FP6-2004-27020

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Marek Skokan, Ján Hreňo

Semantic integration of governmental services in the Access-eGov project

Faculty of Economics - TU Košice

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Agenda

• Project objectives• Challenges • Outcomes• Result from evaluation

Access-eGov objective

• FP6-2004-27020 „Access to e-Government Services Employing Semantic Technologies“

• Duration: 1 January 2006 – 28 February 2009• Effort: 410 person- months• Main goal: To develop and validate a platform

for composition of governmental services into complex process definitions (life events) enabling semantic interoperability of particular eGov services.

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Faced problem (As-is situation)

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Proposed solution - to be situation

• The user accesses Access-eGov site • He obtains information of service(s) relevant for his case• He understands the procedure (services in a structured

workflow) and knows which institution to contact, which forms to fill, and which documents to submit

• He receives support to follow the procedure (Personal assitant)

Research challenges

• Integration and interoperability of existing services

• Solution: employment of semantic technologies• Semantic integration - the meaning of information is

made machine-readable and processed• Requirement: public administrations need to annotate the

services and semantic description of processes has to be created

• Expected benefits• Improve accessibility of services• Simplify the usage of services for users:

Creating an integrated hybrid scenario by combining relevant atomic services

Providing guidance to users while implementing the scenario• Platform, tools, and methodology that enables to easily

transform existing services to be semantically interoperable

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Access-eGov outcomes

• Access-eGov platform • It enables registration, semantic discovery and

composition of PA services• Annotation tool (AT) - system interface for PA users

• AT enables easy registration of PA services into the AeG system

• Personal Assistent Client (PAC) – system interface for citizens • PAC assists in the process of discovery, composition and

execution of relevant PA services into user scenarios• Methodology and ontologies

• Methodology and ontologies serve to transform existing services into semantically interoperable

• Pilot applications• 3 pilot application and 1 test lab

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Access-eGov ontologies• Three main Access-eGov ontologies:

• Life events ontology• involves semantic descriptions of possible life events

• Service profiles ontology• involves semantic descriptions of possible services

• Acces-eGov domain ontologies• lower level ontologies, describing pieces of domain

information related to user’s scenarios

Conceptual data view in Access-eGov

Model of Life event as AeG ontology

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Annotation Tool – Principles

• Dedicated for public administration employees, no special knowledge on semantic technologies required.

• Web application, JSF technology (Browser capable of javascript required). • Interface is based on description of classes in WSML.

• Features, functionality provided:• Service templates: Predefined set of the functional properties and

workflow,• Annotation: Specification of concrete values for non functional

properties of services – i.e. part of Service Profile specification.• User management, based on roles: Administrators, Annotators,

Publishers, Viewers.• Web grabbing: possibility to include and annotate a content from

existing web pages.

Annotation tool

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Example: List of Instances Example: Annotation of a new service

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Personal Assistant Client - Principles

• Dedicated for users - citizens, businesses.• Provides browsing, discovery, and execution of services

according to a specified life event or goal.• Web application, JSF technology.

• Interface is dynamically created from the WSML descriptions and is customized by the user’s answers during the processing.

• Features, functionality provided:• Navigation in the structure of life events, goals, and services,

based on the customization data entered by the users. Automatic resolving of sub-goals, according to the user’s answers.

• Integration of traditional, electronic, and web services into a single platform.

• Direct invocation of web services (via standardized WS interface).• Description: The client provides a textual description of the

services that can not be directly invoked (i.e. traditional services).

Model of Life event in Personal Assistant Client

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Service description in Personal Assistant Client

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Access-eGov 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.

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Evaluation of the first trial (1)

Annotation Tool

• Instruments used for collecting the feedback• Internal testing by developers• Testing by user partners• Feedback from annotators during the training sessions• Think-aloud session (GUC)• Accessibility and usability evaluation (e-Isotis)

• Results in summary• Use of AT was effective• Using the component without training is possible• Usability, efficiency and performance need to be improved

• Specifications for revision of AT regarding• Usability • Performance and efficiency• Annotation of existing web contents

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Evaluation of the first trial (2)

Personal Assistant Client

• Instruments used for collecting the feedback• Internal tests of developers and user partners using TRAC (iterative tests)• Think-aloud sessions (SHG)• Workshop with PA‘s and IT experts (SHG)• Public testing with test scripts and feedback through email and interviews• Online and/or internal questionnaires• Accessibility and usability evaluation (e-Isotis)

• Results in summary• Use of PAC was (mostly) effective• Usability, navigation structure, and information quality need to be improved

• Specifications for revision of PAC regarding• Information quality • Navigation and structure of the services (step-by-step guide preferred)• Usability, incl. leading user through the process, labels of buttons, links, and

contextual help.

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• Access-eGov is aiming to provide a solution to the semantic integration of governmental services

• Life event approach was used• Tools, platform, methodology, ontologies and pilot

application are main outcomes of the project• In the AeG system, executive scenario is dynamically

composed on the basis of user's requirements and service capabilities• It helps to create customised scenario consisting from

relevant separated atomic services.• Web services can be automatically executed

• Results from the evaluation of 1st trial proofs that the provided tools and methodology can be used for semantic integration of governmental services

Summary

Thank you for your attention!

Any questions?

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