Some 40 high-level representatives from EU Commission, Council of the EU, the United Nations, NATO, WCO, national ministries, universities and NGOs as well as leading experts in the field of LOD explored the importance of Linked Open Data for open and transparent governance at the office in Brussels on 12 April.



The EU has already put in place strategic directives and supporting projects as outlined by Richard Swetenham, Head of the Access to Information Unit at the European Commission’s Directorate General Information Society and Media. (View his presentation on slideshare.)



Richard Cyganiak of the Data Enterprise Research Institute in Galway, Ireland, presented how Linked Open Data has picked up pace especially in the public domain. (View his presentation on slideshare.)



Vassilios Peristeras, who is responsible for interoperability services at the European Commission’s Directorate General Informatics (among them SEMIC.EU), made the case for linked metadata, so called core concepts like person, organization, project, vehicle and place. (View his presentation on slideshare.)



The power that Linked Open Data can generate was finally illustrated by Johannes Keizer of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. He used the occasion of this expert gathering to announce the official launch of “AGROVOC Linked Open Data”: The world’s largest agricultural thesaurus has now been completely structured and made available in machine readable form with over 30.000 concepts. (View his presentation on slideshare.)



The evening in Brussels showed a clear acknowledgement of the benefits of making one’s own data accessible. In the advanced stages of LOD the true added value lies in the alignment of the data to common vocabularies.



After the remarkable success of the evening now plans to continue and support the ever faster adoption of Linked Open Data in Germany.