IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Much of the essential information which people need in their daily lives is produced by public sector bodies such as the Health Service or Local Authorities. The Cabinet Office e-Government Unit, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and seamlessUK are working together to merge the three lists which are used by national and local government plus other public sector bodies to index and categorise their information. The e-Government Metadata Standard sets out the way in which organisations should apply metadata to describe their information resources. One element relates to the subject of the resource and until now organisations have been able to use any of the three term lists as source files for subject terms, which has led to confusion and difficulties in finding information.

Now however the list owners have agreed to work together to create a single unified list of categories and keywords that the public sector can use to describe their information resources. This standardisation should result in information resources being described more consistently across organisations, which should in turn make it easier for organisations to share information and for user searches to be more effective.

The work, which is funded by the new Local e-Government Standards Body, will be carried out by an independent taxonomy expert Stella Dextre Clarke and is expected to be completed by the Spring. Until then, the ODPM have stressed that organisations should continue to use any of the lists. Involvement of existing users of the three lists will be a key part of the process and more details of the consultation process will be issued shortly.

Quelle: Managing Information, 29.07.2004