Monthly Archives: March 2013

Terminology lifecycle

There exists many documents and guidelines on terminology and concepts, both generally and specially. Semicolon have collated this documentation and tacit experiences from different departments into a holistic lifecycle process for concepts and terminology work.

The illustration below describes Semicolons suggestion for a lifecycle process for concepts and terms with associated main processes. The process is iterative, since the terms will be in constant flux illustrated in main process #4 (Change management). Public government are mainly the organisation maintaining concept systems on a daily basis, howevere the concept systems are ususally developed in projects. When major revision of the concept systemss are necessary these could be managed in separate projects.

Figur

 

 

 

Figure – Concept system lifecycle

This is a short description of the different processess, a more complete description is in the report (only in Norwegian):

  1. Develop: Develop a representation of the concept systems. Validate and verify its relevance. Ask for stakeholder contributions. A government agency desides implementation of the concept system. The concept system is versioned and published.
  2. Implement: Plan for deployment and practical use. Deploy the concept system on technical-, organisationa- and usage-level, including training.
  3. Governance: Run the concept system on a technical level, maintain it on the organsiational level, realise the benefits.
  4. Change management: Identify changes, recommend changes, analyse and plan for the change. Consider the need to establish a separate project to make the change, or if the governing agency could manage. Implement the changes, govern the new concept systems.
  5. Quality assurance: The concept system must be quality assured during the whole lifecycle.

This process is extensively described by Vibeke Dalberg, Per Myrseth and Jim Yang in the document (in Norwegian): Lifecycle process for development and governance of concept systems, february 2011. Visio concept model.

This lifecycle process are used and evaluated by many of the practical cases in the Semicolon project that are related to concept definitions.

  • Paramedic chain
  • Corporate register
  • Accounting register
Posted in Methods, News, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Terminology lifecycle

Open Data

Report on open linked data
Public sector are increasingly active in electronic sharing of information. This is digital information exchange between entities within the public sector, citizens and businesses. Semantic technologies enables sharing of open public data in new forms that provides other opportunities for sharing than with more traditional technologies. An important part of semantic technologies are the formal models for describing the meaning of the data. This enables the possibility of merging information from disparate sources, for better search and visualization of the information etc.

The Semicolon project have run several pilot projects for evaluating semantic technologies and to better understand the organizational and jurisdictional ramification of open data within the public sector.

In the Semicolon project there have been developed several technical pilots, relevant literature have been reviewed and opportunities and results have been discussed with several stakeholders. The findings have led to collaboration between several other research projects and are embedded as a central topic of the Semicolon II project.

The outcome and findings from the Semicolon project have received a lot of attention and the results are presented at several conferences in Norway and internationally.

The Semicolon project have produced a report discussing opportunities and challenges for the use of Open Data within the public sector with a set of recommendations in bullet points.

Robert Engels and Per Myrseth: Open and Linked data. A information infrastructure for digital collaboration. Report nr. 2011-276, revision nr. 1. Det Norske Veritas, February 2011. (In Norwegian)

The Semicolon methodology for making linked open data available

In the collaboration with The Brønnøysund Register Centre we have developed a methodology for how Open Linked Data could be made available.

The methodology is a process where we investigate master data and other data sources from todays isolated relational databases with associated web services to available, linked and self describing semantic data.

The goal is to demonstrate

  • how to lower the threshold for use of information for a different purpose
  • how semantic standards ensures correct interpretation of data when reused
  • that increased use will increase the data quality

The Semicolon methodology builds on the principles behind linked data and in collaboration with other technologies.

One important aspect from the methodology developed is that the linked data made available shall be interpretable by both machines and humans, to achieve this referenceable vocabularies that returns a definition is used. Metadata related to the quality of the data, ownership etc. shall also be returned by the vocabulary service. In Norway SERES is used as a repository for the vocabularies.

More details available here. (In Norwegian)

URI-regime

In the project a regime for how to use URI’s and its importance was also developed. The report is available here. (In Norwegian)

The proposed URI-regime will be made a Norwegian standard by DIFI.

Presentations on linked open data

The Semicolon project have given many lectures and demonstrations on open linked data.
To mention a few:

Per Myrseth: Linked open data. Track Informasjonshåndtering, Software 2010, DND, Oslo 9. – 11. februar 2010. *

Dumitru Roman og David Norheim: An Overview of Norwegian Linked Open Data. Applications in Regional Development and Environmentally Friendly Behavior. Akseptert for publisering i The proceedings of The Fourth International Conference on Information, Process, and Knowledge Management (eKNOW 2012), January 30 – February 4, 2012 – Valencia, Spain.

Per Myrseth, Jens Kilde Mjelva, David Norheim, Thom-Kåre Granli. National master data as 5 star Linked Open Data, Presentation
IFIP EGOV 2012. 3-5. September 2012, Kristiansand, Norway.

David Norheim, Computas:Öppna upp företagsdata. Sundsvall 42. Sundsvall, 17. oktober 2012.

Svein Erik Grønmo, Brønnøysundregistrene og David Norheim, Computas: Åpne data, Semicolon II med Demonstrasjon av Enhetsregisteret og Regnskapsregisteret. Nokios 2012, Trondheim, 31. oktober 2012.

Comments Off on Open Data