Dimitris Askounis

Interoperability Registries in eGovernment: Developing a Semantically Rich Repository for Electronic Services and Documents of the New Public Administration

As electronic government is increasing its momentum internationally, there is a growing need for the systematic management of the newly defined and constantly transforming services. eGovernment interoperability frameworks usually cater for the technical standards of eGovernment systems interconnection, but do not address service composition and use by citizens, businesses or other administrations. An interoperability registry is a system devoted to the formal description, composition and publishing of traditional or electronic services, together with the relevant document and process descriptions in an integrated schema. Through such a repository, the discovery of services by users or systems can be automated, resulting in an important tool for managing eGovernment transformation towards achieving interoperability. The paper goes beyond the methodology and tools used for developing such a system for the Greek government, to population with services and documents, application and extraction of useful conclusions for electronic government transformation at global level.

The Greek Electronic Government Interoperability Framework: Standards and Infrastructures for One-Stop Service Provision

The need for centralized e-Government strategies and policies is a fertile ground for the development of e-Government INTEROPERABILITY FRAMEWORKS (eGIFs). Integrated information systems and one-stop public services to citizens and businesses are heavily dependent on the resolution of the ever-expanding interoperability challenge and the satisfaction of public services stakeholders. This can only be realistically addressed if the scope of eGIFs is widened, to include service composition and discovery, security standards, certification of public sites, as well as unified data models for achieving a common understanding of semantics at a syntax-independent level. The Greek eGIF presents a transition from paper-based specifications to a robust system that acts as a repository of systems, services, data schemas, certification tools and training material. This paper presents the objectives, the overall methodology and the architecture of the Greek eGIF, that meets todays demands for modelling, storing, managing and updating a vast number of eGovernment-related information.

A Goal Oriented and Knowledge Based E-Government Project Management Platform

There is a growing need for better project management in e-Government endeavors to bring together people with diverse knowledge and skills so they can develop and implement project activities effectively and efficiently. This paper is a research report on eGTPM (e-Government Transformation Project Management) platform, a project management tool which assists implementers and decision-makers in e-Government project planning and control. eGTPM Platform improves most existing commercial tools by integrating goal orientation and dynamic enterprise modeling (DEM) principles into the knowledge building tool developed at the Decision Systems Laboratory in National Technical University of Athens. By employing goal orientation and DEM principles concepts, eGTPM facilitates communication and collaboration among all involved parties in order to jointly identify project needs and requirements and to reduce the number of changes due to misunderstandings. eGTPM also includes a knowledge based project control advisor which contains heuristic knowledge to guide users to possible design alternatives. The paper describes eGTPMs components and possible directions for future work.

Towards Adopting Dynamic Manufacturing Networks for Future Manufacturing: Benefits and Risks of the IMAGINE DMN End-to-End Management Methodology

Exiting the global economic crisis, the manufacturing domain seeks new ways to take a leap forwards, mostly by exploiting the latest advancements in ICT that promise a more productive, cost-effective and sustainable future. Distributed and flexible manufacturing configurations have been around the latest years, however the lack of an agile and responsive management methodology of such structures has hindered them from reaching their full potential. Today, the novel concept of Dynamic Manufacturing Networks stands out as a cutting-edge solution in this quest, carrying a wide set of assets that aim to drive manufacturing organisations into the new global economy. This concept is incarnated through the IMAGINE DMN end-to-end Management Methodology presented in this paper, along with the benefits and risks that the former promises to respectively enhance and mitigate.

eGOVSIM: A Model for Calculating the Financial Gains of Governmental Services Transformation, for Administration and Citizens

Targeting systematic and formal methods for measuring the impact of interoperability on digital public services is emerging as an important research challenge in electronic government. The eGOVSIM model that is proposed in this paper aims to provide administrations with a tool to calculate the gains from digitising and making interoperable services for citizens and businesses. The paper presents existing methods for calculating the cost of services for the administration and the service consumers, such as the Standards Cost Model (SCM) and the Activity Based Costing (ABC). Then it goes on presenting a toolset for analytical cost calculations based on the various process steps and the information needs of each governmental service. The tool supports the definition of several service provision scenarios, such as front/back office system interoperability, cross-system or cross-organisational interoperability allowing the calculation of time, effort and cost elements and relevant gains from the application of each scenario.

E-Business Transactions Modelling; An Ontology-Based Repository

Over the last decade great expectations have been placed on Enterprise Knowledge Modelling and Management through ontologies. However, most of the existing ontological approaches concentrate on the internal part of business and the issue of e-Business process modelling still remains a big challenge for research to tackle. Furthermore, interoperability is the key factor which will drive e-Business to the next level by offering fully automated transactions among Enterprise Applications, such as Enterprise Resource Planning or Supply Chain Management systems. In this regard, this paper presents a cohesive ontology-based framework for developing an Ebusiness transactions Repository, in which interoperable transactions of heterogeneous business domains – Enterprises, Governmental and Banking Institutions are going to be modelled (cross-sector and cross-border). Such an Interoperability Repository is a system devoted to the formal description, composition and publishing of traditional, electronic, or web services, together with the relevant documents, rules and process descriptions in an integrated schema. Through this approach, the discovery of e-business transactions can be automated, resulting in an important tool for managing e-Business transformation and change and achieving in parallel cross-sector and cross-border interoperability.

Achieving Interoperability Through Base Registries for Governmental Services and Document Management

As digital infrastructures increase their presence worldwide, following the efforts of governments to provide citizens and businesses with high-quality one-stop services, there is a growing need for the systematic management of those newly defined and constantly transforming processes and electronic documents. E-government Interoperability Frameworks usually cater to the technical standards of e-government systems interconnection, but do not address service composition and use by citizens, businesses, or other administrations.

Towards Effective Enterprise Knowledge Management through Fuzzy Semantics

Uncertainty and imprecision are inherent characteristics of human knowledge and their role in knowledge engineering and knowledge-based systems development has been extensively examined in the literature. However, when it comes to enterprise knowledge management, existence of corresponding frameworks that are able to address the issue of knowledge imprecision in a formal and comprehensive way is limited. With that mind, we present in this paper our work in progress on an integrated knowledge management framework that effectively deals with the above limitation through the utilization of fuzzy semantics.