march 27, 2006sweg’06 migrating small governments’ websites to the semantic web ralf klischewski...

March 27, 2006SWEG’06

Migrating Small Governments’

Websites to the Semantic Web

Ralf Klischewski German University in Cairo


E-Government Facing the Semantic Challenge

• Integrated services require enhanced computer support

and cross-organizational information management

• Citizen information services (CIS) must draw on up-to-date

data from many distributed sources to serve the users’

informational needs

• To what extent do the vision and the technologies of the

Semantic Web provide solutions for cross-organizational

information management as a prerequisite for CIS?

Research in progress


Today

• Access-eGov research project

• The migration challenge

– Small governments

– E.g. Schleswig-Holstein

• Requirement analysis framework

– Types of administrations & stakeholder model

– Migration scenarios

– Technical & conceptual support

• Seeking to improve migration approaches

Interoperability Vision

??

“Pre-Access-eGov world” “Post-Access-eGov world”

Objectives

• Access-eGov aims at increasing the accessibility of public administration services for citizens and business users

• By supporting the interoperability among existing electronic as well as “traditional” government services

• Employing Semantic Web technologies

Access-eGov

Project TitleAccess to e-Government Services Employing Semantic Technologies

Project AcronymAccess-eGov

Project ReferenceFP6-2004-27020

FP6 ProgrammeInformation Society Technologies (IST)

Strategic ObjectivesSO 2.4.13 Strengthening the integration of the ICT research effort in an enlarged Europe

Start DateJanuary 1, 2006

End DateDecember 31, 2008

Duration36 months

Project Web Sitewww.accessegov.org

Total budget)€( 2,279,243

Commission funding )€(

1,983,000

http://www.accessegov.org/

jan hreno

use View -> Header and Footer...from teh PowerPoint menubarto change author name, and date field

Consortium

Partic. Role*

Participant nameCountry

COTechnical University of KosiceSlovakia

CRUniversity of RegensburgGermany

CRGerman University in CairoEgypt

CRIntersoft, a.s.Slovakia

CREMAX S.A.Poland

CRKosice Self-Governing RegionSlovakia

CRCities on Internet AssociationPoland

CRe-ISOTISGreece

CRMunicipality of MichalovceSlovakia

CRCity Hall of GliwicePoland

CRState Government of Schleswig-HolsteinGermany


Types of Administrations

Small Administration

Web AdminAdmin Officer

Admin Officer

Large Administration

IT Service Provider

IT Function


Small Governments & Semantic Challenge

• Constitutional, legal, and jurisdictional constraints set sharp limits to the extent of e-Government integration and interoperation

• Tight budget constraints: decisions driven mainly by cost-benefit considerations

• Outside actors must help developing required knowledge and capabilities


Auf dem Weg zum übergreifenden Informationsmanagement Service: Who is responsible? What do I have to

know before approaching the responsible agent? What are the next steps to do?

Orientation: What authorities or institutions are there (in my region)? How do I reach the authorities XY (address, telephone, email)? How do I find the responsible agent?

Forms: How do I find the right form for interacting with the authorities?

General questions, e.g.: Where do I find a specific text of law? Where can I file a complaint? What job offerings are there?

Informational needs of citizen


Information service mission

„The Responsibility Finder Schleswig-Holstein offers citizens, institutions, and companies concise and coherent information about the services of the administration throughout the state.

It informs the information seekers about who is responsible for his/her/its concern, how to reach the agency in charge, and what kinds of documents are required. In many cases form or leaflets are available for download.“


Responsibility finding as a two step procedure

Briefing:- service preview- legal aspects

Dialogue: Responsible authority/service- location (plan)- time- person- media/channel- before & after- cost- alternatives- ...

Detailled description- interaction of citizen & authority- special cases- ...

User’s concern?

service location authority

- region/place- situation- ...

RF-Appl.

Info-Pool


Implementing a Responsibility Finder in Schleswig-Holstein

• German state with less than 3 million people

• structured in eleven counties with more than one thousand municipalities, and four cities

• state departments, cities, counties and most municipalities run their own technical infrastructure

• One IT service provider for S.-H. & Hamburg

• Hamburg: central IS for responsibility finder

But how to proceed with distributed Web information?

Case Analysis


Principle Salient Stakeholders


Web AdminAdmin OfficerAdmin Officer

E-Gov. Steering Committee

COSMO Group

IT Vendors & ISP (HW/SW, Network Services, CMS, Applications etc.)


IT Function

IT Service Provider

...


Salient Stakeholder Model


Web AdminAdmin OfficerAdmin Officer

E-Gov. Steering Committee

COSMO Group

IT Vendors & ISP (HW/SW, Network Services, CMS, Applications etc.)


IT Function

IT Service Provider

...

Sem .

Web

Administrations

Businesses

Citizens

Information Providers

Information Consumers


Access-eGov Requirement Analysis Framework

Semantic Web

Benefit / Added ValueEffort / Cost

Information Provision

Information Consumption

Migrating E-gov.

Websites to the

Semantic Web

<• Efficiency

Gains

• E-gov. Service Improvements

IT Infrastructure

& Interoperability

Invest-Invest-

mentment SavingsSavings


Migration Effort/ActivitiesProject initialization

Publication & information alignment

Test & fine-tuning

Web content annotation

Web content preparation

COSMO import/adaptation

Preparation of method, tools & IT infrastructure

Web content analysis & migration goals definition

SemWeb standards

CMS enhanced

Migration tools

Ontology editor

Migration process model

COSMO

Cost-benefit analysis

Migration scope

guidelines

Method & tools selection

guidelines

Web content preparation guidelines

Annotation coaching

Test & bug fix coaching

Go life support

Web annotator

Test bed

Migration methodMigrating

E-gov. Websites

to the Semantic

Web


Web Content Preparation

“Anna is working full-time for the city of Eurocity. […]

Following the council’s decision about upgrading the website to the Semantic Web, Anne received an introduction of how the Semantic Web works in general, and what her part will be in preparing the communal web site for it. […]

A number of decisions have to be made. For example, she must decide which content should be prepared for automated information sharing (including priorities). She also must decide if the content should be rephrased, rearranged, and / or enhanced in order to facilitate the annotation process.

Most likely, she will have to negotiate these aspects with some of her colleagues in her own administration as well as across the region. […]”


Web Content Annotation

“Anna opens the template module of the CMS and selects the template called Event Publication for editing in the template editor. The system presents her with a new prompt for a template type.

Anne has already learned that every template of the CMS has to be assigned a special type, which must be taken from the predefined catalogue of template types. Therefore, she needs to select a predefined template type from the graphically presented catalogue. […]”


Web Content Annotation

“Anna knows from the training that she also has to add another field to the template (for the event’s location).

After doing so, she has to mark each field with appropriate meta-data […]. She does so by selecting each field and then assigning it a special type which she looks up in the catalogue of predefined field types. For example, the field for the event’s title is assigned the type Title of Event, the field with the description is assigned the type Event Description, and so on.”


Web Content Publication

“Today Anne needs to add a page for the local firefighters to the web site. […]

She starts the content editing module of the CMS. Here she selects to create a new page based on the template called Online business card for communal authority. This action opens a page editor where she can enter the information into a number of fields.

She enters “Firefighters of Eurocity” into the field named “Title of authority”. She copies and pastes the rest of the information one-by-one directly from the email: first the street, then the zip-code, the name of the city, then the description […].”


Technical Support…

Project initialization


Test & fine-tuning






SemWeb standards

CMS enhanced

Migration tools

Ontology editor


COSMO


Migration scope

guidelines


guidelines


Annotation coaching


Go life support

Web annotator

Test bed

Migration methodMigrating

E-gov. Websites

to the Semantic

Web


&…Conceptual SupportProject initialization


Test & fine-tuning






SemWeb standards

CMS enhanced

Migration tools

Ontology editor


COSMO


Migration scope

guidelines


guidelines


Annotation coaching


Go life support

Web annotator

Test bed

Migration method

(training)

Migrating E-gov.

Websites to the

Semantic Web


Seeking to Improve Migration Approaches

• Take web pages to be annotated and a domain ontology as inputs

• Extract instances from web pages• Perform a set of heuristics for mapping• Generate and store the annotations that

ontology-aware machine agents can process

Is it that easy?

Great diversity of e-gov web content

Success factors of web content migration beyond scope of existing approaches


Guiding Hypothesis

• Migration methods and tools for small administrations must be tailored & comprehensive

• Lowering effort in conceptual decision making and in changing the local IT infrastructure (minimizing resources)

• Migration methods and tools should be provided by trusted stakeholders

• Small governments must be able to draw on external expertise & experience

march 27, 2006sweg’06 migrating small governments’ websites to the semantic web ralf klischewski...

Documents

coherent information

information seekers

responsible agent

government integration

cases form

users concern

users informational

authorities xy address