Migrating Small Governments Websites to the Semantic Web

Migrating Small Governments’ Websites to the Semantic Web Ralf Klischewski German University in Cairo SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Research in progress 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? SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Today • Access-e. Gov 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 SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Interoperability Vision “Pre-Access-e. Gov world” “Post-Access-e. Gov world”

Objectives • Access-e. Gov 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-e. Gov Project Title Access to e-Government Services Employing Semantic Technologies Project Acronym Access-e. Gov Project Reference FP 6 -2004 -27020 FP 6 Programme Information Society Technologies (IST) Strategic Objectives SO 2. 4. 13 Strengthening the integration of the ICT research effort in an enlarged Europe Start Date January 1, 2006 End Date December 31, 2008 Duration 36 months Project Web Site www. accessegov. org Total budget (€) 2, 279, 243 Commission funding (€) 1, 983, 000

Consortium Partic. Role* Participant name Country CO Technical University of Kosice Slovakia CR University of Regensburg Germany CR German University in Cairo Egypt CR Intersoft, a. s. Slovakia CR EMAX S. A. Poland CR Kosice Self-Governing Region Slovakia CR Cities on Internet Association Poland CR e-ISOTIS Greece CR Municipality of Michalovce Slovakia CR City Hall of Gliwice Poland CR State Government of Schleswig-Holstein Germany

Types of Administrations SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

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 SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Informational needs of citizen Auf dem Weg zum übergreifenden Informationsmanagement Ø Service: Who is responsible? What do I have to know before approaching the responsible agent? What are the next steps to do? Ø 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? Ø Forms: How do I find the right form for interacting with the authorities? Ø General questions, e. g. : Where do I find a specific text of law? Where can I file a complaint? What job offerings are there? SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

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. “ SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Responsibility finding as a two step procedure Detailled description RF-Appl. Briefing: User’s concern? service location authority - service preview - legal aspects Dialogue: - region/place - situation -. . . SWEG’ 06 - interaction of citizen & authority - special cases -. . . Info-Pool Responsible authority/service - location (plan) - time - person - media/channel - before & after - cost - alternatives March 27, 2006 -. . .

Case Analysis 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? SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Principle Salient Stakeholders SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Salient Stakeholder Model Information Providers Information Consumers Sem. Citizens Web Businesses Administrations SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Access-e. Gov Requirement Analysis Framework Effort / Cost Migrating E-gov. Websites to the Semantic Web Investment Information Provision < IT Infrastructure & Interoperability Semantic Web SWEG’ 06 Benefit / Added Value Savings • Efficiency Gains • E-gov. Service Improvements Information Consumption March 27, 2006

Migration Effort/Activities Migrating E-gov. Websites to the Semantic Web SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

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. […]” SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

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. […]” SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

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. ” SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

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 […]. ” SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

…Technical Support Migrating E-gov. Websites to the Semantic Web SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Conceptual Support &… Migrating E-gov. Websites to the Semantic Web SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

Seeking to Improve Migration Approaches • • Is Take web pages to be annotated and a it that easy? 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 Great diversity of e-gov web content Success factors of web content migration beyond scope of existing approaches SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006

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 SWEG’ 06 March 27, 2006