Tomas Sabol

E-government implementation strategies in developed and transition economies: A comparative study

a b s t r a c t In the last decade, electronic government in Europe has emerged and established itself as a viable alter- native channel for public service delivery. While e-government has now matured in most developed European countries, transition economies in Europe, have only recently begun to recognise its poten- tial benefits and incorporated e-government as part of their national strategy. Although time may result in the amplification of e-government experience for transition economy countries, lessons drawn from developed countries indicate that political, fiscal, social, strategic and organisational issues need to be addressed when formulating plans for deploying e-government. Using case study research, this paper examines strategies adopted by the UK and Slovakia in the context of e-government implementation. Par- ticularly, the paper examines how the perspectives on e-government vision, strategy, focus and related organisational change influence the implementation and diffusion of e-government in developed and transition economies in Europe.

Business Models for the Internet of Things Environment

Abstract Over the past few years, the widespread use of the Internet and rapid development of Internet-based technologies has resulted also into shorter life cycles of product and services, requiring thus faster changing business models. This paper provides an overview of business models for Internet of Things, Services and People applications. The concept of the Internet of Things and Services envisions physical devices and appliances to be used as easily as a web service and seamlessly integrated into networked applications with required functionality. Technologically this concept is clear, and several smart applications are currently under development (see e.g. iCore, Hydra, Confidence or IoT@Work projects). However, the business perspective of information as an asset in its own right remains an open issue. To handle this issue we apply an originally value-based requirement technique, e3-value, to model value creation and value exchange within an e-business network of multiple business actors. Using this approach the business activity can be reduced to its core elements, which in the simplest case comprise the value proposition, distribution channels and the customers of the company, explaining how a multi-actor network creates, distributes and consumes value by production of a good or providing a service.

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.

First Trials in Webocracy

The Webocracy project aims to empower citizens with innovative communication, access and polling system, supporting increased participation in democratic processes. One of the main project goals is to develop an open source web-based system called Webocrat as a multi-channel communication platform supporting e-government and e-democracy applications. Some of the Webocrat modules were tested in first trial of our two pilot applications, one of them running in Wolverhampton, UK and the other one in Kosice, Slovakia. Currently, whole integrated Webocrat system is being tested within the second trials.

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.

Knowledge enhanced e-government portal

There is a growing number of e-Government portals and solutions available today. But what the users lack in particular is a customised assistance - help that meets the individual situation and competence [13]. In this paper, a system called Webocrat will be presented as an attempt to shift e-Government portals toward this direction, providing knowledge management strategy as its basis [11]. The Webocrat system applies a knowledge-based approach [5]. Information of all kinds produced by various modules is linked to a shared ontology representing an application domain. Such ontology serves as a means for structuring and organizing available information resulting in improved search capability and contents presentation.

Demo application supporting smart grid control

The energy market is inherently incomplete and imperfectly competitive mainly due to the characteristics and special nature of the commodity of electric energy. To be able to control distribution grid in the condition of not elastic demand and continuously changing structure of the supply taking into account possible failures of supplies and also the fact that the supply of renewable energy sources (RES) can be poorly predicted, requires new mechanisms for flexible demand management. Such mechanism of grid control will be outcome of the international R&Đ project INERTIA that is funded by the EC within EU 7th Framework Programme, which is aimed at Smart Grids with the use of knowledge technologies. The semantic technologies were employed for several purposes. Semantic models were used for modelling of static data/time-independent data. Time-dependent data representing events are annotated to the semantic models. This enables the system to filter, compute and enrich the event data and present them via GUI of a decision support system to operators. A demo application has been developed by the authors. It illustrates the usage of the semantic data models in the decision support system giving a sample mechanism to control the demand side of the electric grid. The demo application and the overall approach adopted in the INERTIA system are presented in this paper.

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.