AN ONTOLOGICAL REPRESENTATION OF PUBLIC SERVICES: MODELS, TECHNOLOGIES AND USE CASES
Keywords:
eGovernment, public administration service provision, semantic web applications, OWL, semantic discovery, ontologyAbstract
This paper presents our effort to “ontologize” a conceptual public service model in order to express in a formal way domain specific semantics and create a reusable service ontology for eGovernment applications. The conceptual model we have used comes from a broader public administration domain modeling effort, called Governance Enterprise Architecture (GEA). With this as a starting point, we document our experience of using the Web Ontology Language (OWL) for the ontological representation of the model. Moreover, we present a use case and a platform that is based and uses this ontology for the discovery of eGovernment services. These services are discovered by semantically matching citizens’ profiles with formally described public services. The proposed domain ontology is reusable and can be exploited by a variety of semantic web applications for eGovernment whenever a formal and standardized model for public services is needed.
Downloads
References
Stojanovic, N., et al. Fostering self-adaptive e-government service improvement using
semantic technologies. in AAAI Spring Symposium, The Semantic Web meets eGovernment
(SWEG). 2006. (Stanford, CA).
Lytras, M.D., The semantic electronic government: Knowledge management for citizen
relationship and new assessment scenarios. Electronic Government, 2006. 3(1): 5-17.
Fass, L.F. The semantic web, e-Government and the digital divide. in AAAI Spring
Symposium, The Semantic Web meets eGovernment (SWEG). 2006. (Stanford, CA).
Traunmuller, R. and Wimmer, M., KM for Public Administration: Focusing on KMS Feature
Requirements, in PAKM 2002, D. Karagiannis and U. Reimer, Editors. 2002, Springer-Verlag:
Berlin Heidelberg 2002. p. 314-325.
Klischewski, R. and Lenk, K., Understanding and Modelling Flexibility in Administrative
Processes, in Electronic Government. 2002. p. 129-136.
Peristeras, V., The Governance Enterprise Architecture - GEA - for Reengineering Public
Administration, PhD Dissertation, in Business School Department. 2006, University of
Macedonia: Thessaloniki.
Grunlund, A. What’s In a Field – Exploring the eGoverment Domain. in 38th Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences. 2005.
Peristeras, V. and Tarabanis, K. Reengineering the public administration modus operandi
through the use of reference domain models and Semantic Web Service technologies. in 2006
AAAI Spring Symposium, The Semantic Web meets eGovernment (SWEG). 2006. (Stanford
University, California, USA): AAAI.
Peristeras, V. and Tarabanis, K., The Governance Enterprise Architecture (GEA) Object
Model, in 5th IFIP International Working Conference, Knowledge Management in Electronic
Government:KMGov 2004, Krems, Austria, May 26-28 2004. Proceedings, Maria A.
Wimmer, Editor. 2004, Springer-Verlag Heidelberg. p. 101-110.
Peristeras, V. and Tarabanis, K., Advancing the Government Enterprise Architecture (GEA):
The Service Execution Object Model, in Electronic Government: 3rd International
Conference, EGOV 2004, Zaragoza, Spain, September 2004. Proceedings, R. Traunmueller,
Editor. 2004, Springer-Verlag Heidelberg. p. 476-482.
Goudos, S.K., Loutas, N., Peristeras, V., and Tarabanis, K. Public Administration Domain
Ontology for a Semantic Web Services EGovernment Framework. in IEEE International
Conference on Services Computing, (SCC 2007) 2007. (Salt Lake City, USA).
Sacco, G.M. User-centric access to e-government information: E-citizen discovery of eservices.
in AAAI Spring Symposium, The Semantic Web meets eGovernment (SWEG).
(Stanford, CA).
Ilgar, E., Oldenhuizing, J., and Mika, P. Let the Citizen Speak: A demand-driven egovernment
portal using Semantic Web Technology. in AAAI Spring Symposium, The
Semantic Web meets eGovernment (SWEG). 2006. (Stanford, CA).
Vitvar, T., et al. Infrastructure for the Semantic Pan-European E-government Services. in
AAAI Spring Symposium, The Semantic Web meets eGovernment (SWEG). 2006. (Stanford
University, California, USA).
Tran, T., Lewen, H., and Haase, P. On the role and application of ontologies in information
systems. in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Research, Innovation and Vision
for the Future, RIVF 2007. 2007. (Hanoi).
DIP Project, D9.3 e-Government ontology. 2004.
Tambouris, E., et al., Ontology-enabled E-gov service configuration: An overview of the
OntoGov project. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2004. 3035: 106-111.
OWL-S Services Coalition. OWL-S: Semantic Markup for Web Services W3C Member
Submission 2004 [cited March 2005]; Available from: http://www.w3.org/Submission/OWLS
Roman, D., et al., Web Service Modeling Ontology. Applied Ontology, 2005. 1 77-106
Medjahed, B., Rezgui, A., Bouguettaya, A., and Ouzzani, M., Infrastructure for E-Government
Web Services. IEEE Internet Computing Magazine, 2003. 7(1): 58-65.
Stojanovic, N., Mentzas, G., and Apostolou, D. Semantic-enabled agile knowledge-based egovernment.
in AAAI Spring Symposium, The Semantic Web meets eGovernment (SWEG).
(Stanford, CA).
eGOV. Project IST-2000-28471[online]. 2003 [cited; Available from: http://www.egovproject.
org.
Tambouris, E. An Integrated platform for Realising Online One-Stop Government: The eGov
Project. in Proceedings of DEXA International Workshop "On the Way to Electronic
Government". 2001. (Los Alamitos, CA): IEEE Computer Society Press.
Tambouris, E., Manouselis, N., and Costopoulou, C., Metadata for digital collections of egovernment
resources. Electronic Library, 2007. 25(2): 176-192.
Kavadias, G. and Tambouris, E., GovML: A markup language for describing public services
and life events. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2003. 2645: 106-115.
Klischewski, R., Ontologies for e-document management in public administration. Business
Process Management Journal, 2006. 12(1 SPEC. ISS.): 34-47.
Stojanovic, L., Abecker, A., Stojanovic, N., and Studer, R., On managing changes in the
ontology-based e-government. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004. 3291: 1080-1097.
Moulin, C., Bettahar, F., Barthès, J.-P., and Sbodio, M., Ontology Based Categorization in
eGovernment Application, in On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2007: CoopIS,
DOA, ODBASE, GADA, and IS. 2007. p. 1153-1160.
Markellos, K., Sakkopoulos, E., Sirmakessis, S., and Tsakalidis, A., Semantic web search for
e-government: The case study of intrastat. Journal of Internet Technology, 2007. 8(4): 457-
Grandi, F., et al., Semantic Web techniques for personalization of eGoverment services.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006. 4231 LNCS: 435-444.
Klischewski, R. and Ukena, S. An Activity-Based Approach towards Development and Use of
E-Government Service Ontologies. in Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences (HICSS41). 2008.
Xiao, Y., Xiao, M., and Zhao, H. An ontology for e-government knowledge modeling and
interoperability. in Proceedings of International Conference on Wireless Communications,
Networking and Mobile Computing, (WiCOM 2007). 2007. (Shanghai).
Magoutas, B., Halaris, C., and Mentzas, G., An ontology for the multi-perspective evaluation
of quality in e-Government services. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2007. 4656 LNCS:
-329.
Trochidis, I., Tambouris, E., and Tarabanis, K. An ontology for modeling life-events. in 2007
IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, SCC 2007. 2007. (Salt Lake City,
UT).
Wimmer, M.A. Ontology for an e-participation virtual resource centre. in Proceedings of the
st international conference on Theory and practice of electronic governance. 2007. (Macao,
China): ACM.
Tang, X. and Yang, F. A study on dynamic ontology for information integration in Egovernmental
virtual organization. in Proceedings of International Conference on Wireless
Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing, (WiCOM 2007). 2007. (Shanghai).
Stadlhofer, B. and Salhofer, P. Automatic generation of e-government forms from semantic
descriptions. in Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Theory and practice of
electronic governance. 2007. (Macao, China): ACM.
Bednar, P., et al., Semantic integration of eGovernment services in Schleswig-Holstein.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2008. 5184 LNCS: 315-327.
Segev, A. and Gal, A., Enhancing portability with multilingual ontology-based knowledge
management. Decision Support Systems, 2008. 45(3): 567-584.
Moulin, C., Bettahar, F., Barthes, J.P., and Sbodio, M.L., Ontology based categorization in
eGovernment application. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2007. 4803 LNCS(PART 1):
-1160.
Stojanovic, L., Stojanovic, N., and Ma, J., An approach for combining ontology learning and
semantic tagging in the ontology development process: EGovernment use case. Lecture Notes
in Computer Science, 2007. 4831 LNCS: 249-260.
Boer, A., Van Engers, T., Peters, R., and Winkels, R., Separating law from geography in GISbased
eGovernment services. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 2007. 15(1): 49-76.
Loukis, E.N., An ontology for G2G collaboration in public policy making, implementation
and evaluation. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 2007. 15(1): 19-48.
Brusa, G., Laura Caliusco, M., and Chiotti, O., Towards ontological engineering: A process
for building a domain ontology from scratch in public administration. Expert Systems, 2008.
(5): 484-503.
TopQuadrant, FEA Refererence Model Ontologies (FEA RMO) v1.1. 2005.
Peristeras, V., Tarabanis, K., and Goudos, S.K., Model-driven eGovernment interoperability:
A review of the state of the art. Computer Standards & Interfaces. In Press, Accepted
Manuscript.
Peristeras, V. and Tarabanis, K. Governance Enterprise Architecture (GEA): Domain Models
for e-Governance. in 6th ACM International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC'04).
(Delft, The Netherlands).
OASIS. Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture 1.0. OASIS Standard, 2006 12
October 2006 [cited; Available from: http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/v1.0/.
CIO Council. Federal Architecture Enterprise Framework v.1.1. 1999 Sep. 99 [cited 5 Sep.
; Available from: http://www.cio.gov/Documents/fedarch1%2Epdf.
The Open Group. SOA Ontology Draft 2.0 Draft Technical Standard 2008 14 Jul. [cited;
Available from: http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soaontology/
doc.tpl?CALLER=index.tpl&gdid=16940.
Dean, M., et al. . OWL web ontology language reference. W3C Recommendation 2004
[cited; Available from: http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/.
Knublauch, H., Musen, M., and Rector, A. Editing Description Logic Ontologies with the
Protégé OWL Plugin. in International Workshop on Description Logics - DL2004. 2004.
(Whistler, BC, Canada).
Patel-Schneider, P.F., Hayes, P., and Horrocks, I. OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics
and Abstract Syntax W3C Recommendation 2004 [cited; Available from:
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-semantics/.
Rector, A. Representing Specified Values in OWL: "value partitions" and "value sets". W3C
Working Group Note 2005 [cited; Available from: http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-specifiedvalues/.
Motik, B., et al. OWL 2 Web Ontology Language: Profiles. W3C Working Draft 2008 [cited;
Available from: http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-profiles/.
Prud'hommeaux, E. and Seaborne, A. SPARQL Query Language for RDF. W3C
Recommendation 2008 [cited; Available from: http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/.
Pellet. The Open Source OWL DL Reasoner. 2008 [cited; Available from:
Bechhofer, S. The DIG Description Logic Interface: DIG/1.1. 2003 [cited; Available from:
http://dl-web.man.ac.uk/dig/2003/02/interface.pdf.
The W3C OWL Working Group. OWL 1.1 Web Ontology Language. Submission request to
W3C 2006 [cited; Available from: http://www.w3.org/Submission/2006/10
