Fenareti Lampathaki

Systematisation of Interoperability Body of Knowledge: the foundation for Enterprise Interoperability as a science

The recently posed challenge of developing an Enterprise Interoperability Science Foundation (EISF) prompted some academic agents to attempt a systematisation of the Interoperability Body of Knowledge (IBoK). Still in their embryonic stages, these efforts have sought to organise and aggregate information from very fragmented and disparate sources, and with different granularities of detail, distinct epistemology origins, separate academic fields, etc. This paper aims to distinguish between levels of specificity of the Interoperability academic work, which are often confused, by considering Models, Theories, and Frameworks. The paper revises these concepts within the context of the EISFs recent work. The results presented here, reflecting consultation with the expert community, provide the synthesis of the current state of play regarding the work developed by the Enterprise Interoperability (EI) at the European Commissions Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) cluster.

Business to business interoperability: A current review of XML data integration standards

Despite the dawn of the XML era, semantic interoperability issues still remain unsolved. As various initiatives trying to address how the underlying business information should be modelled, named and structured are being realised throughout the world, the importance of moving towards a holistic approach in eBusiness magnifies. In this paper, an attempt to clarify between the standards prevailing in the area is performed and the XML Data Standards providing generic XML Schemas are presented. Based on this XML Data Standards Map, a multi-faceted classification mechanism is proposed, leading to an extensible taxonomy of standards. A set of facets is analyzed for each standard, allowing for their classification based on their scope, completeness, compatibility with other standards, openness, ability to modify the schemas and maturity, to name a few. Through populating and querying this multi-faceted classification, a common understanding of Data Integration Standards can be ensured and the choice of a standard according to the requirements of each business can be systematically addressed.

Paving the Way to eGovernment Transformation: Interoperability Registry Infrastructure Development

During the last decades eGovernment has been a vivid, dynamic research and development area. As services are being transformed, electronic documents and web services appear every day in many countries, the involved stakeholders are in urgent need for an instrument to structure governmental administration processes, service composition and provision - in a way that eGovernment transformation can be constantly managed. This paper presents the creation of an eGovernment ontology, and the development of a knowledge-based registry of governmental services in Greece. This Registry is an advanced web portal, devoted to the formal description, composition and publishing of traditional, electronic and web services, including the relevant electronic documents, information systems and as well the process descriptions and the work-flow models in an integrated knowledge base. Through such a repository, the discovery of services by users or systems has been automated, resulting in an important tool for achieving interoperable eGovernment transformation.

Towards a sustainable interoperability in networked enterprise information systems

Sustaining interoperability in enterprise networks is the next research challenge.Not understanding the impact of a single system change may cause network failures.Pervasive information models and EA can support dynamic interoperability enablers.Combined use of model-driven and knowledge-based approaches can improve NG-EIS.We present and discuss the sustainable interoperability research framework. In a turbulent world, global competition and the uncertainty of markets have led organizations and technology to evolve exponentially, surpassing the most imaginary scenarios predicted at the beginning of the digital manufacturing era, in the 1980s. Business paradigms have changed from a standalone vision into complex and collaborative ecosystems where enterprises break down organizational barriers to improve synergies with others and become more competitive. In this context, paired with networking and enterprise integration, enterprise information systems (EIS) interoperability gained utmost importance, ensuring an increasing productivity and efficiency thanks to a promise of more automated information exchange in networked enterprises scenarios. However, EIS are also becoming more dynamic. Interfaces that are valid today are outdated tomorrow, thus static interoperability enablers and communication software services are no longer the solution for the future. This paper is focused on the challenge of sustaining networked EIS interoperability, and takes up input from solid research initiatives in the areas of knowledge management and model driven development, to propose and discuss several research strategies and technological trends towards next EIS generation.

Combination of Interoperability Registries with Process and Data Management Tools for Governmental Services Transformation

Digital government applications are providing more and more electronic services on-line, for citizens and businesses worldwide. However, the new services are in many cases an exact electronic equivalent of existing manual services, thus failing to significantly reduce administrative burden and provide the promised productivity gains – both for the administrations and the final users. Interoperability Registries, as fully electronic repositories of the flow, the input and output documents and relevant standardization, pose as an infrastructure that can support electronic services composition and publishing. In the presented approach, the use of such registries is extended to cover the optimization of manual or electronic services towards citizens and businesses, through the use of Business Process Management and XML Authoring tools. Going beyond the current state of the art, the approach implies a model-driven transformation of service provision. The resulting infrastructure can then become a ubiquitous system, supporting service composition, automated execution and optimization.

A review of electronic government interoperability frameworks: patterns and challenges

e-Government Interoperability Frameworks (e-GIFs) outline the essential prerequisites for joined-up and web-enabled e-government, providing the basic standards that every public authority must adopt. Today, their scope has been extended to facilitate the seamless exchange of information and the deployment of interoperable systems in Central and Municipal Government. In the scope of this paper, the interoperability frameworks released by eight countries are presented, and a comparative analysis among their findings is conducted to indicate the similarities and differences in their philosophy and implementation, resulting in a set of recommendations for any interested party willing to create or update an Interoperability Framework.

Organising municipal e-government systems: a multi-facet taxonomy of e-services for citizens and businesses

As various e-Government initiatives are being realised throughout the world, policy makers and technology providers start to understand the importance of local administration e-Government systems. Municipalities are often the closest Point of Service for the European citizens and enterprises, having access to all the necessary information and usually providing the final service – a fact that makes their e-Services Portals a very important link in the e-Government chain. After attempting a positioning of municipality systems in the taxonomy of e-government systems, the present paper analyses the set of services that a Municipality Portal should be able to offer, focusing on eEurope – related capabilities. Based on this service directory, a multi-faceted classification mechanism is proposed, leading to an extendible taxonomy of e-Services to be offered by Municipality e-Government systems. A set of facets is analysed for each service, allowing for classification of services based on their main purpose, nature, orientation, means of provision, and various functional characteristics. Through populating, viewing and querying this multi-faceted classification, the design, development, deployment and impact assessment of e-Government systems for Municipalities can be systematically addressed.

A core component-based modelling approach for achieving e-business semantics interoperability

The adoption of advanced integration technologies that enable private and public organizations to seamlessly execute their business transactions electronically is still relatively low, especially among governmental bodies and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Current solutions often lack a common understanding of the underlying business document semantics and most existing approaches are not able to cope with the huge variety of business document formats, stemming from highly diverse requirements of the different stakeholders. Developed and applied in the course of the EU-funded research project GENESIS, this paper presents a comprehensive core component-based business document modelling approach that builds upon existing standards such as the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) and the UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS). These standards are extended by introducing the concept of generic business document templates out of which specific documents can be derived according to the actual users needs. Key principle to achieve this flexibility is the integration of business context information that allows for modelling standard-based but at the same time customized business documents. The resulting modelling framework ranges from (tool-supported) graphical data models to the technical representation of the business documents as XML schema documents designed in compliance with the UN/CEFACT XML schema Naming and Design Rules (NDR).

Defining a taxonomy for research areas on ICT for governance and policy modelling

As governments across the world provide more and more support to open data initiatives and web 2.0 channels for engaging citizens, researchers orient themselves towards future internet, wisdom of crowds and virtual world experiments. In this context, the domain of ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling has recently emerged to achieve better, participative, evidence-based and timely governance. This paper presents a taxonomy classifying the research themes, the research areas and the research sub-areas that challenge this domain in order to deal with its diversity and complexity. Taking into account advancements in research, policy and practice, the taxonomy brings together the open, linked data and visual analytics philosophy; the social media buzz taming collective wisdom in decision-making; and the future internet approaches around cloud computing, internet of things and internet of services, while embracing the collaborative policy modelling aspects and the safeguarding against misuse implications.

Envisioning Digital Europe 2030: Scenarios for ICT in Future Governance and Policy Modelling

The report Envisioning Digital Europe 2030 is the result of research conducted by the Information Society Unit of IPTS as part of the CROSSROAD Project - A Participative Roadmap on ICT research on Electronic Governance and Policy Modelling (www.crossroad-eu.net ). After outlining the purpose and scope of the report and the methodological approach followed, the report presents the results of a systematic analysis of societal, policy and research trends in the governance and policy modelling domain in Europe. These analyses are considered central for understanding and roadmapping future research on ICT for governance and policy modelling. The study further illustrates the scenario design framework, analysing current and future challenges in ICT for governance and policy modelling, and identifying the key impact dimensions to be considered. It then presents the scenarios developed at the horizon 2030, including the illustrative storyboards representative of each scenario and the prospective opportunities and risks identified for each of them. The scenarios developed are internally consistent views of what the European governance and policy making system could have become by 2030 and of what the resulting implications for citizens, business and public services would be. Finally, the report draws conclusions and presents the proposed shared vision for Digital Europe 2030, offering also a summary of the main elements to be considered as an input for the future development of the research roadmap on ICT for governance and policy modelling.