Thanks to Dr Michael Hausenblas of the Linked Data Research Centre in Galway, Ireland for posting an excellent example on their website (http://lab.linkeddata.deri.ie/2010/star-scheme-by-example/) of how Tim Berners-Lee’s “five star” model of government data might operate in practice on the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) e-government group. The model may explain to a wider audience what “open data” is and is able to permit. The “five star” model is briefly summarised as:
* on the web, open licence
** machine-readable data
*** non-proprietary formats
**** RDF standards
***** Linked RDF
Some of us will need to be reminded about what TLA’s like RDF and URI mean, so I’ve linked off to W3C.
The W3C is also looking at establishing a Government Linked Data Working Group to focus on the technical issues needed behind all this and it now has a draft charter to operate by.
An end to reinventing square wheels – lets have some international standards for e-government fit for the World Wide Web!
Posted by greatemancipator 
The Great E-mancipator 