I full concur with Mills' idea.  The Semantic Technologies he is describing are needed to build the National Terminology and National Management Life Cycle I've described in own posted ideas.

I strongly believe this is the correct approach - and the literature backs up this claim. The Web has proven itself as a remarkable tool for sharing information, expressing data in the same manner is a natural development.

I fully agree with this concept. One of the goals of Recovery.gov is to make information about how stimulus money is spent availalbe to the average american. Assuming first that the average american even has access (some good comments already about virtualization and cloud computing to aid this), this kind of technology is necessary to present visual representations that will be easy to navigate. Some good examples already exist in news media we sites.

I also agree wholeheartedly with this idea.  Semantics is needed to bridge the various organizations participating in the Recovery and their different uses of language and terminology, thereby increasing transparency.  It is also essential to keeping the process more fluid, dynamic and responsive, since a semantic web can more readily evolve.

This is a win-win proposition. Most of all, by doing this the USA gov will catchup and possibly establish a leadership position on the use of technology that is essential for eGovernment / smart grids / virtual townhall meetings. Addtionally, it will introduce a strategic boost to semantic technology providers who are predominantly small businesses.

Same here.  I fully agree with this idea and with the posted comments so far.  Semantically-enabled data on the web is one of those technologoies on which all sorts of tools and strategies will be built that we haven't thought of yet.  Linking data together in non-obvious ways is key in finding patterns and relationships in data we never knew.  (I can't help but think that it's these new found relationships, bring disparate people and groups together that never were previously, that may Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter so popular)

You know, using semantic technologies together with spreadsheet technology at the point of submission would be a really smart move. It would benefit the submitter two ways: first they would be able to report out (visualize) their data in a variety of ways easily using semantic lens technologies; second, they would be able to see (automatically, since the table structure for agency data submissions is the same) and analyze their data combined with that of other agencies. Just going this far is a benefit.

But, having data and table definitions in semantic form has other benefits. It makes it easier to combine recovery.gov data together with other information and data sources -- data, form, document, and web page. For example, to associate recovery.gov data with data.gov data and with open linked data from across the web. And much more.  

It's time to make semantics and knowledge representation first class citizens in the Federal IT approach.