Sir Tim pitches for use of open web standards by Indian Govt

Mumbai, Dec 29 (UNI) Sir Tim Berners-Lee, renowned as 'Father of the Web', has exhorted the Indian Government to use open semantic web standards so that the data can be easily reused by other websites.

''I would expect developing countries to put data on the web in RDF (Resource Description Framework), as RDF integrates a variety of applications using XML,'' Sir Tim stated.

In an extended interaction with a leading IT magazine in the country ''Dataquest'', Sir Tim said that the Indian Government can use semantic web standards and lead to more democratised dissemination of information.

''If the Indian Government has census data, or rainfall data, or even train timings, and if they put this data on web using the semantic data standards then anybody can create a website, which can use that train timings data and display them in their own language, as data is global and does not have a language,'' he added.

He gave the instances of western governments using semantic standards and how private websites were replicating the data without any human intervention.

Sir Tim felt that India could play a critical role in setting of web standards.

''One possibility in which people in India can choose and direct further evolution of the web is by getting involved in the standard setting process,'' he said and added, ''India has always been a part of the web, and I expect it to play a bigger role in the coming years.'' Talking about whether there was an inherent bias, Sir Tim, agreed that the web indeed seemed to be tilted towards educated and English speaking audience and more so towards technical topics. ''There has been a skew that has existed from the beginning,'' he said.

Though, he expressed hope that there would be more language content on the web leading to greater diversity.

UNI