Social Participation Ontology: community documentation, enhancements and use examples

1.1 MB·English

by  Renato Fabbri

OPS: Social Participation Ontology
Social Participation Ontology: community documentation, enhancements
and use examples
Renato Fabbri,1,a) Henrique Parra Parra Filho,b) Rodrigo Bandeira de Luna,c) Ricardo Augusto Poppi Martins,d)
Flor Karina Mamani Amanqui,e) and Dilvan de Abreu Moreiraf)
Instituto de F´ısica de Sa˜o Carlos, Universidade de S˜ao Paulo (IFSC/USP)
(Dated: 14 January 2015)
Participatory democracy advances in virtually all governments. South America presents a prominent context
with mixed culture and social predisposition. In 2012, civil, academic and governmental parties started
elaborating the “Common Vocabulary of Social Participation” (vcps from the Brazilian name Vocabul´ario
Comum de Participa¸ca˜o Social),asapublicandonlineprocess. ByMay,2013,firstreferencedocumentswere
publicized, together with a preliminary owl code, logos, and a diagram of a general “public consultation”.
The corais platform kept online records of the process, like discussions and preparation of texts. This
articleexposesthismaterialandproposesanelementaryunfolding: the“SocialParticipationOntology”(ops
5
1 from the Brazilian name Ontologia de Participa¸c˜ao Social). To exhibit this new ontology, these steps were
0 considered: correction of ontological contradictions and owl protocol use errors; completion of vcps owl
2 code into a preliminary version of the ops; translations and standardizations; enhancements of class names
and labels in Portuguese, Spanish and English; a toy expansion of the ontology by further specifying classes;
n
a linked data examples regarding dereferencing, a sparql endpoint and participatory instances; use cases by
J researchers and public managers. Ongoing work involves further adoption of ops by the official Brazilian

3 federal portal of social participation, further adoption by civil participatory organizations, and linkage to
1 other participatory ontologies. ops is being used as an upper ontology, and all classes linked further to foaf
and bfo as higher upper ontologies.
]
Y
PACS numbers: 89.65-s,07.05.Bx,07.05.Kf
C
Keywords: OWL, semantic web, linked data, electronic democracy, participatory democracy, social systems
.
s
c
[ I. INTRODUCTION technologies(e.g. html5,node.js,opensourcebrowsers)

and by the need for renewal of representative democ-
2
v Easy access to social media is reshaping citizen par- racy practices. These initiatives have taken place in
2 ticipation in government affairs1. Information and com- various platforms, including usual social networks (e.g.
6 munication technologies (icts) have exhibited such an facebook,twitter)anddedicatedclientscreatedbyboth
6 impact on the way individuals interact that it is giv- government and civil society agents1,5–7.
2
ing birth to new organizational methods in social move- A natural challenge arises: how to link information
0
. ments. These changes can be observed, for example, in produced into an unified knowledge base. This is being
1 the 2010 Arab Spring and the 2013 Brazilian protests. addressed, at the technology level, by semantic web de-
0 These events gathered millions of people and, although velopments. Endorsed by World Wide Web Consortium
5 recent, have shown direct and strong impact in govern- (w3c), current semantic web technologies include8:
1
: mentsandnewlaws,andtheforecastisanintensification • reasoning by means of ontological specifications,
v
of the process2–4.
i
X Concomitantly, electronic government initiatives are • linkingdatafromdifferentsources(e.g. databases),
r flourishing, favored mainly by the ubiquity of Internet
a • organizationofdomainknowledgeforcoherentcon-
sideration.
Key among these technologies, ontologies are consid-
a)http://ifsc.usp.br/˜fabbri/;Electronicmail: [e-mail] ered one of the pillars of the semantic web. An ontology
b)http://www.cidadedemocratica.org.br/; Electronic mail: hen- is usually defined as a formal specification of a shared
[e-mail];CidadeDemocr´atica
conceptualization9. They give meaning to data and are
c)http://www.cidadedemocratica.org.br/; Electronic mail: ro-
usefulfordatasetsavailableonthewebtomakethemau-
[e-mail];CidadeDemocra´tica
d)http://ricardopoppi.org/; Electronic mail: ri- tomatically retrievable and linkable with other datasets.
[e-mail]; Social Participation Department, The w3c created the Web Ontology Language (owl) as
Social Articulation National Secretariat, Brazilian Presidency astandardtorepresentontologiesintheweb. Thesecond
GeneralSecretariatoftheRepublic(DPS/SNAS/SG-PR) versionofthelanguageiscalledowl2andoffersgreater
e)http://java.icmc.usp.br; Electronic mail: florka-
expressive power10, but the version is omitted with very
[e-mail]; Instituto de Ciˆencias Matem´aticas e de
Computa¸ca˜o(ICMC/USP) few exceptions.
f)http://java.icmc.usp.br; Electronic mail: [e-mail]; In this context, to describe and give meaning to social
alsoat(ICMC/USP) participation, the “Common Vocabulary of Social Par-
OPS: Social Participation Ontology 2
ticipation” (vcps from the Brazilian name Vocabul´ario II. VCPS ORIGINAL DOCUMENTATION
Comum de Participa¸c˜ao Social) was proposed as a joint
effortofLatinAmericaacademic,civilandgovernmental From April to December, 2012, vcps was first con-
groups11. Although started in 2012, a recent initiative ceived. In the online process, as registered by corais
for ontological developments, it already yielded relevant platform,66usersinteracted,6ofthemwerethemostac-
material, including a public preliminary owl ontology tive14. Various materials were produced both as activity
with a concise taxonomy. Also important are the ref- traces and as reference media. This section is dedicated
erence documents reporting results from a first working to these materials.
phase, from July to December, 2012. As stated by the
community,vcpswaspropelledbythreegoals: 1)toease
adoption of the vocabulary; 2) to stimulate the creation A. Reference textual documents
of public tools to understand, visualize and summarize
how participation is happening; 3) to meet the need of
The main documents are:
participatory initiatives to open and link their data.
It is important to notice that vcps, an ontology, was • “Commented methodology”14: this document de-
called a vocabulary both to ease understanding of the scribes the public process of vcps conception. It
general public and because it started as a vocabulary. is composed by brief inspections of forum topics,
Thepresentarticlepresentsthe“OntologyofSocialPar- pointing both pertinent characteristics of the on-
ticipation” (ops from the Brazilian name Ontologia de line collective process and ontological observations
Participa¸c˜ao Social), based on vcps, in which the term (about classes and properties). Considerations are
vocabulary was substituted by the term ontology for the made about tightening relations with the Open
following reasons: Government Partnership (ogp), an international
initiativetofostertransparencyandopenpractices
ingovernmentsworldwide15, andtheBrazilianfor-
• The usage of the word “vocabulary” can lead to
confusion is some situations as ops is an owl on- mal action plan, as means to achieve ontology us-
tology (not, for example, a skos vocabulary). age. There is also a proposal of a systematic study
of electronic government initiatives, so that the
vcps might be better contextualized. This docu-
• Documentation seems inconsistent when an ontol-
mentendsbyproposinganagendaofmeetingswith
ogy is repeatedly called a vocabulary.
academics, entrepreneurs and government parties.
• Ops is, in fact, an ontology, with a vocabulary, a
• “Conceptual modeling, version 0.1 (in natural lan-
taxonomic organization and properties further re- guage)”16: this document is a description, in com-
lating the terms. mon English, of the vcps. The introduction is
mainlyacollageofthedocumentabove14. Boththe
• This coherent naming is a prerequisite for for aca- itemized description of the ontology, and the con-
demic acceptance and further formal adoption by siderations for its usage, are of great value as ref-
governmentinstances,suchastheBrazilianFederal erence. Figure2isheavilyinfluencedbyadiagram
Portal of Open Data12 and the Brazilian Federal related to this document and further described in
Portal of Social Participation13. Section IIB.
Also, the term common was dropped when ops was
conceived,asthetermisredundantforanontology. The B. Images
vcpspresentedotherdifficulties, suchasmissingclasses,
incorrecturispecifications(containingspaces),somelog- There are various images associated with the
ical flaws, and unnecessary out-of-standards restrictions. ontology17, most notably:
This were all solved within ops (to the extent authors
were able to, of course). • Variousproposalsforthevcpslogo, someofwhich
Next section is dedicated to an inspection of the doc- are in Figure 1.
uments delivered by the vcps: reference textual docu-
• Figure2showsanEnglishandcompletedversionof
ments, images, owl code, blog posts, discussions and
theoriginaldiagramof opsinthedocument16. For
etherpads. SectionIIIpresentsops: modificationsmade
completeness of exposition, the original diagram is
from vcps to ops: class and property names and la-
in Appendix D, Figure 8.
bels, class restrictions and property axioms. Section IV
isdedicatedtoopsusage: dereferencing,sparqlqueries, • A diagram for general public consultations. Given
atoyopsexpansion,discursiveexampleofusage,anduse the details and the pertinence of public consulta-
cases from government, civil society and academic par- tionsforops,thedigramisexposedinAppendixB
ties. Concluding remarks are stated with future work, in and Figure 7.
Section V.
OPS: Social Participation Ontology 3
• A pad for process documentation. It became the
first document described in Section IIA.
• Apadforbothvocabularyspecificationand“ques-
tions not addressed to in the webinar”.
III. OPS: THE ONTOLOGY OF SOCIAL
PARTICIPATION
This section makes considerations about ops label
FIG.1. Someofthevariouslogosforofthevcps. (a)isacol-
standardizationandimplementedclasses, propertiesand
oredtextlogoproposal;(b)isafigurativelogo;(c)ismixture
restrictions. FeaturespresentinFigure2,butnotpresent
of both ideas. It can be seen that these logos were conceived
fortheontologywhenitwascalledavocabulary. Community invcps,arefullydescribedinSectionIIIA.Examplesof
documents reflect this nomenclature, which is being changed usage are addressed in Section IV.
with this article and subsequent work with ops advent.
A. Standardizationandexhibitionofimplementedfeatures
C. OWL code of VCPS
Without explicit criteria, vcps uri was http://
The owl code of vcps is online18 and deprecated by lumii.lv/ontologies/Corais.owl. Ops uri was cho-
ops advent. The vcps owl code did not contain all sentobehttp://purl.org/socialparticipation/ops
relation from Figure 2 (or Figure 8). This is directly ad- for the following reasons:
dressedinSectionIII,whichexposestheimplementation
of all relations in the ops, including vcps owl correc- • This uri is directly related to the ontology name
(ops).
tions and adjustments to best practices. The complete
and correct ops is further contextualized in Section IV. • This uri, also an url, is independent from gov-
ernment and other political associations. This is
importanttocoalesceinterestedparties: theBrazil-
D. Blog Posts ian Federal Social Participation Portal13, Brazilian
government repository of vocabularies and ontolo-
The vcps blog aggregates both important discussions gies22, academic groups, ngos, and non-organized
anddocumentsinnomorethantwentypoststodate. All civil society.
owl code, final documents, public consultations, mental
map and images are posted in the blog19. The first post • Derived uris, when reached via http, can be redi-
iffromJuly24, 2012. LastpostaboutvcpsisfromMay rected to where current documentation is held, as
7, 2013. Most blog posts are from the first day (almost it is hosted by http://purl.org.
halfofthem). Theyreceivedmorethantwentycommen-
Labelsinthelanguagesofinterestshouldbewrittenin
taries. Two “out-of-season” blog posts, one from August
label fields. Even so, ops class names should be friendly
9,2012andanotherfromOctober22,2012,separatefirst
tousers,bearingtheattentionnottotaketheclassname
daypostsfromlastposts. Bothhaveabouttencommen-
as the label or as a meaning restriction.
taries. Last blog posts occurred as a few days burst and
For standardization, all classes are written in Camel-
a final message, a month after.
Case23 in plain English to ease internationalization,
There are three more recent blog posts, from Novem-
adoption and maturation. Labels are written in
ber and December, 2013. But these already address ops
Portuguese, English and Spanish. Therefore, class
conception from vcps.
nameschanged,receivingrespectivelabels(rdfs:label)
in each language and a textual short explanation
(rdfs:comment) in English. Table I exhibits all classes
E. Discussions and etherpads
is ops.
Ops property names fit headlessCamelCase23 format,
Besides blog registries of collective elaborations, four
are readable in English (to ease internationalization,
etherpadswerewritten20(theseareinterfacesthatallows
adoption and maturation), and some of them have de-
writing online texts with multiple simultaneous contrib- fined domains and ranges. Table II is dedicated to ops
utors21):
properties, with labels in English, Portuguese and Span-
ish.
• A pad for important words.
In the first versions of ops, all proper-
• A pad dedicated to a second phase of vcps elabo- ties yielded existential restrictions, except
ration, which did not happen yet. ops:hasParticipationCharacteristic. Although
OPS: Social Participation Ontology 4
FIG. 2. Diagram representation of the Ontology of Social Participation (ops). Arrows with white heads indicate “is a”
relations (subclass points to superclass). Arrows with black heads indicate property relations from subject to object . All
property relation yield existential restrictions, with the exception of the “has characteristic” property, that does not yield
restriction. Upper ontologies bfo and foaf are asserted through color (bfo) and dashed boxes (foaf).
sucheffortswereaimedathandlingabetterdefinedops, sions are exposed in Appendix A):
furtherdevelopmentsanddiscussionsrevealedthatthese
restrictions made ops rigid, a bit more complicated, • Class: ops:ParticipationCharacteristic.
and was not of much help, at least in this stage of • Property: ops:hasRole.
ops development and adoption. The result is that all
• Property: ops:composesSolution.
restrictions were removed. Appendix A and Table IV
exhibit all dropped ops restrictions. Ops is available online25. To ease navigation of the
An inspection of vcps also yielded a contradiction ontology by interested parties, it is also available in the
presentinFigure8: arolecannotexecute,initiateorsup- Webprotege interface26. The diagram of ops taxonomic
port a cause. These are done by the social actor. There- structure is exposed in Figure 3.
fore, tomaintainvcpsdirectionsandobtainasoundon- Upperontologiesusagewithopsisunderdevelopment
tology, ops:Role was removed from ops in preliminary and should receive a dedicated article, as possibilities
versions. The result can be seen directly in Figures 2 shouldbeinspectedcarefully. Pertinentandalreadyused
and 3. as upper ontologies for ops are foaf27 (for linking and
A comparison of the vcps owl code24 with the dia- describing people and things they do) and bfo28 (“de-
gram in Figure 8, which reflects official vcps documen- signed for use in supporting information retrieval, anal-
tation, revealed that a class, two properties and three ysis and integration in scientific and other domains” as
restrictions were not implemented. These were fully im- stated on their documentation). Properties were not re-
plemented in ops before all restrictions were removed. lated to upper ontologies as reasonable relations are still
These are the missing class and properties (restrictions being searched for. Table I exposes ops classes and re-
missinginvcpsandimplementedinpreliminaryopsver- spective upper ontologies classes.
OPS: Social Participation Ontology 5
Figure2isacompletediagramofcurrentops: classes,
propertiesandrelationstofoafandbfo. Actually,Fig-
ure 2 is more informative than ops owl code, as restric-
tions were removed and not all properties have defined
domainandrange. Therefore,thediagramistheremain-
ing source of relations envisioned by ops creators.
OPS: Social Participation Ontology 6
TABLE I. Classes of the ops (Ontology of Social Participation). These are core concepts in the ontology. Along with the
taxonomicstructureexposedinFigure3,theseclassesarerelatedbythepropertiesinTableII.Noteworthyisvcpsclassname
“vcps:Espa¸co de A¸c~ao”, which caused original vcps owl to be pointed as corrupted by prot`eg`e (spaces are not allowed in
uris). Also, class vcps:Role was dropped as it yields logical problens in vcps.
OPS class VCPS pt-br label es label en label definition upper ontology
name class name classes
Person Pessoa Pessoa Persona Person a person (social actor is a bfo:’Material
person) Entity’,foaf:Person
Organization Organizacao Organiza¸ca˜o Organizaci´on Organization social actor is a group of indi- bfo:’Material
viduals, organized formally or Entity’,
informally (e.g. movements, foaf:Organization
collectives)
Executor Executor Executor Ejecutor Executor performsactiondirectlyandis bfo:’Material
responsibleforresults Entity’
Initiator Iniciador Iniciador Iniciador Initiator originates cause, individually bfo:’Material
orcollaborativelly Entity’
Supporter Apoiador Apoiador Apoyador Supporter supports cause with resources bfo:’Material
of any kind (e.g. cognitive, fi- Entity’
nancial,equipments)
SocialActor Ator AtorSocial ActorSocial SocialActor entity that might have a par- bfo:’Material
ticipatoryrole Entity’
Participation- NivelDe- Caracter´ısticade Caracter´ısticade Participation the way the participation of bfo:’Dependent
Characteristic Participacao Participa¸c˜ao Participacio´n Characteristic thespecificactorishappening Continuant’
Cause Causa Causa Causa Cause themotivationforAction bfo:’Dependent
Continuant’
Scope Espa¸co de Escopo Ambito Scope thescopeosAction bfo:’Dependent
A¸c˜ao Continuant’
Result Resultados Resultado Resultado Result theresultobtainedwithaction bfo:’Dependent
Continuant’
Solution Solucao Solu¸c˜ao Soluci´on Solution solutionachievedwithAction bfo:’Dependent
Continuant’
Problem Problema Problema Problema Problem the problem that the Action bfo:’Independent
aimstosolve Continuant’
Theme Tema Tema Tema Theme thethemeinfocusbyAction bfo:’Independent
Continuant’
Action Acao A¸c˜ao Acci´on Action whatisdoneintermsossocial bfo:’Processual
participation Entity’
Papel -//- -//- -//- theroleoftheactor -//-
droppedclass
TABLE II. Properties of the ops (Ontology of Social Participation) along original vcps names. Only a few ranges were
established, and no domain, as these were not currently useful and, without them, ops can be used more freely.
OSP property name CVSP property name pt-br label es label en label domain range
theme possuiTemaAssociado tema tema theme -//- Theme
belongsTo pertenceAoEspaco pertence ao pertence al belongs to -//- Scope
action possuiAcao ac¸a˜o accio´n action -//- Action
supports apoiaCausa apoia apoya supports -//- -//-
contributesTo compoeSolucao contribui para contribuyepara contributes -//- -//-
to
executes executaAcao executa ejecuta executes -//- -//-
generates geraCausa gera genera generates -//- -//-
starts iniciaCausa inicia inicializa starts -//- -//-
solves soluciona soluciona resuelve solves -//- -//-
produces produzResultado produz produce produces -//- -//-
proposes propoeSolucao propo˜e propone proposes -//- -//-
trait temNivelDeParticipacao trac¸o rasgo trait -//- -//-
dropped temPapel -//- -//- -//- -//- -//-
OPS: Social Participation Ontology 7
FIG.3. AtaxonomictreeoftheOntologyofSocialParticipation(ops). Thisimagewasrenderedinsideprot`eg`e,withtheowl
codeinAppendixC.Figure2ismoreinformative,butthisdiagramismorestandardandmightbesimplerforthenewcomer.
Note that the taxonomic tree does not present any information about properties further linking these classes. The prefixes
snap: and span: are bfo specific for snapshot and spanning-time.
OPS: Social Participation Ontology 8
IV. OPS UTILITY
Ops is meant to be useful. First, as a systematization
of what is social participation to Latin America groups,
as conceived by vcps. Second, as a mean to ease linked
data, and enable integration of various instances for so-
cialparticipation. Anindicativeofthispertinenceisopa,
ocd, ontologiaa, and obs, ontologies that already uses FIG. 5. Scheme of the common use of ontologies for mul-
ops as upper ontology29. tiple databases integration. A user or application reaches a
Thissectionexploresdifferentopsuses: dereferencing, sparql endpoint. This endpoint, through ontologies, deliv-
ers data from one or more databases. Nowadays, the most
sparql queries, expansion, discursive fictional cases, and
usual is to find only one database available at an endpoint,
real use cases.
andthisdatabaseisusuallyduplicatedandnotsynchronized,
but available as a (converted) triplestore. Even so, it is pos-
sibletoaccessmultipleontologiesanditisdesirablethatthe
A. Usage of OPS through dereferencing databases have synchronous access, i.e. without need to con-
vert data to triples beforehand.
All ops classes and properties uris are accessible
via http. A pubby instance delivers information like
name, labels and relations to other classes and prop- protocol in order to retrieve information through seman-
erties. As an example, the uri http://purl.org/ tic criteria. Figure 5 is a schematic representation of
socialparticipation/ops/SocialActor returns infor- obda (Ontology Based Database Access), which is a
mationaboutthisclassandallsubclassesitisrelatedto, common name for this multiple database access through
as shown in Figure 4. ontologies.
Some examples of this usage can be given by sparql
queries and concise explanations:
• "select ?s ?s2 ?s3 where {?s a
ops:SocialActor . ?s2 a ops:Person .
?s3 a ops:Organization}": this query retrieves
all social actors (returned in variable ?s), be
each a person, an organization, or something else;
retrieves all persons (variable ?s2); and retrieves
all organizations (?s3). In a similar manner, one
can retrieve all roles played, all executers, all
initiators and all supporters.
• "select ?s ?o where {?s ops:starts ?o}":
this query retrieves all causes (?o) and their
initiators (?s) or whatever use is being done of the
ops:stars property.
FIG. 4. Dereferencing an ops class: the uri is also an url,
which, reached by http, returns information for the user as
shown. Also, if the client is not a browser, but a crawler • "select ?s ?s2 ?o ?o2 where {?s a
or a linked data application, pubby delivers plain rdf, not ops:Action . ?s ops:belongsTo ?o . ?s2
user-friendly html. ops:executes ?s . ?s ops:produces ?o2}":
this query retrieves all actions (?s) along their
Action Field (?o), their Executer (?s2) and their
Results (?o2), or whatever use is being made of
B. Usage of OPS through a SparQL endpoint there ops classes and properties.
Linking multiple databases is an owl technology core Noteworthy is that while opa:Participant can
purpose. The standard way to access these data via be used to retrieve all participa.br participants,
ontologies is by using a sparql endpoint. This end- ocd:Participant can be used to retrieve all cidade
point delivers data from a triplestore (collection of rdf democr´atica participants, and aa:User can be used to
triples)or,withmoreexperimentaltechnology,fromrela- retrieve all aa participants; their upper ontology class
tionaldatabasesystems,suchasamysqlserver(e.g. via ops:SocialActor retrieves all of them and relates these
ontop/quest30). Either way, the query is the same: the entities directly to the class of generic actors of social
user or machine reaching the endpoint uses the sparql participation processes29.
OPS: Social Participation Ontology 9
C. OPS expansion what roles they take, and make assumptions about
how much the society is really participating or if
Ops matches vcps online documentation11. As an ex- these processes are manipulated by a few agents
ample of additional classes, an expanded ops ontology is (ops:SocialActor). One can also gaze uppon the
exposedinthissectionandisuploadedtowebprotege31. problems being discussed and which solutions are
Table III is dedicated to these additional classes while being proposed, therefore easing the sense of what
Figure 6 presents the resulting taxonomic structure. is being considered important and valid as public
The property ops:receivesFrom was also added discussions. Thislistofpossibilitiesisendless,spe-
and has an inverse: ops:SocialActor ops:paysTo cially when ops variations and expansions are con-
ops:Executor. Also, the ops:DownloadedMod class is sidered.
a defined class by the existential restriction: ops:Mob
ops:convoquedBy ops:Network, with a newly defined • Suppose a person, say Jessica, has a new proposal
property ops:convoquedBy. for a participatory system that uses ops. She can
This is one of the numerous ways by which ops might have a quite concise understanding of the concepts
deal with further classes, properties and restrictions. involved, and how they relate. She can now make
This particular expansion was chosen as an example by very objective observations and deliver clear sug-
direct observance of vcps documentation and recent so- gestions that relate directly to the systems used or
cial affairs, such as the Brazilian protests. envisioned. She can make an ops variation or an-
other ontology, as a way to confront paradigms.
D. Fictional examples of usage • Suppose there is a system for exhibiting indica-
torsaboutsocialparticipation(howeffectiveithas
Ops usage might not be obvious at first. How is data been, how wide is the scope of interests, etc.). In-
stances that are integrated by ops can be queried
linked? How is field knowledge organized? Why and
by whom? Core principles of these ops utilities, can be for information and, for example, this system reg-
isters any organization involved as a social ac-
understood by the following observations:
tor. Also, reflecting the expanded ops exposed
• Differentparticipationinstanceshavesocialactors, above, the system registers any mob involved,
actions being developed, organizations involved, whose incidence was recorded in the database as a
problems being tackled, etc. These can yield one DownloadedMob, as related to some social network
consistent database by means of ops usage. (the network might be unknown).
• One can understand and share the mutually exclu-
sivenatureofbeingapaidoravoluntarycontribu-
tor by observing the expanded version of ops (see E. Real use cases
Section IVC. Also, noticing the fact that a mob
canbeverybigornot,andthatitcanbeconvoked Ops is a recent ontology. Even so, some real use cases
or not by a Network, can make the field more neat can be pointed, from which are most notable:
for a newcomer or ease discussions and problema-
tization for senior researchers or politicians. • The undp/un consultant contract 2013/00056,
projectBRA/12/018,wasprofoundlyinfluencedby
• Other fields of human knowledge and practice also ops29. Within written products are other partic-
have agents, problems and so forth. These can ipatory ontologies, such as opa, ocd, ontologiaa
be linked to participatory data and ontologies by and obs, which relates directly to ops. Also, some
means of ops. methods for analysing ops related data and for re-
source recommendation were delivered. These de-
Fictional examples are useful to make these points
velopmentsweredonebythecomputationalphysics
clear:
researcher R. Fabbri (first author of the present
• Suppose a public sparql endpoint unifies several article), in collaboration with other parties, spe-
participation instances by means of ops (we will cially the Brazilian General Secretariat of the Re-
seeinSectionIVEthatthisisnotreallyfictional). public, University of Bras´ılia researchers, and free
Thus, the number of participants is publicly avail- software parties. Data from three participatory in-
able (|ops:SocialActor|). Also, depending on stancesweretriplified: participa.br,aaandcidade
the platforms involved, one can observe how many democr´atica; all related to ops. These linked data
oftheseparticipantsareindividuals(ops:Person), resourcesareavailableinsparqlendpointsandcan
how many are organizations (ops:Organization), be dereferenced, in a similar fashion as done for
andunderstandtowhichextentthecorporativein- ops. As these are all executed in research facili-
fluence is explicit. One can observe how many of ties, they might lack maintenance and should be
theparticipantsarethesameineachplatform,and kept by a dedicated team.
OPS: Social Participation Ontology 10
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