The impending semantic web holds forth many
promises. These include the ability to improve information retrieval by
using background knowledge and inference; to extract and fuse information
from multiple, heterogeneous sources in response to a query; to dynamically
compose data and services in response to a query; to track information pedigree
and provenance; and to mine data distributed in databases across disciplines.
Delivering on these promises will require not only the development and adoption
of ontologies that capture (perhaps implicit) data models and service models,
but also an improvement in the ability of software agents to mediate amongst
differing, and perhaps inconsistent, ontologies.
The purpose of this BoF is to explore the idea of a future “Semantic
Web for Digital Government” workshop. Such a workshop would gather
stakeholders and researchers from appropriate communities to craft are search
agenda for developing semantic web capabilities in support of DG. The BoF
will begin with a very brief tutorial on the semantic web, followed by a
brainstorming session on the theme of what the semantic web should mean
for DG. Finally, we will lay the groundwork for the workshop by identifying
the communities that the workshop should involve, and the questions that
it should address. |
