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Access-eGov: Accessible eGovernment embracing the Semantic Web - Progress

Access-eGov (Access to e-Government Services Employing Semantic Technologies) is an IST project partially funded under the IST Programme of FP6 (eGovernment research). A consortium consisting of eleven partners from five countries (Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Greece, and Egypt) led by the Technical University of Kosice will carry out the project between January 2006 and December 2008.
Access-eGov aims at increasing the accessibility of public administration services for citizens and business users by supporting the interoperability among existing electronic and “traditional” government services. For citizens and business users, Access-eGov will provide two basic categories of services. Firstly, Access-eGov will identify - depending on the needs and context situation (location, etc.) of the user - traditional and/or electronic government services (if available) relevant to the given life event (of the given citizen user) or business episode (in case of businesses). Secondly, once the relevant services have been identified, Access-eGov will generate a “scenario” consisting of elementary government services. In most cases these scenarios will be probably of a “hybrid” nature – i.e. a combination of elementary traditional and e-services- which will lead to a requested outcome. Access-eGov will also provide a virtual personal assistant, who will guide the user through the scenario (reminding him/her of deadlines, providing support information, initiating existing e-services, etc.). Special attention is paid to the e-Inclusion criteria to guarantee that Access-eGov will be accessible also to disadvantaged groups of users, for which the system can be considerably beneficial.In the first project year, a design of the overall system architecture that Access-eGov will consist of was established. This design provides an overview of the conceptual, logical and physical architecture from different points of view: security-focused, functional, structural and data-based perspectives. In this respect, the architecture adheres to the planned pilot applications and the user requirements that have been identified in the first project phase (first six project months). These requirements are dealt with on the conceptual architecture level, by describing the system interaction with the user(s). In addition, a number of possible software architectures were researched for use in Access-eGov. Furthermore, a logical architecture has been proposed, taking the researched architectures into consideration, while also outlining some details of the envisioned physical level and its possible implementation. At this point in time, major software risks have also been identified and analysed.
Since Access-eGov is envisioned to build a service-oriented platform, it is supposed to be highly modularized and shall be logically composed of a number of components interacting with each other. Based on the reasoning and results described in the user requirement analysis and the Access-eGov platform architecture, the following modules have been identified, mostly derived from the needs captured by the use cases, and are grouped in the following sets: Information provider related modules, Information consumer related modules, and System management related modules. Information provider related modules consist of: 1) Service annotation module, 2) Service discovery module, and 3) Service composition module. The Information consumer related modules consist of: 1) Scenario execution module, and the 2) Personal assistant module. The System management related modules cope with the core functionality of the Access-eGov platform, and consist of the System core module.
Three distinct pilots of the Access-eGov system will be implemented and evaluated.
The Slovak pilot will be specified and implemented by the Kosice Self-Government Region and municipality of Michalovce City. This specific scenario is based on the intention of building a new family house in a municipality of the Košice region. At present, it is difficult for the average citizen to make his/her way through the trap doors of complex administrative processes while obtaining a building permission. The Access-eGov system is intended to facilitate such procedures using an interactive web platform, which provides citizens with useful guidance on “what and how to do it”. As a result, a user shall be easily guided through all of the “building permission procedures” required, by avoiding unnecessary additional questions or procedures. The value added by the Access-eGov solution consists of an increased efficiency and performance that is achieved through process optimization and integration of the concerned public services at execution time. All this adds up to greater convenience for the citizen as final beneficiary. This will also ensure more transparency in the public service delivery and shall encourage people to make use of electronic public services more often.
The Polish pilot will be implemented in the Silesia Region in cooperation between the Cities on Internet and City Hall of Gliwice. The scenario is the establishment of an enterprise (starting one’s own business) by the user. This service consists of four main tasks: Registration in the City Hall (the local government), Registration in the Statistical Office, Registration in the Tax Office, and Registration in the Social Insurance Agency. The main goal of delivering that service is to enable citizens to establish their enterprise via the Internet (in those cases where it is possible) and to deliver complete information package related to the service. The information will be provided by dialogues between the user and an intelligent agent (a component of the Access-eGov platform), correct interpretation of the user’s queries, and additional questions to the user. The aim of performing each task is to give the user all required instructions, to point out activities he should perform, places/institutions he should go to, forms he should fill in, and to provide access to e-services. The overall goal is to support the user to start his business.
The German upgrade and field test will be implemented by the State Government of Schleswig-Holstein. This scenario assumes that a German citizen is currently living in a municipality of Schleswig-Holstein. Her future husband is a Slovak citizen. They have decided that they want to get married within the next four weeks. In case they are able to find a special place for the wedding ceremony (like a ship or a light house) they are willing to wait a little bit longer and also travel for up to 100 km. For example, they want to find out about their options regarding the wedding location, and what kind of legal preparations and documents are necessary.
In addition, the German University in Cairo, thanks to its location in Egypt, will arrange a challenging Egyptian test case: for example, a person with an Egyptian citizenship searching for e-government services or wanting to obtain a work permit in a EU country. It will include all tasks of an intra-European scenario plus additional challenges of language and cultural differences.
In the next six months, Access-eGov will continue with the development of the various services that will constitute the Access-eGov platform, and will also present its first results to the European Commission beginning of February 2007 during its yearly review meeting.
The Project consortium, in addition to the partners mentioned before, includes also the University of Regensburg, Germany; Intersoft, a.s., Slovakia; EMAX S.A., Poland; and e-ISOTIS, Greece.
Participants List
Participant name Country
Technical University of Kosice Slovakia
University of Regensburg Germany
German University in Cairo Egypt
Intersoft, a.s. Slovakia
EMAX S.A. Poland
Kosice Self-Governing Region Slovakia
Cities on Internet Association Poland
e-ISOTIS Greece
Municipality of Michalovce Slovakia
City Hall of Gliwice Poland
State Government of Schleswig-Holstein Germany

For More Information, please contact:

Access-eGov Project Coordinator:
Assoc. Prof. Tomas Sabol
Tel.: (+421 55) 602 32 59
Fax: (+421 55) 602 32 58
Faculty of Economics
Technical University of Kosice
B. Nemcovej 32, 042 00 Kosice, SLOVAKIA
contact@accessegov.org

The Access-eGov project started on 01/01/2006 and will end on 31/12/2008. For extra details, you can also visit the project’s website: www.accessegov.org.

Information:

 e-ISOTIS
Karel Van Isacker
Phone: +302102693760 Site: www.accessegov.org

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