1. Supporting the Information-Driven Enterprise Semantic Interoperability – The State of the (European) Union Topic Maps 2008, Oslo Peter F Brown Founder & Managing Director Pensive S.A. www.pensive.eu/uid/0208 All content © 2008, Pensive S.A. Check URI in header for most recent and/or authentic version. This file may be copied on condition that it remains complete and intact, including this page.

2. Who am I? Peter F Brown Author of “Information Architecture with XML” (Wiley) until 2004 : Head of Information Resources Management, European Parliament until 2006 : Senior Policy Advisor on eGovernment Strategy, Austrian Government until 2008 : Chair, eGovernment Focus Group, CEN Founder of Pensive Director of OASIS www.pensive.eu

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4. Semantic Interoperability ► When people interact with government they want to do so on their own terms (in their own words). ► They do not want to understand how government is organised, or to know which department or agency does what, or whether a function is exercised by central or local government. ► Requires technical policies and specifications for achieving interoperability and information systems coherence across the public sector. © Pensive.eu, All Rights Reserved 4

5. What is missing? ► eGov standards are rarely mandatory or backed by legal mechanisms (except nationally in some cases) ► Growing demand for cross-border services without corresponding pan-European authority (risk of a “free for all”) ► Need to know who is doing what, particularly at EU-level ► Need a mechanism to “resolve” possible overlapping and redundant initiatives ► Need to accept that there is no centre “in charge”...

6. “Build a Portal!”, they cried... ► “Mistakes are the portal of discovery” James Joyce ► “The discovery of portals was a mistake” ?

7. Yes, Topic Maps... ► Standardize the way information about your assets is captured; ► Use, enforce and maintain PSIs ► Public authorities are just that: authorities – can legitimately make claims about identity and definitions ► Make that information available (“the map is not the territory”); ► Share fragments where useful (Atom feeds); ► Federate as much as possible See my closing keynote at TMRA 2007, www.pensive.eu/uid/0178

8. A reflex of collaboration Political: ► a recognition of the need for and role of cross-border and pan-European services; Organisational: ► “collaborative by design”: ensuring that services and systems are able to interoperate from the outset, at design stage – TM offers a powerful design paradigm Cultural: ► building a collaborative mentality into the organising principles of eService project management 8

9. Reasons to be cheerful ► CEN/ISSS eGovernment Focus Group ► Recommendations on the role of standards in public administration ► Practical demonstration of use of Topic Maps to collect and share this information (3 demonstrators) ► Follow-up activity, eGov-Share ► Microsoft Germany ► eGovernment Resources Sharing Platform ► Using SharePoint, NetworkedPlanet’s TMCore suite and Pensive information modelling

10. Challenges ► eProcurement ► Need for cross-border solutions ► Common approaches and terminology ► Cross-border access to markets ► EU Services Directive ► Need for “single point of contact” of information about services offered in every EU country (please, no portals...)

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12. Semantic Interoperability Topic Maps 2008, Oslo peter@pensive.eu http://public.xdi.org/=Peter.Brown www.pensive.eu/uid/0208 www.pensive.eu/uid/0 Supporting the Information-Driven Enterprise