Presenter: Charles McSweeney MSc. Chair, Information Technology Department, UB

The Transnational Digital Government Research Project An IT system for transnational collaboration on border control

Presenter: Charles McSweeney MSc.Chair, Information Technology Department, UB

Chair, Belize National Observatory on DrugsOn behalf of

TDG Team: Belize, Dominican Republic, US

The University of Belize & the National Drug Abuse Control Council

Belize Gateway to Paradise – Yoh betta Belize it


TDG

Transnational digital government • collaborative government processes that use

Information Technology to help address national , regional or global problems

• This research is aimed at demonstrating IT solutions that can be used by countries to find, notify and receive allowed transnational information about suspicious and/or dangerous individuals who cross borders


Participants and funding

University of Belize

CMU, NCSU U. ColoradoU. FloridaU. Mass.

PontificiaUniversidad Católica Madre y Maestra

Belize

Organizationof American

States

USA Dominican Republic

Universities

AgenciesMinistry of

Health

NationalDrugCouncil

Funded by US National Science Foundation (5/02)

• NSF funds basic research, not development

• agencies responsible for infrastructure & staff time


Broad Context

• OAS Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM)

• Specifically the MEM indicator that deals with Displacement • The movement of persons and the effect of drug

trafficking and drug related activities across borders

• Project comes as a direct result of the MEM requirement


The TDG team University researchers and staff members from OAS and

agencies in the US, Belize and Dominican Republic• Carnegie Mellon University (J. Carbonell, V. Cavalli-Sforza)

• North Carolina State University (A. Anton, Q. He)

• University of Belize (C. McSweeney)

• U. of Florida (J. Fortes, S. Su, A. Matsunaga, M. Patil, M. Tsugawa)

• University of Colorado (R. Cole, W. Ward)

• University of Massachusetts (D. Towsley, W. Chen)

• U. Pontificia Católica Madre y Maestra (L. de Brens, J. Ventura, P. Taveras)

• OAS CICAD (B. Piñeres)

• National Drug Abuse Control Council (Belize) (O. Brooks, Immigration - G. Murillo)

• Consejo National de Drogas (Dom. Rep.) (M. Herrera, A. Bautista)

• Agencies in Belize and Dominican Republic


Why remote border control?

The participating countries considered this critically important• Border control addresses the influx of

immigrants, assists in identifying suspicious travelers, assists in the protection of the sovereignty of countries, provides valuable information for the inter-national collaboration

Tracking movements of traffickers and terrorists requires sharing information across countries• Presents research and execution challenges


Why Dominican Republic and Belize Wonderful similarities

• Caribbean

• Land-locked borders with a country with which “differences” exist

• Air, water,land drug trafficking possibilities Challenging differences – great for

research• Language

• Culture

• Protocols


Research goals of the project

To advance the state-of-the-art of: spoken dialogue systems, machine translation, collaborative information management,network performance optimization, and software requirements in the context of a specific TDG process – the MEM.


Collaboration Portal

US

(OAS)

*SMSC *SMSC

DR Belize

ETR Server

Event Server

Translator

Dist. QP

DB

DBMS

ETR Server

Event Server

Translator

Dist. QP

DB

DBMS

Internet

Point of entry

Point of entry

Stations with Conv. Interface

Stations with Conv. Interface

AgenciesAgencies

People People

Event Registration and Discovery

Query

Event Notification and Data Delivery

Post events

Post events

query query

Data entry

Data entry

Cell phone notification Cell phone notification

*SMSC: Short Message Service Center

Prototype System

A first system design


Conceptual view

Internet(Belize/Dominican Republic/OAS/USA)

DominicanRepublic Belize

Español English

superdr superbe

Dialogue ServiceDialogue Service

Translation Services

Query ProcessorService



Database Service

DominicanRepublic

Belize

Database Service


Distributed Query Scenario

Internet(Belize/Dominican Republic/OAS/USA)

DominicanRepublic

Belize

Español English

superdr superbe

Dialogue Service Dialogue Service

Belize



Database ServiceTranslation Services

Database Service

Result

DominicanRepublic

Result

Query

Query



Event Filter Installation

Internet(OAS/Belize/US/Dominican Republic)

DominicanRepublic

Belize

superdr police

SuscripciónArrestPEntry

Event Register

Subscription + Event Filter Specification

SubscribeEnter Arrest Record

Event Server

Event Publication andSubscription Registry

Translation Service

Event Server

Translation Service

Notification

Register EventsEventDescriptionCountryTemplate

Arrest RecordLanguageDefendantWitnessVictim

Event-Trigger Scenario

Post Arrest

director


Internet(OAS/Belize/US/Dominican Republic)

DominicanRepublic Belize

superdr superbe

Fill Port of Entry Form

Register EventsEventDescriptionCountryTemplate

Forma de llegada

Alert

Watch-List Scenario

Response

Check

Wat

ch-L

ist

director

DominicanRepublic

Database Service


Watch list alert

Upon border crossing by individual on a watch list, interested parties (who subscribed to the event) are automatically notified • Person who posted the event is also notified


Translation at work Multilingual processing uses “in the

background” a translation service

• A real-time view of translation at work


Dialogues instead of forms Examples of the dialogues that are possible when forms

are replaced by conversational interfaces

• A real-time view of the system at work


What is the date of entry for rosa perez?dateofentry: 2002-11-08

What is her passport number and date of birth?passportno: 44871849dateofbirth: 1963-06-21

What about mingo garcia?passportno: 2676356dateofbirth: 1962-10-02

What are his nationality, passport number and occupation?nationality: USApassportno: 2676356occupation: IMMIGRATION OFF

Dialogue Examples


Ongoing work

Further development and integration of the different software components of the system

Collection of language data for Belize and Dominican Republic

Field-testing and evaluation of system


The big vision System extended to the entire

hemisphere Good quality of service Sharing of resources of all kind


Thank you so much for not leaving,yawning and throwing

objects.

Questions??


What???

I said that’s it!


Examples of queries Get the passport number, last name, first name, nationality and

date of entry of all those people who entered the country after ‘01-Jan-2003’ and whose nationality is ‘USA’.

Get the passport number, name, date of entry, port of embarkation and purpose of trip for the people who came from Chicago or from Boston for business after ‘01-Nov-2003’.

Get the passport number and name of the lady who had a tattoo on her arm and who departed after 15-Jan-2003.

Get the passport number, name and comments for all the people who appeared nervous when they entered the country.

Get the name, arrival information, departure information and purpose of trip for all the people who entered the country after ‘01-Jan-2003’.


El viajero se veía nervioso y tenso.Traveler appeared nervous and tense.

El viajero se presentó en la frontera sin documentos.Passenger, presented himself at the border without documents.

Hablaba francés.Spoke French.

El viajero no entendía español.The traveler not understood Spanish.

No quería contestar a nuestras preguntas.Not wanted answer to our men questions.

Translation Examples

Woman appears nervous.La mujer parece nerviosa.

Claim to be students studying archeology.Afirman ser estudiantes, que estudian arqueología.

Presenter: Charles McSweeney MSc. Chair, Information Technology Department, UB

Documents

Transcript of Presenter: Charles McSweeney MSc. Chair, Information Technology Department, UB