I’m very pleased to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation is a consortium partner in the recently funded FP7 project LOD2. From the overview:
Over the past three years, the semantic web activity has gained momentum with the widespread publishing of structured data as RDF. The Linked Data paradigm has therefore evolved from a practical research idea into a very promising candidate for addressing one of the biggest challenges in the area of intelligent information management: the exploitation of the Web as a platform for data and information integration in addition to document search. To translate this initial success into a world-scale disruptive reality, encompassing the Web 2.0 world and enterprise data alike, the following research challenges need to be addressed: improve coherence and quality of data published on the Web, close the performance gap between relational and RDF data management, establish trust on the Linked Data Web and generally lower the entrance barrier for data publishers and users.
The OKF depends on external funding to expand and provide better services more quickly. One of the absolutely fantastic things about the LOD2 project is that we’ll be able to expand the CKAN software specifically as part of developing an EU wide registry for open government data. We’ll be launching a great new website that helps collect all the great public data starting to be built across Europe at www.publicdata.eu (though the first version won’t be up for a bit, so patience with the current site).
We’ll of course be available to help anyone as much as we can across all the projects. In terms of formal responsibility and work, we participate in 6 workpackages:
- WP1 – Requirements, Design and LOD2 Stack Prototype
- WP6 – Interfaces, Component Integration & LOD2 Stack
- WP9 – Use Case 3: LOD2 for Citizen – GovData.eu
- WP10 – Training, Dissemination, Community Building, Fertilization
- WP11 – Standardization, Exploitation
- WP12 – Project Management
The project has a number of deliverables, and we’ll be in charge of:
- WP9 – Use Case 3: LOD2 for Citizen – GovData.eu
- D9.1.1 – First release of the GovData.eu website and tools
- D9.1.2 – Intermediate release of the GovData.eu website and tools
- D9.1.3 – Final release of the GovData.eu website and tools
- D9.3.1 – Guide and best practices presentation
- D9.3.2 – Guide and best practices brochure
- D10.1.1 – LOD2 training course for external audiences
As you can see, most of our work will be concentrated on WP9, which we’re the lead partner on, together with Free University Berlin, University of Leipzig, Ten Force, and Wolters Kluwer Germany. More at: http://lod2.eu/WorkPackage/wp9.html
Use hashtag #lod2 on twitter, and follow @lod2project for more updates. The LOD2 project overview is also on the EU site.
LOD2 homepage is available at: http://lod2.eu/
The full project deliverables are at: http://lod2.eu/WikiArticle/Deliverables.html (Note they look to be in chronological order of delivery dates).
The project has even started a flickr account for sharing at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lod2/
And of course, if you’re interested in Open Government Data, don’t forget Open Government Data Camp in November in London and if you’d like to participate more, join one of our working groups on Open Data.
