Karol Furdík

Semantic Integration of eGovernment Services in Schleswig-Holstein

The paper presents an example of e-government service integration on a semantic basis, as it was designed within the Access-eGov research project and applied in the Schleswig-Holstein state government. The case study follows up the application of a requirements-driven approach for designing e-government service interfaces with respect to the informational needs of citizens and business users. Using this approach, a conceptual model for e-government services was developed, formalised in the WSML ontology language, and used for semantic annotation of the services as a basis for integration. A subsequent field test was focused on the evaluation of produced semantic description on the client-side system components as Annotation tool and the Personal Assistant Client. The results of the field test have been evaluated and are presented in as lessons learned.

Integration of government services using semantic technologies

The paper describes an approach to semantic interoperability of eGovernment services applied within the 027020 FP6 IST Access-eGov project. The goal of the project was to improve accessibility and connectivity of governmental services for citizens and businesses by means of creating integrated scenarios and providing guidance to users while following this scenario. The scenario helps the user to identify and fulfil any needed electronic or real governmental services in a selected life situation. The Access-eGov project has developed software tools enabling service integration using semantic technologies. In addition to that, a methodology providing guidance to the user-driven process of creating ontologies was developed. Sample ontologies were prepared for trial applications. The developed tools support browsing, discovery, and execution of government services according to a selected life event or goal. The project successfully developed and tested the proposed solutions. The software developed within the project is available as open source software.

Towards Semantic Modelling of Business Processes for Networked Enterprises

The paper presents an approach to the semantic modelling and annotation of business processes and information resources, as it was designed within the FP7 ICT EU project SPIKE to support creation and maintenance of short-term business alliances and networked enterprises. A methodology for the development of the resource ontology, as a shareable knowledge model for semantic description of business processes, is proposed. Systematically collected user requirements, conceptual models implied by the selected implementation platform as well as available ontology resources and standards are employed in the ontology creation. The process of semantic annotation is described and illustrated using an example taken from a real application case.

Open Collaboration in Policy Development: Concept and Architecture to Integrate Scenario Development and Formal Policy Modelling

Along the demands for good governance and open government, policymakers need concise, reliable and up-to-date information to respond to society’s problems and affairs in an efficient and effective way. Likewise, stakeholders affected by a particular policy call for transparency, accountability and trustworthiness in political decision-making. Along the evolution of information society that leads to increasing digitisation of information and knowledge artefacts and public services, citizens more and more request direct involvement in policymaking. In this chapter, we introduce a comprehensive and innovative approach to collaborative policy development. The approach integrates collaborative scenario building and formal policy modelling via an integrated ICT toolbox. Stakeholders are collaboratively involved in the scenario development as well as in the evaluation of simulation outcomes. To bridge the gap between narrative texts of stakeholder-generated scenarios (evidenced through background documents of the policy to be discussed) and formal policy models (generating model-based scenarios), the approach introduces conceptual modelling, which enables the different stakeholders to better understand the policy context and to support semi-automatic transformation of text statements into formal statements and agent descriptions. A consequence of the agent-based modelling approach used is that the justifications for expectations of the stakeholders are made precise, explicit and linked to evidence, and this process provides for the monitoring of ongoing policy implementation.

Employing Semantic Technologies for the Orchestration of Government Services

The main aim of the eGovernment is to provide efficient, secure, inclusive services for its citizens and businesses. The necessity to integrate services and information resources, to increase accessibility, to reduce the administrative burden on citizens and enterprises – these are only a few reasons why the paradigm of the eGovernment has been shifted from the supply-driven approach toward the connected governance, emphasizing the concept of interoperability (Archmann and Nielsen 2008). On the EU level, the interoperability is explicitly addressed as one of the four main challenges, including in the i2010 strategy (i2010 2005). The Commission’s Communication (Interoperability for Pan-European eGovernment Services 2006) strongly emphasizes the necessity of interoperable eGovernment services, based on standards, open specifications, and open interfaces. The Pan-European interoperability initiatives, such as the European Interoperability Framework (2004) and IDABC, as well as many projects supported by the European Commission within the IST Program and the Competitiveness and Innovation Program (CIP), illustrate the importance of interoperability on the EU level.

Food Traceability Chain Supported by the Ebbits IoT Middleware

The paper presents the food traceability prototype, which was implemented as a pilot application of the FP7 EU project ebbits. The platform architecture, built upon the principles of the Internet of Things (IoT), People, and Services, is described in aspects of the supported interoperability and semantic orchestration of services involved in the food production chain. The platform represents physical objects as digital objects that go through different phases in the production chain. The information produced in each phase is stored by involved actors and could be retrieved back by the consumers through orchestrating services provided by the actors in the production chain. These services are resolved by a product service orchestration, which is supported by a semantic backend.

Design of a system architecture for support of collaborative policy modelling processes

The paper describes a design of system architecture for support of collaborative policy modelling processes in electronic governance. The policy modelling processes, as complex and knowledge intensive activities, combine collaborative creation and analysis of narrative scenarios with agent-based simulation. The proposed architecture will support collaborative approach to the policy modelling (i.e. enhance the modelling processes by collective intelligence). A scope of the proposed system will be specified and platform architecture components, including some practical details regarding their implementation, will be described.

Distributed task-based execution engine for support of text-mining processes

This paper describes design and implementation aspects for extension of our original software system developed in Java for support of information retrieval and text mining with specialized execution engine for different type of tasks. Some of our experiences and specific requirements of the real applications lead us to idea give the system possibility to run the tasks in distributive way. The result of the idea is task-based execution engine, which represents middleware-like transparent layer (mostly for programmers who want to re-use functionality of our package) for running of different tasks in multi-thread environment. The original system is being developed as open source with the intention to provide an easy extensible, modular framework for pre-processing, indexing and further exploration of large text collections. This specialized execution engine has been implemented within APVV project called PoZnaŤ (Support for knowledge creation processes) in order to extend proposed text-mining platform for educational and experimental purposes. Conceptual architecture of the system is provided as well as details regarding our extension of library like usage of content repository paradigm, representation and encapsulation of tasks, implementation of the engine itself and its role within PoZnaŤ platform.

Use of Semantic Principles in a Collaborative System in Order to Support Effective Information Retrieval

This paper focuses on information retrieval aspects of a new application in domain of collaborative systems based on utilization of semantic principles for representation of different types of knowledge, collaborative objects and relations between them. Proposed collaborative system (within European IST project called KP-Lab) uses ontologies as common communication framework and exchange format for different types of end-user tools. Theoretical background is provided by innovative theoretical approach called Trialogical learning. Information retrieval in KP-Lab System is supported by designed and implemented text-mining and search services. These two sets of functionalities provide features for management of shared objects, described with content in textual format, as well as with semantic metadata.

A process-oriented service infrastructure for networked enterprises

Abstract The networked enterprise is a short-term partnership of business organizations aimed at sharing the partners’ services without restrictions on size or organizational structure. Our approach considers two software solutions developed for supporting the creation and maintenance of such business collaborations in interoperable networks. The first one addresses a business alliance formation based on combining competences, processes and services of several organizations into a single value chain. Our emphasis is mainly on the interoperability and security of the provided services. The second approach focuses on the collaboration between large enterprises with rich IT ecosystems and SMEs with poor or missing IT infrastructure. Interoperable data sharing is supported by light-weight semantics, while standard inter-SME communication is enriched to grant authentication among partners. Alternatives for enabling technologies for service orchestration, process modelling, and event routing are investigated for the solutions. Based on the evaluation results obtained from pilot testing of the system prototypes, we discuss the implications of the technologies on quality indicators such as usability, performance, and business applicability.