Project Profile Assignment

Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus
http://en.thesaurus.gc.ca/intro_e.html
October 3, 2005

In 1999, the Government of Canada, in its Speech from the Throne, promised “…to be known around the world as the government most connected to its citizens, with Canadians able to access all government information and services on-line at the time and place of their choosing.” (Renaud, n.d.). This commitment was followed by the birth of the Government On-Line initiative in 2000 and has led Canada to becoming a world leader in e-service delivery. In their 2005 report, Accenture, an international consulting firm that annually studies global eGovernment maturity, ranked Canada as first in eGovernment implementation, for the fifth year in a row (Riley, 2005).

The Government On-Line (GOL) initiative led to a number of standards being developed (Renaud, n.d.). Firstly, the development of the “Common Look and Feel” standard set guidelines for the structure and appearance of all Government web sites. Then, the Metadata Working Group recommended adopting Dublin Core as the core metadata standard for resource discovery. Once a metadata standard was adopted, the group recommended a Controlled Vocabulary standard for the management of electronic information. The Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus was adopted as the default thesaurus to be used for the “subject” () metadata element within federal government web resources (Renaud, n.d.). The Core Subject Thesaurus (CST) is based on the Depository Services Program Subject Thesaurus which was a source of subject descriptors applied to bibliographic records in the Government of Canada Publications Database (http://www.dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Thesurus/index-e.html). Before these standards existed, departments developed and used their own thesauri and vocabularies in order to meet their own needs and to make their own information available. However, there was very little “interoperability” (Renaud, n.d.). Interoperability has become a guiding principle of this initiative. It requires the consistent application of standard metadata elements and vocabulary values across the Government of Canada (GoC) domain, increasing access to everyone and in particular the citizens of Canada. Thomas Riley (2005), in his article “Successful eGovernment in Canada” comments that “52 per cent of the 76 percent of Canadians online, who go to the Canadian sites for services, and the multitude of people who receive better services because of the attention to eGovernment initiatives, are the beneficiaries.”

The Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus, the controlled vocabulary standard, was developed as a source of standardized terminology for the indexing and retrieval of Government of Canada information resources. Its use ensures that any particular concept or subject will always be represented in the same way across the Government of Canada domain. For example, to describe a web resource which provides “essential information in a field of study” indexers have agreed and would be required to use the value “handbooks”, not “guides”, “manuals” or “user guides”. Renaud (n.d.), in his paper “Metadata and Controlled Vocabularies in the Government of Canada: A Situational Analysis” (http://purl.org/metadataresearch/dcconf2004/papers/Paper_20.pdf ) describes some broad principles that were agreed upon and applied to the selection of terms. These principles are that terms be “high level, representing broad concepts that may be further expanded into detailed schemes; applicable, representing content types found on a significant number of Government of Canada Websites and/or are of substantial significance to Government of Canada programs/services; recognizable, that is, understandable by implementers and indexers; unique, so that no terms will be a synonym of an existing term; and client-centric, ensuring that concepts and terminology used in presentation layers would be tested with the public.”

The Core Subject Thesaurus Web site itself is intended to be used by those who have responsibility for building, enhancing, or revising Web sites within the Government of Canada (http://en.thesaurus.gc.ca/into_e.html). The Thesaurus is described as “a controlled vocabulary arranged in a known order (not necessarily alphabetic) in which equivalence (USE; USE FOR), homographic (variant spellings), hierarchical (Broader Term; Narrower Term) and associative (Related Term) relationships among terms are clearly displayed and identified by standardized relationship indicators. A thesaurus contains synonyms, or “lead-in” terms that may be used as the conceptual point of entry by searchers or indexers, instead of the designated indexing terms. As such, they “lead” users to the “preferred’ term that is consistently used in indexing information resources that contain the subject or concept that the user is looking for.” These are the basic characteristics of any thesaurus. The Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus fits this description. It is comprehensive and relatively easy and straightforward to use and has been developed in accordance with the standards set out for monolingual and multilingual thesauri by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (Renaud, n.d.). Since all Government of Canada web resources must be available in both official languages, English and French, both versions of the Core Subject Thesaurus have been developed and are maintained simultaneously.

As the Government On-Line initiative evolved, it took an all-government approach to e-service delivery, organizing services by category rather than on a department-by-department basis. This is reflected in the current Canada Site home page (http://www.canada.gc.ca) which offers “gateways” to three audiences: Canadians and Residents, Non-Canadians, and Canadian Businesses. Use of the controlled vocabulary of the Core Subject Thesaurus by all government departments ensures that anyone searching for information about a specific topic will find it more easily since subjects will be described using the same preferred terms each time they are indexed (http://www.collectionscanada.ca/8/4/r4-294-e.html). As the Government On-Line initiative continues to evolve, so will the Core Subject Thesaurus as new terms are being consistently added.

Helen McDonald, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Government of Canada, was recently asked by ‘eGov monitor’ (http://www.egovmonitor.com) what she thought the future held for Canadian eGovernment in the next few years. Ms. McDonald responded: “For us, the question is not where we go next with eGovernment. The question is how do we meet citizen needs for higher quality services and better value for money? Services need to be seamless across all channels – in-person, mail, phone and the Internet – and seamless across programs and jurisdictions.” The Core Subject Thesaurus will have a role to play as a controlled vocabulary standard that all government departments will use as they expand and revise their Web sites.



Resources

Depository Services Program Subject Thesaurus. Retrieved from
http://www.dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Thesaurus/index-e.html

eGovernment Leadership: High Performance, Maximum Value. Retrieved from
http://www/accentrue.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=industries\government\gove_ egov_value.xml

Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus. Retrieved from
http://en.thesaurus.gc.ca/intro_e.html

Implementing Controlled Vocabulary on Government of Canada Web Sites. Retrieved
From http://www.collectionscanada.ca/8/4/r4-294-e.html

Q&A: Helen McDonald, CIO, Government of Canada. Retrieved from
http://egovmonitor.com/node/1033

Renaud, G., Metadata and Controlled Vocabularies In the Government of Canada: A
Situational Analysis. Retrieved from http://purl.org/metadataresearch/dcconf2004/papers/Paper_20.pdf

Riley, T., Successful eGovernment in Canada. Retrieved from
http://egovmonitor.com/node/709

Survey of Government Implementation of DC. Retrieved from
http://dublincore.org/groups/government/survey-200106.shtml