                      # Publishing (X)HTML
                      # Providing APIs
                      # RSS/Atom information
                      # REST interfaces
                      # Semantic Web technologies
                + What Are the Main Issues and Limitations with Publishing Open Government Data?
                      # Mission and Strategy
                      # Provenance and Trust
                      # Limitations of the Technology
                      # Capabilities
          o Interoperability
                + What is Interoperability?
                + What Are the Main Benefits of Interoperability?
                      # Easier for the Citizen
                      # Less Documentation
                      # Faster
                      # Greater automation
                      # Increased multi-channel delivery
                + How Can Interoperability Be Achieved?
                      # Government Interoperability Frameworks
                + What Are the Main Issues and Limitations?
                      # Privacy
                      # Security
                      # Semantics
                      # Legal Aspects
                      # Open Standards
                      # Open Source
          o Multi-channel delivery
          o Identification and Authentication
                + The Transition of Identity from the Physical to the Virtual
                + The Myth versus Reality of Physical Forms of Identity and Authentication
                + Roles of Identity and Authentication with eGovernment
                + Uses for Identity and Authentication
                + Technological Methods for Authentication and Identity
                + W3C eGov IG's Interest in Identity and Authentication
          o Long term data management
    * Next Steps
    * Acknowledgements
    * References

Introduction

Governments have strived for over a decade to provide more information and services to their constituents including the public, businesses, and other governments. Through their efforts there have been struggles given policy, resources, technology, capability, and other issues which have provided significant challenges and roadblocks to conceptualizing or achieving the desired goals and results. The explosion and development of the Web, related technologies, and practices have offered governments perhaps the best opportunity to realize their goals in providing information and services while meeting the demand for increasingly more contribution and interaction.

The idea of government use of the Web and related technologies was born in the late 1990's and culminated in early 2000 as an extension of everything “e”. At the time, the Web was in its infancy and still very much acting and facilitating a wild-wild west frontier. eCommerce, eKnowledge, B2B, B2C, eService and many other terms floated around and sought to be defined to enable and leverage the promise of the Web. Terms were publicized and communicated in the hopes of creating interest and ultimately business via this new and exciting medium. During this period, governments realized there were also opportunities internal to their organization and activities seeking the same efficiencies and approaches used by others to improve and make electronically available information and services. This concept and opportunity was dubbed electronic government or eGovernment, eGov for short.

The promise of eGovernment then and continuing now offers governments the opportunity to open their doors to citizens, helping expose the secrecy of government, opening doors to the inner workings while aiding understanding and explanation, informing and making available large quantities and types of information for use, interest, and comprehension, delivering services where and when and at times citizens and constituents need them, and creating internal and external operating efficiencies that improve the operations and interchanges within and between governments.

The promise, progress, and efforts have been stymied given the many unique needs, requirements, and challenges that governments face in collecting, managing, and making available information and services. The unique issues include policies which control, at times in specific and procedural detail, how information must be handled, who has access, and if or not it can be distributed, and if it can, when. Other issues relate to budgetary and personnel resources that prohibit innovation, ability and execution of electronic government related activities. Governments are challenged to always do more with less being mindful of spending tax income. Governments are challenged in recruiting and retaining the qualified and skilled resources needed to develop innovative applications and approaches. Governments are challenged with being able to adeptly and quickly maneuver and adjust policies and procedures to facilitate a forward direction in electronic government.

Another challenge comes from the government and its role and contribution to society. Governments have looked to, used, and implemented technologies well after technologies and related approaches have been tested and proven in private industry. Governments, who are the champions of innovation and at times the financial resource for the private sector, cannot readily adapt to being an innovator which places them far behind what is viewed as the norm and current technological environment.

The host of issues cited and many more create challenges for governments considering or moving forward with electronic government.

The new ideas, applications, and promises of the so called Web 2.0 [WEB20] have only furthered and made more complex the issues and challenges that governments face in achieving the promises of electronic government. Web 2.0 and particularly social media, social networking, and the new paradigms of openness, interaction, and influence have confounded governments as to how they can take advantage of Web 2.0 and meet the demands of their constituencies. Many questions have been brought forth and with only partial answers to some. How can policies, practices, and laws be amended to allow for electronic participation? How can operations be altered to operate on and in real time to leverage the interest and desired level of participation? How can governments ensure the authority and primary nature of the information is maintained? What can and is a part of the official record of government and its activity? Can electronically derived and received comments be considered part of the official record? How are they responded to or addressed? How can governments use and incorporate new technologies within their older systems and infrastructure? Are there way to expose data from the older systems and infrastructures via the Web?

Additional issues and challenges come forth on who and what percentage of their constituencies have access to the Web, electronic tools and applications which would allow for the provision of information and service, the interaction, and the contribution. How and what must governments do to ensure the majority have access to the information and services now available from the fruits of their labor? The issue of access confounds and challenges both developed and developing countries and regions of the World. The wide adoption of mobile devices has furthered even greater complexity to the access issue. The citizens of some countries and regions (Japan, India, Latin America) have adopted mobile devices as their primary interface to the Web and are demanding more and more mobile access to government information, service, and interaction. For many in developing countries, mobile delivery and retrieval are their only opportunity and method for access given the lack of adequate telecommunications and networking infrastructures needed to connect and communicate by other means.

The further challenge and complexity of the access issue comes from cost. Computers and connection points are still economically out of range for a majority of people around the world. Cost and the lack of infrastructure limit the opportunities for many and their related governments in achieving and benefiting from the promise of electronic government.

One last challenge to document, although not in any way seeking to be conclusive of all the issues and hurdles that exist, is the understanding and definition of what the openness and transparency movement and demand is. How do or should different governments define or consider openness and transparency? How does each address the structure of government and cultural norms? Many of these questions will take considerable time to find their answers and explanations. Consensus of and on the answers are not yet clear nor do governments yet fully understand the impact and opportunity and how to operationally incorporate and accommodate.

Once the questions are answered, policies evaluated, and challenges are met, technical standards and particularly standards related to open source, data, and Web standards can aid governments and others with achieving and realizing the promise and benefits of electronic government.

Standards work across many groups, governments, and organizations continues to aid governments. Many have committed time and resources to develop XML, Authentication, and other data standards to promote and aid information to be free flowing and available. Others have sought to address and understand how to aid in developing standards for interoperability and interchange of data while others have sought to create or identify Web presentation layer, application, and browser based standards to aid governments in their efforts.

The W3C eGovernment Interest Group (eGov IG) seeks and aspires to become a critical link in assisting governments with the promise of electronic government. The Interest Group realizes that one group, government, nor organization needs to own or create everything needed to assist governments. Innovations, new opportunities, and work are occurring worldwide creating example applications, creating and vetting new standards, manipulating or customizing existing standards, and experimenting with and addressing the policy and procedural challenges seeking solutions to these and many of the other existing challenges and issues.

The eGov IG, therefore, acts as the validation and aggregation point of the representative use cases, standards, approaches, and opportunities while being the connector and enabler in the electronic government space. The IG efforts and products will be freely available and adoptable by governments worldwide. The eGovernment Interest Group stands ready to advise developed and developing countries in furthering the promise of electronic government.

The product of the initial group work and effort to date is found in this issues paper. The paper seeks to define and call forth, but not yet solve, the variety of issues and challenges faced by governments. The use cases, documentation, and explanation are focused on the available or needed technical standards but additionally provide context to note and describe the additional challenges and issues, which exist before success can be realized.
Background

Governments are increasingly finding value in Web standards created at W3C, these standards currently enjoy broad use in eGovernment and some have been named in laws and put into practice in a variety of countries.

Nevertheless, governments have some unique requirements (e.g. enforcing certain policies about information privacy) and sometimes spend considerable effort in adapting some standards to their specific needs. Having those requirements reflected in the standards produced at W3C would be beneficial for all. So there's still work to do to help the governments understand how to better use, support and participate in the development of Web standards to make their applications interoperable across bodies and countries and meet citizens' needs, demands, and goals.

The eGovernment Interest Group focuses its efforts to fill a distinct gap in the Web and technology standards space focusing on the unique and diverse needs and issues that governments throughout the developed and developing World face in enabling electronic service and information delivery and providing opportunities for discovery, interaction and participation.

The eGov IG is in its first year of existence and is through this Note, an issues paper, and future work attempting to meet and execute its charter [EGOVIG] and mission for the W3C and specifically for serving its purpose and intent to assist governments throughout the World in realizing the promise of electronic government.

The eGovernment Interest Group (eGov IG) is designed as a forum to support researchers, developers, solution providers, and users of government services that use the Web as the delivery channel. The Interest Group uses email discussions, scheduled IRC topic chats and other collaborative tools as a forum to enable broader collaboration across eGov practitioners.

The following activities are in the scope of the eGovernment Interest Group and three interest areas have been formed to achieve the Group's mission:
Usage of Web Standards

Gather information about the areas where best practice guidelines are needed: best practices will be drawn from the successes (and failures) of efforts at opening, sharing, and re-using knowledge about the use of standards and specifications by government applications that could be collected into a set of best practices with the intent of identifying productive technical paths toward better public services.

Provide input on how to ease standards compliance: use previous successful experiences in terms of broad government use (such as the Web Accessibility Initiative work) to identify ways for standard bodies to better speak in terms of government needs; for example, additional effort to package, promote, and train on best practices and existing material and tools.
Transparency and Participation

Identify ways to improve government transparency and openness: identify any gaps to be filled in creating a complete suite of standards to enable open government information and ease the goal of linkable Public Sector Information.

Identify ways to increase citizenship participation: recognize new channels, ways to get the information to the citizens where the citizens are looking for it, and make better use of tools as means to increase citizenry awareness and participation while supporting champions, i.e. acknowledge and help active citizens and public servants.

Identify ways to increase citizens and businesses use of eGovernment services: get information on benefits of Web use for government services, identify main factors that are important for people and businesses to use eGovernment services such as time and money savings, simplicity, etc. and identify ways to improve them.
Seamless Integration of Data

Identify how to advance the state-of-the-art in data integration strategies: identify ways for governments and computer science researchers to continue working together to advance the state-of-the-art in data integration and build useful, deployable proof-of-concept demos that use actual government information and demonstrate real benefit from linked data integration. These proof-of-concept tools ought to be targeted to applications that will show real improvement in areas that elected officials, government officers and citizens actually need. This area would include addressing the needs of business cases through the use of XML, SOA, and Semantic Web technologies.
Relationships and Collaborations

The eGovernment Interest Group is current working with, forming relationships, or collaborating with governments and other organizations (The World Bank, EC, OECD, OAS, ICA, CEN, OASIS) recognizing the activity and efforts throughout the World on the issues, challenges, and work required to aid governments in achieving the promise of electronic government.
Definitions

Description terms are used to highlight and describe the various types of interaction points and relationships that governments have to their various constituencies. A few of the major and known terms are below:

    * G2C: Government to Citizen: Governments providing Web based information and services to their public constituencies.
    * G2B: Government to Business: Governments providing Web based information and services to companies and others in the private sector (Financial, Retail, as examples)
    * G2G: Government to Government: Connections and communications between, state, local, regional, territories, Federal depending on Country and political structure.

And a newer term resulting from the demand for higher levels and opportunities of participation and interaction is Citizen to Government or C2G.
Trends and Modalities of the Web and the User

The Web is currently processing and addressing several trends and activities that are requiring evolution of tools, thoughts, and strategies. Four key trend areas must be accounted for and noted in strategies and directions being discussed, developed, and implemented:

    * Global: Issues related to content, information, and services that are tailored to the individual's needs and consumption toinclude multilingual formats and take into account cultural sensitivities [I18N].
    * Connected: User and community connectivity resulting in content/information available via APIs and desktops (without browsers) and content/information that centers on online communities and is distributed across many sites, platforms, and repositories. Content and information should be able to be shared, manipulated, and packaged as the user or groups of users see fit honoring all rights and restrictions and where they interact and spend their time.
    * On the Go: Content/information availability via mobile devices [MWI] that takes into account a variety of delivery methods and accepted practices, industry standards and applications.
    * Easily Accessible: Content/information that is available and discoverable, accessible [WAI] and searchable via quick and simple applications; complete and relevant content/information that promotes an experiential gain of knowledge and growth; incorporation of content/information in mash-ups and other programmatic combinations that allow for a hyper-personalized experience; and information architectures and navigation that is relevant and usable to a diverse world-wide audience.

The World is now global. Localization is still critically important, however, all content and interaction crosses continents and oceans despite the original intent or focus. It is no longer easy to say one or an organization can focus only on a particular geographic area. All must recognize that the content, actions, and communications are available, being reviewed, watched, and potentially used by others around the globe. This global reach has furthered the concept of communities where people all over the world or even specific geographic regions can meet, interact, share, and consume information and service. People want to be connected and in ways that are tailored and customizable to how and where they want to meet, interact, share, and consume. This “on demand and customized” desire for information, service, and interaction, requires the adoption and recognition that all or most must be available via mobile devices and applications recognizing that in today's hyper busy and demanding world, the concept of “on the go” becomes a necessary part of daily life and operation. The activity, connectivity, and growth of the information and service on the Web has caused the amount of information available to grow exponentially requiring more complex and faster ways to access, mine, categorize, and deliver information.

These new demands and requirements are currently pushing technological limits and are resulting in very complex systems comprised of many different parts and interactions both on a user and systems level. Therefore, the strategies must be able to account for the dynamism that is occurring today and ensure that tomorrow's demands, requirements, and trends can be easily met in a global audience construct.

These four key trends and the recognition that the Web is both a localized and global space must result in governments thinking and defining their role in the context of modalities.

Within the key trends there are three modalities that exist for governments' use of the Web:

    * to deliver public services, to citizens,businesses, and other governments and levels of government (providing information or transactional services)
    * to engage with citizens through the use of social media on government Web sites or through engagement with online communities elsewhere on the Web.
    * as infrastructure, to enable others to retrieve and manipulate government provided data.

These modalities can be loosely characterized as provide, engage and enable. The extent to which a government chooses to fulfill any or all of these roles on the Web is a socio-political question, tightly connected to levels of public funding and the more general development of public services.

When characterizing governments' current use of the Web a number of general observations can be made. Whilst increasingly cognizant of the opportunities afforded by social media, typically governments are still operating a broadcasting paradigm. Web sites are a vehicle for mass communication and for the delivery of transactional services. In this environment statistics showing the scale of usage are celebrated as indicators of success in themselves. The structure of a government Web estate is often organizationally driven. This is problematic as the structures of government continually change, resulting in significant disruption to the presentation of government on the Web. Government departments can be surprisingly transient entities. Transposed to namespaces and URIs this is quick sand on which to build an essential information infrastructure using the Web.

To give an example of the consequences of this churn, governments have difficulty maintaining persistent URIs even to documents. Increasing volumes of official reports and documents are published on the Web alone making the long term availability of those resources an important issue. In this context 'link rot' is not just an inconvenience of the user, it undermines public accountability as documents cease to be available.

Firmly in the provide mode many governments have devised a channels strategy for their Web estate. This has been developed primarily from a communications perspective. What is more generally absent is a data strategy from a Web engineering perspective. It is rare in government to think about Web site development as the engineering of basic information infrastructure.

Underlying these issues is one of particular interest to the W3C as a technology standards organization, not just about adoption and usage of its standards, but about the understanding of them. As a supplier and provenance source of information on the Web, governments have an important role to play. There is potential for significant social and commercial innovation using public sector information made available using the Web.

The reality is that not many officials responsible for commissioning or managing government Web sites are familiar with the basic principles of the Web‚ for example Architecture of the World Wide Web [WEBARCH]. Unfortunately, lacking a government context and being aimed at a more expert audience, the W3C guidelines and specifications are almost impenetrable to many Web decision makers in government.
eGovernment Issues

Electronic Government brings forth a host of issues and challenges for any government embarking upon the effort and the promise. Electronic Government also presents many challenges to the technical community and others who are creating, developing, and making available tools and technologies that can assist governments. The eGov IG recognizes the complexity of the environment and the host of issues that need to be addressed and vetted with, ultimately, solutions and assistance documented and published.

The following topics are those the eGov IG believe to be the most pressing for governments in the context of the current constituency demands and the trends related to Web 2.0. transparency, and participation. Future work of the eGov IG will begin to structure, prioritize, and address many of the other issues impacting electronic government while continuing to mature those found below.
Participation and Engagement
What Is Participation and Engagement?

In an increasing number of countries the level of domestic broadband access has reached and surpassed critical mass. The Web is the first port of call for information and advice - from breaking news to fact finding about an illness. Increasingly human relationships are being created and sustained on the web through social networking sites. Large numbers of people are using social media tools to keep in touch with their friends and colleagues. These are important trends that are opening new opportunities for governments and citizens to interact. Increasingly the default means for government to communicate its message and to provide public services is using the Web.
Participation

The Web provides a transformative platform for the public sphere, the process of social communication where opinions are expressed, synthesized and coalesced. There are many types of public spheres operating across many different platforms, including the traditional mass media of television, radio and newspapers. The Web is transformative simply because it allows anyone to be a publisher. This changes the power relationships in the public sphere in profound ways. It affords political leaders new routes to power, crowd sourcing both finance and campaign teams. It affords citizens new ways to have their say. Both marginalized or extreme voices can now be heard making the public sphere increasingly rich and diverse. In turn this changes the nature of politics, news and journalism and how they contribute to the public sphere. What is clear is that people's use of the Web is shifting the relationship between the citizen and the state. The nature of these changes varies by culture and system of government but the impact is being felt everywhere.

The growth of political blog [BLOG] illustrates the Web's use for conversations about the direction of public policy. Outside of traditional political processes, campaign Web sites provide the means for people to group together to press for political change. This may be through lobbying or by seeking elected office or from new forms of campaign such as crowd sourcing a flash mob. This is about using the web for participation, to shape, direct or change public policy.

Both politicians and political parties are increasingly using social networking tools as part of their political campaigning, the most striking example being the Obama campaign in the United States. Supporters who have grown up with a candidate engaging in a two-way dialogue during the campaign feel they have a strong stake in what that candidate does once they have been elected. For example, there is evidence with the Obama administration that supporters are insisting on maintaining the dialogue from the campaign into office, “Holding Obama-Biden Administration Accountable” [OB-ACC]. This is the introduction of a new type of check and balance into the political system, what some, such as William Dutton, call the fifth estate [FIFTH-ESTATE]. We see the phenomenon elsewhere where online communities seek to enforce a degree of accountability. Social network Facebook's response to pressure over changes to the service's terms and conditions, which led to a return to the original [FB-TOS] is an example of such community power.