eGovernment refers to the use of the Web or other information technologies by governing bodies to interact with their citizenry, between departments and divisions, and between governments themselves.
The eGovernment Interest Group is chartered to explore how to improve access to government through better use of the Web and achieve better government transparency using open Web standards at any government level (local, state, national and multi-national).
The Group met face-to-face for the first time at TPAC 2008. One of the biggest challenges so far was to scope the work since eGovernment is a huge topic, and how to be as much effective as possible in terms of charter's goals. The main outcome of the meeting was the definition of twelve topic areas on which the Group would conduct its work. These areas were subsequently refined down to six that are outlined in the draft Group Note. Out of those six, there are two topics that are getting the most attention: use of social media in government and open government data. With regard to the former, the Chairs and Staff Contact sent a position paper to the future of social networking summarizing the discussions and challenges found. The topics will be developed in the Note paying attention to how they can help achieve given policy goals, identifying the issues in doing so, and how those can be addressed.
In order to gather information about those issues and a better understanding of real-world project problems, the Group is also compiling a set of draft use cases.
The Group is positioning itself as a facilitator between governments and other W3C Groups, acting as a two way street. On one hand, it better communicates in government terms W3C's work and on the other gets information on government requirements that should be reflected in W3C standards. As such, some technical topics of interest are coming to the Group, such as the need to publish legislation on the Web, the development of a common model for public services or the need for better persistence of public information on the Web. These are still under consideration and if future steps would need to be taken, they would be coordinated with the relavant W3C activities or proposed as new to the Membership to find out if there is enough interest in pursuing them.
Since the announcement of the Activity, the number of stakeholders participating in the Group and subscribed to the public mailing list is still constantly increasing.
The second group face-to-face meeting is scheduled for 12-13 March 2009 in Washington, DC (USA), building on the momentum that is being lived in the U.S. with the arrival of the new Administration that has Transparency and Open Government high in the agenda, matching perfectly with the Group's main interests. Since the Group is still working hard on improving its community building (this is a main deliverable), this won't be a regular W3C Group meeting but a mixture of Group and stakeholders meeting.
The eGovernment IG also plans to publish the first public draft of the Group Note before the meeting and discuss about the potential future of eGovernment activities at W3C beyond its current charter.
| Group | Chair | Team Contact | Charter |
|---|---|---|---|
| eGovernment Interest Group (participants) | Kevin Novak, John Sheridan, José Manuel Alonso | Sandro Hawke | Chartered until 31 October 2010 |
This Activity Statement was prepared for the Bilbao AC Meeting (Members only) per section 5 of the W3C Process Document. Generated from group data.
José M. Alonso (W3C/CTIC), eGovernment Activity Lead$Id: Activity.html,v 1.114 2011/04/12 14:46:22 sysbot Exp $