Standards body issues draft advisory on maintaining open government data

While building out publicly facing data repositories, government agencies should cleanly separate the user interface layer from the data being presented, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) advises in a draft report on maintaining open government data. "External parties can create new and exciting interfaces that may not be obvious to the data publishers. For that reason, do not compromise the integrity of the data to create flashy interfaces," the report states. "If you must create an interface, then publish the data separate from the interface and ensure external parties have direct access to the raw data, so they can build their own interfaces if they wish." The paper, titled "Publishing Open Government Data," is one of the first deliverables from the newly formed W3C eGovernment Interest Group, the mission of which is to help governments around the world share standards-based best practices.