22 Publishing

With data in hand in an open format and under a license that allows it to be reused freely, now it is time to publish the databases on the Web. This is an important time for the Open Data Plan and should be planned calmly and diligently. Publication depends on how many stars the agency concerned wants to achieve with the open data. Ideally, a publication that aims to achieve five stars in the long run should prepare from the beginning so that adjustments along the way are smooth and predictable.

The best way to achieve openness and interoperability of the data, with regard to feasibility of access on the Web, is using structured and planned repositories. This does not necessarily mean that the agency concerned must acquire complex data storage systems. A simple web page with a well-structured list of documents can serve as a good data repository or catalog, provided certain precautions are taken. The complexity of the system will depend on the number of open databases and the technical and human resources of each agency.

The format in which this information is organized must be agreed on in advance with the participation of all the actors involved. Preferably, this should include agencies that publish correlated data and can publish databases that have the potential to "talk" to each other. This is important so that everyone has a common understanding of the meaning of the data that will be shared.

The objective of this organization to make sure everyone who has access to the information will be able to interpret the data in a uniform way, using data exchange systems and platforms. This prior standardization among the parties takes shape when you publish the names and definitions of the elements used on the Web in a sharable and referenceable format, regardless of the degree of support obtained.

This planning paves the way for developing five-star databases, regardless of the applications used to organize and publish them. Whatever the adopted strategy, it is important to include the concepts of a few standards in the planning:

● A URI is a resource identifier that is used to identify or point to something on the Web.

○ A URL is a URI that identifies a resource and provides the means of acting upon it, obtaining and/or representing this resource, specifying its primary access mechanism or the "network" location. For example, the URL http://www.w3c.br/ is a URI that identifies a resource (W3C Brazil Site) and represents this resource (HTML of the page for example) and is available via the HTTP of a network host called http://www.w3c.br.

● RDF/XML: XML is a W3C standard format for creating documents with hierarchically organized data, as is often seen in formatted text documents, vector images, and databases.

● SPARQL: the "sparkle", also recommended by W3C and under the care of W3C Semantic Web groups, is used to search information independent of the format of the results.

There are standards for publishing data in an open format. It is imperative that these standards also be specified and regulated in norms or any other government recommendations to enable an interoperable environment in all of the e-Gov domains.