Social Tagging to Search and Recommend Government Information
The amount of data, documents and services provided by the US government and all its agencies is overwhelming for citizens as well as employees of government agencies that need to collaborate. The US federal government offers several portals and associated search engines. In addition, to aid in inter-agency coordination, there are some platforms deployed to exchange information and share resources. This chapter investigates how social tagging technology can support citizen information and service requirements by facilitating discovery of needed information, services and knowledge. The authors also show how governmental agencies and departments can use the technologies to better service citizens through integration of their capabilities and knowledge. The proposed service could have a big impact in helping citizens with a relatively small incremental cost to implement because the “work” done is by the users in a distributed fashion. The impact derives from improving the accessibility and sharing of information resources.