Business Rationale for Linked Data at Governments: A Case Study at the Netherlands’ Kadaster Data Platform

Abstract

Linked Data is an innovative approach for publishing heterogeneous data sources on the web. As such, it can transcend the traditional confines of separate databases, as well as the confines of separate institutions. At the same time, businesses and governmental organizations alike are trying to cope with everincreasing quantities of heterogeneous data that must be used across multiple departments, manufacturing locations, and governmental bodies. Linked Data would, therefore, be a great technological solution for today's organizational problems. However, we observe that a serious gap exists between Linked Data research and business research. While Linked Data research is almost exclusively technologically oriented, the business research literature has not devoted much attention to the use of Linked Data solutions yet. In this paper, we seek to bridge this gap, by introducing a real-world use case where Linked Data technologies are applied in large-scale government settings. We argue in detail that Linked Data provides a major contribution to the business vision of a modern governmental institution based on the experience of the Netherlands' Cadastre Land Registry and Mapping Agency (Kadaster), so far, the largest implementation of Linked Data in the governments of the Netherlands. INDEX TERMS Government, information management, data systems.

Information management in the facilities domain: investigating practitioner priorities

“…Their approach towards “portability of applications based on a common data model” is referred to by another participant as “IT independence”, a state towards which they (case 1) are now migrating. These ideas, they explain, are “starting to pick up speed incredibly fast”, even being adopted by some governments in structuring their public data (Folmer et al , 2020). This view is also reflected by widespread interest within the research community, specifically in the work of the World Wide Web Consortium Linked Building Data Community Group and others.…”

Interoperability and Integration: An Updated Approach to Linked Data Publication at the Dutch Land Registry

“…Indeed, each dataset contains between 800 million and 1 billion triples. Where previous approaches could be lengthy in process, this approach highlights improved cost-and resource-effectiveness, strengthening the business case for linked data within an organisation such as Kadaster [3]. The sections that follow outline the concepts and architecture which support this updated approach to linked data publication within Kadaster, including the standards, technologies, and relevant choices made with regards to these during publication of geospatial datasets by Kadaster.…”

Towards Self-Service GIS—Combining the Best of the Semantic Web and Web GIS

“…The Semantic Web, which is made up of Linked Data, is made possible through the use of semantic technologies, including RDF, SPARQL, OWL and SKOS, and the standards which govern the organisation of data using vocabularies and those which govern the storage, management and querying of data on the web. While there generally does exist a lag in the uptake of LD in organisations across various industries, the value of Linked Data implementation in business is acknowledged in its potential to decrease the cost and increase the flexibility of data integration and gives rise to new service [8].…”

“…In seeking to comprehensively identify what the necessary features and functionalities of an SSGIS making use of semantic web technologies are, it is first necessary to review existing examples of linked data/self-service tooling based on their common and/or innovative feature inclusions. Semantic web technology, and the principles of Linked Data which support it, is not a new concept, but its implementation has been slow in various fields and within large organisations which can benefit from its uptake [8,31]. This limited uptake could, arguably, be a result of the limited number of Linked Data tools available to support organisations and industries in implementing these projects.…”