E-Government Service Integration and Provision Using Semantic Technologies

1. E-Government Service Integration and Provision Using Semantic Technologies Karol Furdik1, Ralf Klischewski2, Marek Paralic3, Tomas Sabol3, Marek Skokan3 1 InterSoft, a.s., Kosice, Slovakia, karol.furdik@intersoft.sk 2 German University in Cairo, Egypt, ralf.klischewski@guc.edu.eg 3 Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia, {tomas.sabol, marek.skokan, marek.paralic}@tuke.sk

2. Contents • Motivation: Interoperability and service integration • back-office vs. front-office integration, existing approaches • Access-eGov project: Basic facts, pilot applications • Access-eGov system: Architecture, technology, components • Architecture and functionality, control flow • Annotation tool • Personal Assistant client • 2nd Prototype and trials of pilot applications • Description, focus of pilot trials • Evaluation, results • Conclusions: Achievements, hints for future work

3. Motivation: Interoperability & service integration • Status quo: • eGovernment services are difficult to find / locate; • Individual e-services are disconnected, not interoperable; • Users (citizens/businesses) have to find several services, going then from one to another. • Solution: Interoperability on organisational, technical, and semantic levels • General goals: • To improve accessibility and connectivity of government services for users, i.e. to find the relevant services; • To simplify the use of services for users by providing a guidance and scenarios that combine atomic services

4. Interoperability: Existing approaches • Several initiatives and frameworks, for example: • EIF IDABC , ec.europa.eu/idabc/ • e-GIF specification of UK GovTalk , www.govtalk.gov.uk • SEMIC.EU, www.semic.eu • Most of the existing solutions are focused on the back-office integration - expensive, time-consuming, difficult to set-up • Access-eGov project: • Aimed to provide a lightweight solution for front-office integration of government services on a semantic basisk • all types of existing services (i.e. on-line electronic services, web services, “face-to-face” services) can be integrated

5. Access-eGov project: Basic facts Full title: Access to e-Government Services Employing Semantic Technologies • Contract No.: FP6-2004-27020 • Duration: January 06 - April 09 • Consortium: 11 partners, 5 countries (SK, PL, D, GR, Egypt) • Coordinated by the Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia • Main goal:To develop and validate a platform for composition of gov services into complex process definitions (life events) enabling semantic interoperability of particular eGov services. • 1st Prototype: autumn 2007; 1st Pilot trials: Oct.07 - Jan.08 • 2nd Prototype: end of 2008; 2nd Pilot trials: Dec.08 - Jan.09 • Final release: April 2009

6. Access-eGov project: Pilot applications • Slovakia:Land-use planning and processing a request for a building permit. • Poland:Establishing an enterprise - the process of company registration. • Germany:An upgrade and field test based on the existing good practice “Zustaendigkeitsfinder” ("Responsibility Finder"), by introducing a semantic layer (securing semantic interoperability between national and local governments). Use-case: Getting married. • Egypt (German University of Cairo):Usability testing from outside EU.

7. Access-eGov platform: Architecture schema Web Services + Service-oriented peer-to-peer architecture Three major platform modules: • The Access-eGov infrastructure itself; • User clients - Personal Assistant tool and other end-user interfaces; • Administration and management tools (e.g. Annotation service)

8. Technology used • WSMO (Web Service Modelling Ontology, www.wsmo.org) - conceptual model for the WSML description of ontologies, SW services, goals, and mediators. • WSMX execution environment - discovery, selection, mediation, and invocation of Semantic Web services. • Ontologies - WSML knowledge base and data storage • Process model - WSMO orchestration and choreography was extended according to the DIP CASheW-S workflow model. • Java programming language; WSMO4j data model. • Java web technologies: JSF, JSP, Apache Tomcat, Lucene, ... • Peer-to-peer engine: JXTA connectivity framework • Web services: JAX-WS

9. Basic system components • AeG resource ontology: • persistent data repository and a knowledge base; • contains WSML of life events, goals, service templates & instances. • AeG core components module: • inner business logic of the system; • provides decomposition into sub-goals, orchestration, composition, and mediation of goals in a workflow, semantic matching, discovery, and execution of services. • Annotation tool: • web-based interface enabling to semantically describe (i.e. to annotate) the services by specifying their non-functional properties and templates. • Capability interfaces, inputs, outputs, and related workflow sequences are determined by the used service template. • Personal Assistant client: • tool for browsing and navigation, through the life event and corresponding sub-goals, their customisation, semantic retrieval and execution of services.

10. Architecture and control flow A) - F):Initialization 1. - 4.: Run time

11. Annotation tool - User interface Example: Annotation of a new service Example: List of Instances October 22, 2008 eCom eGov '08 11

12. Personal Assistant client - User interface Example: Browsing and customisation of the process Control tabs Customisation question(s) Top-level goals (tasks) - fulfilled goals are contextually indicated

13. 2nd prototype and trials of pilot applications 2nd prototype was ready in November 2008; it was implemented according to the requirements coming from 1st trial. Trials was accomplished on 3 pilot applications (GE, PL, SK) in December 08 - January 09 Improvements implemented in the 2nd prototype: • Personal Assistant client: • enhancements on the graphical UI, easier navigation and browsing between the goals, user management functionality, full-text searching, etc. • Annotation tool: • web grabbing functionality, new service templates • Inner components: • adaptation to the PAC enhancements, integrated SA-WSDL web service invocation, web service interface for the data repository, inner components for resolving the goals wrapped as web services

14. Focus of pilot trials German pilot, “Getting married” scenario: • Task to semantically integrate services of 1,120 municipalities • Semantic annotation of services, using existing web content (web grabbing) - concept was proven, but the annotation was found as rather difficult, integration with CMS needed Polish pilot , “Establishing a new enterprise” scenario: • Make interoperable the services of various levels and involved institutions, ease the navigation for citizens / businesses • Integration with the specific ontological model (TERYT - Polish National Official Register of the Territorial Country Division) Slovak pilot , “Get a Building Permit” scenario: • covered area of around 350,000 inhabitants, testing in real-life conditions • web service interface, integration with the Slovak cadastre portal (www.katasterportal.sk)

15. Evaluation of trials (1) Methods used for evaluation (the same as in the 1st trial): • Standard methods of technical testing (unit tests, integration testing, load testing, fault tolerance, etc.) • On-line questionnaires, “think aloud” sessions, user workshops. Collecting feedback was concentrated on: • General development and improvement of the Access-eGov platform achieved after the 1st trial; • Improvement according to requirements for Annotation Tool and Personal Assistant client deriving from the 1st trial – verification whether all requirements were fulfilled; • Applicability of Access-eGov technology; • Satisfaction of the platform users (citizens and businesses).

16. Evaluation of trials (2) Results of evaluating the Personal Assistant client tool:

17. Conclusions (1) Achievements: • Access-eGov system - a modular framework for integration of existing electronic and traditional services provided by public administrations. • Significant improvement achieved in comparison with 1st trial. • Testing on pilot applications has proved that the system is suitable as a platform for front-office semantic integration of government services. • User feedback indicates that the solution helps to increase the level of service interoperability, by providing the user-centric navigation based on the life event approach. • All the user partners of the project expressed a will to continue with using the Access-eGov. Future work: • Integration with a CMS (to support web grabbing and publishing); • Visual tool for process modelling; • To establish an Open source community.

18. Conclusions (2) Licensing: • Developed system is available as open source, upon the dual licensing model (i.e. GPL for private and/or non-commercial use vs. commercial license for incorporating the Access-eGov system into a party’s commercial application.) Availability: • The project outcomes (deliverables, source code, ontologies, documentation) are available at www.accessegov.org. • The resource ontologies can also be found in the SEMIC.EU Asset Repository, www.semic.eu/semic/view/snav/assetRepository.xhtml. More info: • Home web of the project: www.accessegov.org • Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access-eGov

19. Thank you for your attention! Questions?