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The Semantic Community: Building Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud

Keynote Presentation for the SEMIC.EU Conference onRethinking Semantic Interoperability Through Collaboration

Brussels, Belgiumby

Brand Niemann, Director and Senior Data ScientistSemantic Community

May 18, 2011http://semanticommunity.info

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Abstract• The Federal Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP)

was established in 2003 by a group of individuals for the purpose of achieving "semantic interoperability" and "semantic data integration" focused on the U.S. government sector. The SICoP enabled Semantic Interoperability, specifically the "operationalizing" of these technologies and approaches, through online conversation, meetings, tutorials, conferences, pilot projects, and other activities aimed at developing and disseminating best practices. The SICoP was graduated to the Semantic Community in 2008 because the maturation of the Semantic Web and Semantic Technologies created the need to apply the work of SICoP to the real-world needs of both government and non-government organizations in a new way. Now the Semantic Community is building knowledge-centric systems based on the earlier SICoP experience and maturation of the pilots and products fostered previously.

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Bio• Dr. Brand Niemann is the Director and Senior Data Scientist of the Semantic

Community. He was the former Senior Enterprise Architect and Data Scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and co-led the Federal CIO Council’s Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICOP) with Mills Davis from 2003-2008:– http://

semanticommunity.info/Federal_Semantic_Interoperability_Community_of_Practice.

• He is currently authoring a series of Editorials for Federal Computer Week on his work:– http://semanticommunity.info/A_Gov_2.0_spin_on_archiving_2.0_data

• and recently made Spotfire's Twitter list for his cool visualizations on government data to produce more transparent, open and collaborative business analytics applications:– http://spotfireblog.tibco.com/?p=5328 .

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Editorials for Federal Computer Week

• 1. Making Individuals Into Information Architects and Preservationists.• 2. Data Services - What Data.gov and Many Other Things Should Be.• 3. Federal Cloud Computing: It can really happen if we can do our own

IT!• 4. Gov 2.0 Platform Data Services with Cloud Computing: OMB Earmarks

Database.• 5. Gov 2.0 Platform Data Services with Cloud Computing: HealthDataGov.• 6. What’s In a Name for Open Government Data Sets?: Everything!• 7. Build Health Care Data Analytics in the Cloud: How patient and

provider data can be used to promote economic growth, improved health care, and save taxpayer’s money.

• 8. The Open Government Research and Development Summit: Ed Tufte Should Have Been in the House and Sooner!

Open Collaboration with Open Standards

• My Experiences (Editorial for Federal Computer Week in process):– Standardizing “Eforms for Egov” for Mark Forman with the eGrants Schema and

Web Services as Chair of the Federal CIOC’s Web Services Working Group;• Move everybody up in interoperability instead of ‘rip-n-replace’.

– Standardizing SOA and Semantic Interoperability for the Federal CIO Council with multiple pilots, ontology, and semantic technologies as Co-chair of the Federal CIOC’s SOA and SICoP Communities of Practice; and• ‘Show me a SOA’ and get the ‘Medici Effect: the best and brightest will find one another and

collaborate to innovate, facilitated by the technology itself”.

– Standardizing cloud computing for Vivek Kundra and Aneesh Chopra for desktops, Gov 2.0 platforms, data centers, and health data as Director and Senior Data Scientist of the Semantic Community and formerly senior enterprise architect and senior data scientist for the US EPA.• ‘Think outside the box’ and foster open collaboration with open standards in multiple pilots.

– I especially want to put the recent Federal CIOC’s reports on NIEM into a broader perspective:• See http://semanticommunity.info/National_Information_Exchange_Model/Assessment_Report

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Open Collaboration with Open Standards

Program Champion CoP Leader Standards

eForms for eGov Mark Forman, OMB Rick Rogers, Fenestra Technologies

eGrants XML Schema and Web Services

Federal SOA CoP Roy Maybury, DoD Cory Casanave, Model Driven Solutions

Web Services and Open Group MDA and SoAML

Federal Semantic Interoperability CoP

David Wennergren, Navy CIO

Rick Morris, US Army, and Mills Davis, Project10X

W3C Semantic Web in Semantic Technologies

Cloud Computing Desktop for OGD & Data.gov/semantic

Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO

Brand Niemann, US EPA and Semantic Community

Web Oriented Architecure (MindTouch)

Gov 2.0 Platform for Data Science Products and 5 Stars of LOD

Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTOTim Berners-Lee, W3C Director

Brand Niemann, US EPA and Semantic Community

Open and Quality Data Visualizations (Spotfire)

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Overview

• 1. The Invitation• 2. Introduction• 3. SICoP• 4. Semantic Community• 5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud• 6. Questions and Answers

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1. Invitation• I am contacting you primarily to ask about SICoP. How is it going

on? I have a great interest as one of my ideas here is to set up a similar SICoP with EU CIOs. The US experience and lessons-learnt would of course be a very valuable source of lessons-learnt and know-how on this.

• Present mainly experiences, lessons-learnt, what has worked and what not, the challenges, etc. in the years you are working with SICoP. My intention is to mobilize around SEMIC a European CoP on semantic interoperability and we really want to learn from your experience in the US.– Vassilios PERISTERAS, Programme Manager, European Commission,

Informatics Directorate-General (DIGIT), Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA).

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1. Invitation• Vassilios Peristeras has recently taken over the responsibility for the

semantic methodologies and Linked Open Data actions in the ISA Unit. A seasoned expert in these fields, he has joined as a seconded national expert from Greece the Commission after several years of research and practical experience in organizations like the United Nations, CERTH/ITI, the Greek National Centre for Public Administration and Local Government, and Digital Enterprise Research Institute in Galway, Ireland (DERI). In this interview, Vassilios describes the usefulness of SEMIC.EU’s Core Person, comments on the more general Core Concept idea in the greater context of eGovernment interoperability - and makes the case for expanding SEMIC.EU in two directions: a) creating, hosting, and maintaining a selective library of harmonized, generic metadata schemas and b) creating the infrastructure for a federated portal for eGovernment metadata schemas.

Source

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1. SEMIC.EU Roadmap

• SEMIC.EU defines goals and strategies in roadmap, 19/08/2008:– A new roadmap sets SEMIC.EU's course on enhanced services,

individual project and community coaching.– The document will be presented during the upcoming meeting of the

SEMIC.EU Advisory Group on 17th September 2008.– Essential objectives are already known. Three goals define where

SEMIC.EU is heading:• SEMIC.EU is going to be the single point of collaboration for Member

States initiatives and pan-European eGovernment projects.• SEMIC.EU is going to be the main European service and platform for

solving questions and issues of semantic interoperability.• SEMIC.EU is going to be the European partner for global standardisation

bodies representing living communities of eGovernment and cross border data interchange.

Source

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1. SEMIC.EU 2010 Roadmap

Source: http://www.semic.eu/semic/view/documents/SEMIC-2010-Roadmap.pdf

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1. SEMIC.EU at 1 Going on 2• First anniversary: SEMIC.EU's birthday, 7/06/2009:

– The Semantic Interoperability Centre celebrates its 1st anniversary on 17th June 2009.• The Centre has built bridges for and with the help of more than 50 partner

projects and initiatives and 550 registered users.• With the help of partners and users, the groundwork has been laid for more

cases of successful reuse of assets of interoperability and, thus, better eGovernment in Europe.

– The Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe heads into its second year with a number of key objectives:• fostering the discourse on technical issues like ontology development• new partnerships• new cases of reuse and cooperation among projects, within as well as across

domains• comprehensive exchange of knowledge on research in semantic technologies

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2. Introduction

• 2.1 A Simple Example of Semantic Interoperability: The What, Why, Who, and How (September 2007).– Also use this to build community and networking.

• 2.2 The Different Scales of Semantic Interoperability:– Community of Practice – (“Speaking the Same Language” -

Press Coverage January 7, 2008)– Mediation – Ontological Engineering (help with mapping

among heterogeneous models of information)– Standardization – Data Element Vocabularies

• 2.3 A Best Practice Example: Semantic Interoperability Interfaces

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2.1 Semantic Interoperability:The What, Why, Who, and How

• I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.– Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman

(attributed).• http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Robert_McCl

oskey/

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2.1 What

• Semantics = Meaning = Relationships– Humans (and therefore our machines) only ever

understand anything in so far as it is related to other things

ID

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2.1 What

• Semantics = Meaning = Relationships– Humans (and therefore our machines) only ever

understand anything in so far as it is related to other things

ID

VANY

MD

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2.1 What

• Semantics = Meaning = Relationships– Humans (and therefore our machines) only ever

understand anything in so far as it is related to other things

ID

SUPEREGO

EGO

ANALYSIS

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2.1 What

• Semantics = Meaning = Relationships– Humans (and therefore our machines) only ever

understand anything in so far as it is related to other things

ID

LICENSE

CARD

BADGE

2.1 Semantic Interoperability:The Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How

Six Questions Discussion Leader

Attendee 1 Attendee 2 Etc.

Who (are you)? Brand Niemann

What (do you do)?

Enterprise Architecture & Data Science

When (have you done it)?

30+ years of federal service

Where (did you do it)?

U.S. EPA

Why (did you do it)?

Idealistic about public service

How (do you do it)?

Communities of Practice

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Purpose: To help build collaboration and your professional network .Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws

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2.2 The Different Scales of Semantic Interoperability

• “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind but you must set priorities and budgets for what you want to look at (with an eye to the EU's Digital Agenda and apologies to Kant).”– Márta Nagy-Rothengass and Stefano Bertolo, European Commission, DG

Information Society and Media, Unit E2 – Technologies for Information Management• See Their Presentation to the Ontolog Forum, March 17, 2011, and See My

Excerpts from Their Slides and Chat Log Comments in the Next Slide.

• Interesting Discussions Coming Out of the 2011 Ontology Summit about Barry Smith’s Presentation at the Ontology Driven Implementation of Semantic Services for the Enterprise Environment (ODISSEE) Workshop, April 13, 2011.– See My Excerpts from His Recent Presentation in Slide 20.

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2.2 The Different Scales of Semantic Interoperability

• To Make Every European Digital for a Single Digital Market (N. Kroes) – I added ‘by their use of cloud computing tools!’

• The Welty doctrine: In the semantic web the part that is new is not the semantic part, it is the web part (Chris Welty, ISWC 2005).

• The Sowa Wisdom: Serious work on deep semantics, reasoning, inferencing, etc. overshadowed by low hanging fruits: terminologies, LOD, other shallow semantics.

• Nicola Guarino: Despite EU efforts on promoting strong interdisciplinary communities, still the ontology community in EU is a bit scattered, and many researches working on EU-funded projects involving ontologies are suspicious towards an open interdisciplinary approach (especially if this philosophy-oriented research on formal ontology).

• Steve Ray: Ah - good quote: "The need comes first, ontologies come later“.

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2.2 The Different Scales of Semantic Interoperability

• Barry Smith, National Center for Ontological Research:– Coordinated Development of Ontologies Across Diverse

Communities of Interest:• Too many ontologies have created “semantic silos”. We need to reduce

to one because we cannot afford more.• The attitudes of Tim Berners-Lee, which are in favour of freedom and

anarchy, and creativity, and all those nice things, mitigate against the coordination which is necessary to make good scientific ontology work - in a way good science works. See Where is the knowledge we have lost in data?

• The Gene Ontology Community is the principal contributor of data to the Semantic Web. See The OBO Foundary.

• Ralph Hodgson doing the most to create good linking ontologies. See next slide.

Source: Barry Smith

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2.2 The Different Scales of Semantic Interoperability

• Empower your SME, web specialists, and project managers and participants to contribute content to a common sandbox.– Be inclusive - You probably do not know where the next great idea,

innovation, and product will come from in the community.• Show senior managers how their content can be made

smarter and to participate.• Engage the citizenry in contributing content and building

applications.• Bottom Line: Go up and out with your content using cloud

tools and successful collaboration principles (Break the 90-9-1 Paradigm).

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2.2 The Different Scales of Semantic Interoperability

• Broader Context:– Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations

• eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015– Speech of Vice President Neelie Kroes

• ISA Work Programme - 1st revision 2011– “Data Science” on Budget Table

• Address Four Levels in Francisco García Morán Slides 11 Notes (We did this with SICoP):– Level 1 – Simple website: Information is provided online about public policies and

administrative procedures, but there is little or no change in the nature of the interaction of external stakeholders with the institution.

– Level 2 – On-line government: Simple electronic interaction mechanisms are implemented (like e-mail or web-based forms) in an effort to provide better services to customers.

– Level 3 – Integrated government: No paper forms need be filled in. Administrative activity is completely automated end-to-end, crossing organisational boundaries.

– Level 4 – Transformed government: Services are built up from the viewpoint of internal and external users, rather than based on the organisation’s set-up, so as to maximise user satisfaction through better quality and more transparency while also increasing efficiency.

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2.2 The Different Scales of Semantic Interoperability

http://semanticommunity.info/Build_SEMIC.EU_in_the_Cloud

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2.3 A Best Practice Example:Semantic Interoperability Interfaces

• Build the Semantic Community in the Cloud:– Example: Build Sustainable Society Foundation Index 2010 in the Cloud:

• See at http://www.sdi.gov

• Build Interoperability Interfaces in the Cloud:– The means by which components of the smart grid can talk to each other, for example, or by

which electronic health records can be shared and added to by many parties – are an important stimulus to technology innovation and adoption. Optimally, these interfaces would be open: anyone may create products that use the interfaces without paying fees; and a public, transparent process is used to establish and revise the standards that define the interfaces. See Cross-Cutting Themes in the Designing a Digital Future Report.

– Everything within Three Mouse Clicks: See the Data, Search the Data, and Download the Data. See FCW Editiorial.

• Build a Commons in the Cloud:– What is a Commons (slide 37):

• An organized workshop where raw materials can be found and assembled into new things.• An efficient and scalable knowledge creation platform.

– Twelve Characteristics of a Commons (slide 39):• http://www.si.edu/commons/prototype

Source: Slides 37 and 39.

2.3 A Best Practice Example:Semantic Interoperability Interfaces

27http://cloud.mindtouch.com/

With the power of MindTouch DReAM, MindTouch products excel at loading, transforming and re-mixing data from web services, databases and enterprise applications.

2.3 A Best Practice Example:Semantic Interoperability Interfaces

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http://goto.spotfire.com/g/?SK3YHYAQFI=clicksrc:home

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2.3 A Best Practice Example:Semantic Interoperability Interfaces

General Web Site Best Content -Centralized

Best Content - Distributed

US Federal Government (1)

Community Sandbox (2)

Annual Statistical Abstract (3) and EPA Report on the Environment (4)

FedStats.net (5)

TOGAF (6) EA Principals, Inc. (7)

Training Materials (8)

Ecosystem of Frameworks (9)

SEMIC.EU (10) Web Site (11) EuroStats (12) and European Environment State and Outlook (13)

Global Data Catalog and Data Services (14)

Key: See next slide.

Source: http://semanticommunity.info/Build_SEMIC.EU_in_the_Cloud

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2.3 A Best Practice Example:Semantic Interoperability Interfaces

• Key:1. http://usa.gov2. http://semanticommunity.net 3. http://semanticommunity.info/2010_Annual_Statistical_Abstract 4. http://semanticommunity.info/EPA/EPA_Ontology 5. No longer operational – see http://www.sdi.gov6. The Open Group Architecture Framework -

http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/index.html 7. http://eaprincipals.com/index.htm 8. http://semanticommunity.info/Build_TOGAF_in_the_Cloud 9. http://semanticommunity.info/Build_TOGAF_in_the_Cloud#Alternative_enterprise_architectu

re_frameworks

10. Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe 11. http://www.semic.eu/12. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat 13. http://eea.europa.eu 14. http://semanticommunity.info/Data.gov/An_Open_Data_Public_Dataset_Catalogs_Faceted_Br

owser

http://semanticommunity.info/Build_SEMIC.EU_in_the_Cloud

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2.3 A Best Practice Example:Semantic Interoperability Interfaces

Web Player

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3. SICoP• U.S. President George W. Bush’s CIO, Carlos Solari, said to the CIO Council’s Best Practice

Committee we need to use public-private partnerships to foster greater collaboration in getting the government’s work done.

• U.S. CIO Council Vice-Chair and Best Practices Committee Co-Chair, David Wennergren, said we should have a community of practice for semantic interoperability that demonstrates this can work.

• My SICoP Co-Chair Rick Morris said to me that we first need to build the CoP before we do the actual work.

• After we had built a sense of community and trust for the first 6 months, SICoP was able to race ahead with writing white papers, organizing meeting and conferences and doing many pilots.

• My SICoP Co-Chair Rick Morris retired from the U.S. Federal Government and I obtained permission to appoint a non-government Co-Chair, Mills Davis, who considerable expertise and experience in working with the private sector semantic technology community.

• After 5 years we graduated SICoP to the Semantic Community at the 2008 SemTech Conference to deliver new value to the community in the form of a Community Sandbox Web Site and Deki Wiki and most recently a new MindTouch Technical Communication Suite, Spotfire for Data Science, and other tools.

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3. SICoP

http://semanticommunity.info/Federal_Semantic_Interoperability_Community_of_Practice

We preserved everything for those that followed.

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3. SICoP

Web Link

We fostered Jump Start Kits.

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3. SICoP

http://semanticommunity.net/

We provided a Community SandboxWeb Page and 40 Deki Wikis.

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4. Semantic Community• Mills Davis and I are restarting the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice

(by popular demand) and are working on a series of meetings/workshops in 2011 in collaboration with a numbers of groups and individuals based on three things:– 1. Mapping U.S. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra's 25 point plan to CoPs and individuals,– 2. The new OASIS Technical Committee on Transformational Government, and– 3. Our very successful SICoP meeting in 2009.

• Please see From E-Government to Transformational Government Wiki Page and Slides. Knowledge-Centric Paradigm: A New World of IT Solutions (Slides) (Slides).

• The ideas we would like to explore with you include how best we might:– Harvest and package content from the sorts of meetings & demonstrations we are

planning for dissemination through media channels -- publications, digital, events, etc.– Collaborate together to develop and conduct a series of educational events that would

reach the right audiences as well as benefit all parties involved.• Cloud Computing for and with Linked Open Data Visualizations :

– My Bottom Line: Do the “5 stars” and “linked data cloud” in MindTouch, Spotfire and the Concept-Map Ontology Environment with the Data Science approach.

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4. Semantic Community

http://semanticommunity.info/#Data_Science_Products

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4. Semantic Community

• Use the Open Data Public Datasets Catalog Faceted Browser as an Example:– Community of Practice: We now generally agree

on the need for data catalogs (93 by recent count).– Mediation – Ontological Engineering: There is a

growing feeling that some harmonization is needed for data integration.

– Standardization: Harmonization would require solving the “semantic interoperability” problem at the catalog data element level.

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4. Semantic Community

http://datos.fundacionctic.org/sandbox/catalog/faceted/

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4. Semantic Community

http://semanticommunity.info/Data.gov/An_Open_Data_Public_Dataset_Catalogs_Faceted_Browser

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4. Semantic Community

Web Player

Europe has about 30 Data Catalogues.

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4. Semantic Community

http://semanticommunity.info/Build_SEMIC.EU_in_the_Cloud#ADMS_Questionnaire_No._2

MY COMMENT: A good wiki provides most if not all of these!

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5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the CloudBe Informed: Knowledge-centric business process platform for proposal development, project management, collaborative knowledge work, and knowledge-driven solutions.

Selected customers and partners:

• Formed in 2006• Result of long-running

university and public sector R&D projects• Privately owned,

~180 people• 5 year 70% compound

annual growth rate• Gartner cool vendor in

business process management

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5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud:Knowledge technology driven business process platform – 1 of 3

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5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud:Knowledge technology driven business process platform – 2 of 3

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5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud:Knowledge technology driven business process platform – 3 of 3

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5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud: Case examples—smart knowledge-driven citizen-centric services

BENEFITS

• “Open knowledge as a service” bridges the gap between government and citizens and facilitates effective cooperation between independent institutions – both public and private.

• Provides automated decisions and decision support; means for agencies to manage their knowledge / rules; ability to quickly adapt to external events / implement new legislation; improved decision making, guaranteed compliancy, less errors; improved service delivery to the public; and substantial cost reductions.

CHALLENGE

• Permitting site synthesizes requirements, processes, and information across multiple jurisdictions and 14 independent institutions into a unified user experience.

• Immigration site helps new arrivals solve varied problems of relocation. It combines information, and decision logic from 12 agencies into an easy to use single point of service delivery.

SOLUTION

• Knowledge-centric solution separates the know from the flow and the function to create declarative applications configured by users with semantic models of legislation, knowledge, processes, data, and UI. The core infrastructure consists of an ontology, which is enriched with business rules. All functions use the same ontology, e.g., semantic search, information access, automated decision making, decision support, and dynamic processes.

Sour

ce: O

SD (R

eadi

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: BeI

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5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud:Be Informed case examples (1 of 2)

Environmental Licensing

SituationCreate single point of contact for environmental licensing. Reduce administrative burden and improve service. Rationalize 52 different types of licenses, 1600 procedures, and 600 authorities.

Business Benefits

• Reduction in red tape: single application and one procedure

• Operational cost reduction: 96 million euro in year 1

Pan-European Insurance Company

Situation

Lacking expert knowledge in operating countries, leading to risk of bad underwriting. High operational costs because of tedious manual processes

Business Benefits

Any underwriter can advise customers: reducing claim risks automated bidding and acceptance (7X24). Co-insurance between operating units: risks are evenly divided over larger and smaller operating units

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5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud:Be Informed Case Examples (2 of 2)

European Maritime SafetySituation

Assist the European Commission and Member States in the proper development and implementation of EU legislation on maritime safety

Business Benefits

• Real-time monitoring of 22,000 ships in European coastal waters

• Single point of contact for all queries on maritime activities, incl. routing, trade, safety, illegal immigration, terrorism, environmental

Immigration office (IND)Situation

IND had major problems in adapting to the frequent changes in legislation and workload, resulting in errors and delays.

Business Benefits INDiGO

• implementation of new regulations from 9 months to 2-3 days

• 165 business processes to 1 generic process

• business users fully in control (IT department outsourced)

• substantial reduction in labor (20%) while improving customer service

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5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud: Be Informed Web Interface

Screen Captures from Short Video

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5. Knowledge-Centric Systems in the Cloud: Be Informed Ontology Model Interface

Screen Captures from Short Video

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6. Questions and Answers

• Contact Information:– Brand Niemann– bniemann@cox.net– http://semanticommunity.info

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Extra Slides: EuroStat

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/download.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tgs00027

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Extra Slides: EuroStat• You can download individual datasets or the complete database by

using the bulk download facility. • On the bulk download you will find:

all information updated twice a day, at 11:00 and 23:00,• the datasets in tsv (tab separated values), dft and sdmx format,

which can be easily used to import the data in a tool of your choice,• a manual containing all detailed information on the bulkdownload

facility,• the table of contents that includes the list of the datasets available,• the "dictionaries" of all the coding systems used in the datasets.• http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/statistics/bulk

_download

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Extra Slides: EuroStat

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/NavTree_prod/everybody/BulkDownloadListing?sort=1&dir=data

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Extra Slides: EuroStat

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ramon/nomenclatures/index.cfm?TargetUrl=LST_NOM&StrGroupCode=GLOSS&StrLanguageCode=EN