A Top5 List of Applications That Should Be Addressed with Semantic Solutions + a List of Key Steps to Enable Acquisition In this session we discuss the results of an informal survey of experts in semantic technology, government program managers, and system inte (original) (raw)

Semantic Technologies for E-Government: An Overview

Semantic Technologies for E-Government, 2009

Semantics, in the context of information systems, allows for a rich description of information or behavioural models that improve application processing, integration, and performance. Research and development into semantic technologies is today centred around Semantic Web, which covers various areas of computer science including knowledge engineering, software and service engineering, data interoperability, logical languages, user experience, social networks, and last but not least, business applications. While a vast number of different semantic technologies already exist, it is not fully clear how industry may profit from them and what they bring on top of other solutions already available in the market. For this reason, many research efforts focus on showcasing semantic technologies in various domains, such as e-business, e-health, e-learning, telecommunications, transport, and e-Government. E-Government, like other mentioned areas, is facing several problems in systems and information integration, information extraction, and information representation across heterogeneous organizations. In particular, e-Government faces big challenges to achieve interoperability and integration, taking into account differences in laws, regulations, services, administrative processes, and different languages across regions and countries. Such differences are related to a great variety of computerbased solutions used at various levels and create the requirement for technical, content, and process integration. On the other hand, semantic technologies have been of interest to the research community for the last 7-8 years, and as any other research domain, they require a large, dynamic, heterogeneous, and shared information space to be effectively tested and evaluated. Therefore, the combination of these two areas is very much natural. E-Government provides an ideal test-bed for semantic technologies research and, on the other hand, semantic technologies provide an ideal platform for the vision of a knowledge-based, citizen-centric, and citizen-empowering, distributed and integrated e-Government. In addition,

Semantic Technology for E-Government

Semantic Web Services, Processes and …, 2006

In the last five years a number of significant developments have occurred that motivate the use of Semantic Technology in e-Govemment. In 2001, the US President announced 24 e-Government initiatives (US President's E-Govemment Initiatives, 2001). In 2004 the Federal Enterprise ...

Achieving Interoperability through Semantic Technologies in the Public Administration

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

In this paper we report the experience of using semantic based tools and technologies for (collaboratively) modeling administrative procedures and their related documents, organizational roles, and services, in the Italian Public Administration (PA), focusing in particular on the interoperability aspects faced during the modelling process. This experience, the reported lessons learned and next steps identified, highlight the potential and criticality of using web 2.0 semantic technologies and tools to enhance participatory ...

Semantic technologies in electronic government

2008

Abstract Joined-up government depends fundamentally on semantics---on the computable representation of meaning, so that data is associated with appropriate metadata from the start, and this association is maintained as the data is manipulated. This paper summaries a tutorial and workshop on semantic technologies for supporting electronic government.

Towards a Semantic Interoperability in an E-government Application

Electronic Journal of E-government, 2009

Research issues have emerged from the rapid introduction of new technologies in government services in order to deliver efficient and cost effective services, information and knowledge through information and communication technologies. However, the complexity of government services and the diversity of actors involved in the processes make the access to the right information difficult and pose several problems. Some problems are linked to the way of presenting and accessing information. Other problems are linked to interoperability among applications and processes of eGovernment services. The objective of the European TerreGov project is to find a solution to such problems. The project focuses on the semantic requirements of governments at local, intermediate and regional levels, needed to build flexible and interoperable tools to support the change towards eGovernment services. We propose, within this project, an ontology to present knowledge and to achieve the required level of semantic interoperability. We use the ontology to describe the domain knowledge of the organization and to index the resources from which civil servants may receive information. The key point of the system is a unique and multimodal ontology used simultaneously for describing domain knowledge, for adding semantics to agency services, for indexing various documents in knowledge bases used by civil servants and finally for supporting the interaction between the users and the system. We present in this paper the challenges of using ontology in eGovernment environments, such as the lack of expressivity of the formalism chosen for interoperability in the project and the risk of inconsistency when the ontology changes. We propose our solution to such challenges and we demonstrate the use of the ontology by the module in charge of managing complex tasks in the system.

Semantic Interoperability Middleware-Cases and applications in Electronic Government

2008

Abstract Information systems in different public agencies need to seamlessly collaborate to support the delivery of public services through a one-stop government portal. For such collaboration to be successful, the systems must be organizationally, semantically and technically interoperable. In this paper, we illustrate the need for semantic interoperability services in electronic government and present a solution-semantic interoperability middleware (SIM) that provides such services.

Semantic interoperability architecture for electronic government

2009

Semantic Interoperability is arguably the least developed aspect of Government Interoperability Frameworks. This could be explained by poor understanding of the semantic interoperability problem in government, considering its substance and scope, difficulties encountered in aligning technical solutions with the practice of government organizations, and the paucity of mature semantic technologies and complete semantic interoperability architectures and solutions (beyond metadata specification and semantic annotation of resources). As a result, most governments prefer to concentrate on technical and organizational aspects of their information sharing and interoperability efforts.

Chapter 3 SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGY FOR E- GOVERNMENT

2008

In the last five years a number of significant developments have occurred that motivate the use of Semantic Technology in e-Government. In 2001, the US President announced 24 e-Government initiatives (US President’s E-Government Initiatives, 2001).

A new semantic knowledge sharing approach for e-government systems

2010

Knowledge sharing within a large entity such as government organizations, is critical to successful e-government implementations. Semantic technologies offer promise in this regard, however, many studies in the past have suggested that the semantic technologies for knowledge sharing suffer from potential weaknesses such as dynamicity, scalability, flexibility and offer limited options for specific business applications. In most cases the need for knowledge integration in business interactions in government systems are overlooked or loosely addressed due to rapidly changing situations and complex business networking. Significant challenges remain in developing e-government solution that can address the need for growing knowledge integration and sharing to enhance business interactions. This paper outlines a knowledge sharing framework to solve these issues with respect to citizen's participation in e-government system, by encouraging user driven activities through the use of emerging technology and ontology based design.