The University of Washington iSchool lecture, Dec 2012

1. Yannis Charalabidis
Assistant Professor, University of the Aegean
Head of Research, Greek Interoperability Centre
University of Washington, Seattle, 3rd December 2012

2. Your speaker for the day
Studied computer engineering, at the National
Technical University of Athens. PhD in complex
information systems, NTUA
7 years a researcher in RTD projects for businesses
and governments
7 years in the software industry (Greece, Netherlands,
Germany Poland). Managing director of Baan-
Singular ERP company
Already 5 years in University of the Aegean and the
Greek Interoperability centre, teaching and
researching on eGovernance. The next 7 years ?
My aim for the day: to give you food for thought.
Hold on …

3. Activities
 Research in Greece and European Union (FP7/ICT,
CIP/PSP, e-Infrastructures, REGPOT, LIFE,
INTERREG, Greek CSF/RTD programmes)
 Industry-Academia programmes and projects
(Student practice, industry-oriented theses, PhD
research, targeted research)
 High-level, innovation-oriented consulting for
Governments, and Businesses worldwide (typically in
partnership with industry and other institutions)
 Scientific global-scale events organisation (WeGov
Awards, The Samos Summit, Aegean Start-Ups)
 Dissemination and Training activities

4. Areas of Expertise
1. Unified Process and Data Modelling methodologies with emphasis in
collaborative process modelling, advanced CCTS-based XML
modelling, business process management, simulation methods and
tools
2. Interoperability Standardisation and Application
Frameworks, including National Standardisation Frameworks for
businesses and governments, interoperability testing and
demonstration platforms
3. Service-Oriented Information Systems for Businesses and
Governments in Local, National and European level, including
Electronic Services Portals, eGIS, eSCM, Service Registries and
middleware components
4. Web 2.0 technologies for participative services, including
mashups, social networking applications, enterprise 2.0 applications
5. Electronic Governance models and systems with the use of
ontological representation and federated repositories for policy
modelling, argumentation support, knowledge visualisation, legislation
management

5. GIC International Network
ALBANY Univ, US
USC, US
NIST, US
SINTEF
NCC
TELIN
FhG-FOKUS
VUB
I-VLAB
SAP
EPFL
BoC
UNINOVA
UPV
CNR
GIC Syria
Israel
Collaborating Centres of Excellence in eGovernment & eBusiness Palestine
Countries with user organisations

6. An exercise
 There is a photo of the class in twitter
 Can you retrieve it ?(search for
#UWopendata or @yannisc)
 Then, you can post online
questions in twitter using
#UWopendata

7. ON OPEN DATA
Open data is the idea that certain data should be
freely available to everyone to use and republish as
they wish, without restrictions from copyright,patents or
other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open
data movement are similar to those of other "Open"
movements such as open source,open content,
and open access … (wikipedia)

8. Why is Open Data important ?
 Organises public knowledge
 Leads to better, new services
 Fights against corruption
 Supports transparency
 Can motivate citizens
 Can contribute to better democracy
 Gives data to other sciences
 Gives ideas for start-ups

9. Can you give us some good examples
?
 Organises public knowledge : data.gov (UK)
 Leads to better, new services : data.gov (US)
 Supports transparency: diavgeia.gr (GR)
 Can motivate citizens: toronto.ca (CA)
 Fights against corruption : ipaidabribe.com (IN)
 Can contribute to better democracy: opengov
(GR)
 Gives ideas for start-ups: Open Data Institute
(UK)
 Provides data to science for solving complex
problems of the society: ENGAGE (EU)

10. The ENGAGE EU project on Open Data
 A European e-Infrastructure, for advancing open
data provision across countries and scientific
communities, to solve complex societal problems
 To provide state of the art methods and tools for
data gathering, curation, publication, maintenance
 A public-private partnership of research (Greek
Interoperability Centre University Aegean, TU Delft,
Fraunhofer FOKUS) industry (Microsoft, IBM,
Intrasoft intl) and administrations from 5 EU
countries
www.engage-project.eu

11. The ENGAGE “Two-way” Open Data Usage Scenarios
Delivering Public Sector Data to Researchers and Citizens
Delivering Open Data Needs and guidelines to Public Sector
Organisations

12. An Open Data Platform generic
architecture
Application Interface (for Various Apps
Provision User Interface systems) (PC & mobile)
Data Curation
Processing (annotation, linking, formats)
Data Visualisation Data Linking
Data Acquisition Data Acquisition
Acquisition UI API
Directories of sources

13. Open Data Social
Natural
Sciences and
Governance
Platform architecture sciences
ICT
Engineering
Law
Policy
Modelling
Citizens
User groups Single point of
Access
Providing PSI to Research and Industry
Tailored data Governance and Citizens and
research communities services policy making education
and citizens in a
personalised manner Search and
Navigation tools
Knowledge /
Data Mining
Collaboration /
Communities
Directory services
and direct linking to
Data Service
Provision data archives
Visualisation Data Personalisation
Infrastructure - Analytics analytics
Curating, Annotating,
Harmonising , Data Quality Knowledge Mapping Automatic curation
algorithms
Data Curation
Visualising Infrastructure Data Linking Semantic Annotation Anonymisation Harmonisation
Public Sector Information Sources
Gathering data from
governmental Public Organisations, Repositories, Databases

14. The Global reach of ENGAGE

15. Challenges for Open Data Platforms
 Metadata schemas “2.0”: automated filling & self
classification, multiple levels of abstraction for
different user groups
 Develop auto-calculating new, metrics for open
datasets: semantic closeness / distance, linking
possibility, data quality will allow for
automatically linking open data (A-LOD)
 Full API and SaaS operation: automated input
and publication of open data “from the source”
 Novel ways of visualisation for open / linked
data
 Build ecosystems around open data, for sharing
and usage that can make our lives better, for

16. ON METADATA as it is used for two
The term metadata is ambiguous,
fundamentally different concepts (types). Although the
expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply
to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design
and specification of data structures, cannot be about data,
because at design time the application contains no data. In
this case the correct description would be "data about the
containers of data". Descriptive metadata, on the other
hand, is about individual instances of application data, the
data content.

17.  Metadata provides the means for discovery of relevant
datasets
 Metadata provides the context for understanding the
dataset
 Metadata provides the restrictions on use of the dataset:
rights, possibly costs
 Metadata provides the access to the dataset
 Metadata can assist in the further processing of the
dataset(s) by providing information on data syntax (type,
structure) and semantics (meaning)
 Metadata can record provenance (what has been done to
the dataset)
 Metadata can record information for digital preservation to
assure the future existence of the dataset
 Metadata can record user reaction to datasets: quality,

18. Conventional metadata for PSI (data.gov.xx)
is:
• Flat (lacking structure)
• Inadequate for describing the context of the
dataset
• Inadequate for software processing of the
dataset
• Inadequate for scientific use of open data
• Inadequate for automating linking
• Inadequate for automating visualisation
• But ... suitable for initial discovery

19. • In ENGAGE we shall provide:
• Much more detailed metadata
• With formal syntax (structure) and declared semantics
(meaning)
• From the world of research information
• Congruent with the EC e-infrastructure and associated
projects
• Within an architecture allowing the end-user to
• Use conventional PSI browsing and query
• Semantic web / linked open data /Simple metadata
• Access to datasets and limited processing / visualisation
• Or use information system query, reporting, analysis,
visualisation, simulation
• Rich metadata / Full range of relational processing

20. We will try in the next slides to show you what
is the level of expectation from metadata
handling from a 2nd generation open data
system

21. Imagine you are in front of the ENGAGE
system, and you have your URI from a
dataset, somewhere in the cloud,
(copied as string in the clipboard)
And begin …

22. Prescreening: User only gives URI
of the dataset
Enter (paste) the URI of your dataset
_

23. (then for 30 seconds you see this
screen, changing)
Progress of ENGAGE Resource Prescreening:
( 45% ) of jobs completed
Managed to :
Identify xls file
Autofill, provisionally: Title
Autofill, provisionally: Creator
Create unique ENGAGE URI
Calculate keywords
Autofill, provisionally: keywords
…
…

24. (When finishing import, the report)
Report
ENGAGE managed to automatically, provisionally fill in ( 21 ) of 43
metadata attributes for your dataset.
Your current validity is at ( 45% )
For your dataset to be inserted in the database, you need to continue
filling in ( 5 ) mandatory attributes.
Your dataset will then be inserted with validity ( 55% )
If all ( 17 ) non-mandatory attributes are filled in, validity will be
maximum, at 70% / limit of the insertion phase.
Please select next action: Continue Park

25. After import …
… and then, we enter the metadata
insertion page with pre-filled data, etc.
When we finish, we get a similar final
report.
When all metadata fields are filled-
in, we can ask all types of queries for
open data, at an international scale

26.  Open data, collaborative governance and ICT will be
key pillars of the new, value-based administration in
this century
 Open data and applications can play an important role
for entrepreneurship and development
 European Union member states, having already
adopted a collaborative governance example, can now
partner and work together with Gov 2.0 initiatives
internationally
 In the Greek Interoperability Centre and the University
of AEGEAN we can leverage on European
experiences and best practices, delivering them
worldwide

27. ON COLLABORATIVE
GOVERNANCE
Collaborative governance is a process and a form
of governance in which participants (parties, agencies,
stakeholders) representing different interests are
collectively empowered to make a policy decision or
make recommendations to a final decision-maker who
will not substantially change consensus
recommendations from the group

28. The Problem: Gap between
Society and Governance
 Society: increasingly  Governance: often
interconnected, silos-based, linear,
flexible, fast-evolving, obscure, hierarchical,
unpredictable over-simplified
 Policies, Disciplines
and Actors are
isolated
Policies Health R&D Social
Disciplines Economics Mathematics ICT
Actors Government Citizens Industry

29. "The problems that we have
created cannot be solved
at the level of thinking
that created them"
Albert Einstein
So ?

30. More people involved (collaborative governance)
2020
2010
More accurate and
analytical, modelin
g and simulation
tools
More data available (open data)

32. “Hard” Web Technologies Systems & Services
Web 2.0 Technologies
Argument Visualization Public Sector Service Systems
Mixed Reality Workflow Systems
Pattern Recognition Enterprise Resource Management
Serious Games Cloud computing
Electronic Participation PS Knowledge Management
Translation Systems Legal Structures Management
Social Networks Business Intelligence
Data & Opinion Mining
Simulation
Behavioral Modelling Forecasting - Backcasting
Societal Modelling Optimization
Social Simulation Systems Dynamics
Adaptive Models
Social Informatics Management Tools
“Soft”
Society Administration

33. Available for application
Visibility Should be around, soon
Service Co-creation / Web Services for all basic services
Visual Analytics Will take many years
Serious Games for Governance
Linked Data Gov Cloud (SaaS)
Dynamic, External Workflow Mgt
Open data
Legal Informatics
(Seamless) Identity management & trust mechanisms
Online Opinion Mining Internal, Static Workflow Mgt
Government Service Utility Social Media in Policy Making
(Automated) Argument Service Delivery Platforms
Organisational Interoperability
Visualisation Gov Cloud (IaaS)
Participatory Sensing / IoT eParticipation
Agent-based Societal
Simulation Gov Cloud (PaaS)
Model-Based eVoting
Decision Making Instant, proactive Service
Delivery for all services
Semantic Interoperability Municipality Mobile Government
Governance Model ERP
Composability & Reuse Web Services /SOA in
core registries
Science Base
Federated eID
for ICT-enabled Governance
Open Source Technical Interoperability
Software for
Service Mgt
ICT-enabled historiography
Inflated Expectations Disillusionment Productivity
Readiness, over time

34.  PADGETS: Policy Making through Social
Media Interoperability www.padgets.eu
 ENGAGE: Open, Linked Governmental Data
for scientists and citizens www.engage-
project.eu
 NOMAD: Non-moderated opinion mining (the
opinion web) www.nomad-project.eu
 CROSSOVER: New horizons in ICT-enabled
governance www.crossover-project.eu

35.  We need a totally different set of tools for
evidence-based decision making by
governments
 Societal Simulation, Data and Opinion Mining,
Service Co-creation will be the next “big things”
for governments that wish to make a difference
 We need to go beyond pure ICT approaches and
embark in a multi-disciplinary journey. That’s
why we need a science base for ICT-enabled
Governance
 But most importantly …

36. eGovernance Research is about our
children’s future:
It is not enough to “do the things right”
… we have to “do the right things”