Most Linked Data projects still do not follow a set of common and clear guidelines to scale out the generation and publication of Linked Data. In this talk, we present a preliminary set of guidelines and best practises in the development of Linked Data projects and the usage of open source projects based on our experience in number of Spanish and European Linked Data projects.
Linked Data provides a paradigm that allows publishing and interlinking structured data increasing the value and usefulness of data. However, Linked Data generation and publication does not follow a set of common and clear guidelines to scale out the generation and publication of Linked Data. Moreover, there is a lack of detailed guidelines and software catalogs to support the whole life cycle of publishing government Linked Data, and most of existing guidelines are intended for software developers, not for governments.
In this talk we take the first step to formalize our experience gained in the development of government Linked Data, into a preliminary set of methodological guidelines for generating, publishing and exploiting Linked Government Data. This talk is addressed to developers who pertain to public administrations, but governments may find the guidelines useful because these guidelines are based and have been applied in real case government scenarios. Therefore, the guidelines are very good starting point for local or national public administrations when they want to publish their data as Linked Data.
Moreover, the guidelines have been applied in real case government scenarios and include methods, techniques and tools for carrying out the activities and tasks involved in the Government Linked Data publishing process. The process of publishing Government Linked Data must have a life cycle, in the same way of Software Engineering, in which every development project has a life cycle [1]. According to our experience this process has an iterative incremental life cycle model, which is based on the continuous improvement and extension of the Government Linked Data resulted from performing several iterations. The guidelines, for the process of publication Government Linked Data, consist of the following main activities: (1) specification, (2) modelling, (3) generation, (4) publication, and (5) exploitation. Each activity is decomposed in one or more tasks, and some techniques and tools are provided for carrying out them. These tools include projects like Apache Jena. It is worth mentioning that the order of the activities and tasks might be changed base on particular needs of the government bodies. Moreover, we are continuously getting feedback about these guidelines, and therefore, we are improving them constantly.
These guidelines are derived from our experiences from several Linked Data projects during the last few years. Most notable projects include:
[1] J. Taylor. Project Scheduling and Cost Control: Planning, Monitoring and Controlling the Baseline, volume 1. J. Ross Publishing, 2008.