Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
11.2 E-Government
In comparison with e-commerce, the area of e-government is a new ap-
plication area for Web-based IT solutions; it is concerned with providing
an advanced public infrastructure and governmental services on the Inter-
net [17]. Commencing with Web portals for countries, cities or aspects of
public interest, e-government has recently gained o
cial interest. Remark-
able effort have been initiated by the United States government (see
http:
//www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov
). Aiming at a novel level of citizen support
via a completely Web-based infrastructure, including registration of citizens
and businesses, handling of immigration and visas, public health-care, and
other services related public administration; [80] gives an overview of best
practice and existing efforts in e-government.
Although the problem of widely used, incompatible standards is not as
prevalent as in B2B commerce, legacy data and systems do exist and should
be utilized in novel e-government solutions. Hence, technology developers are
applying widely the Semantic Web and Web service technologies in order to
prevent problems arising this. The first aspect is concerned with the use of
ontologies as the data model for allowing advanced processing, maintenance,
and usage of information within e-government resources, by applying ontol-
ogy technologies developed for the Semantic Web [63]. The second aspect is
concerned with the use of Web services as a basic building block for dynamic,
more complex e-government services [120]. Naturally, such techniques lack
support for automated Web service usage as is needed for dynamic access,
composition, and execution of computational facilities over the Web.
In consequence, [57] has proposed an architecture for e-government appli-
cations that consists of four layers, as displayed in Fig. 11.2. The lowest layer
comprises systems and information resources that provide general-purpose
data or services useful for e-government. The second layer provides standard
access and usage interfaces (Web services) to the first layer. The third layer
provides the semantic annotation for the second layer in order to allow auto-
mated handling and execution of e-government services, and the fourth layer
denotes actual e-government applications that work on the third-layer tech-
nologies. Evidently, the semantically enabled technologies for discovery, com-
position, mediation, and execution of Web services presented in this topic are
allocated at the semantics layer of this architecture.
A prototype e-government application that realizes this architecture pro-
vides an emergency planning and notification system for Essex, a county lo-
cated to the northeast of London in the UK. The first-layer resources use
geographical information systems (GIS) that are provided as Web services
(second layer) and have a WSMO Web service description (third layer). The
application (fourth layer) utilizes these to provide a decision support system
that assists emergency authorities such as emergency planners, the police,
the ambulance service, and the army in gathering information related to any
particular type of event, quicker and more accurately.
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