Supporting public decision making in policy deliberations: An ontological approach

This is the post-print version of the Paper. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 SpringerSupporting public decision making in policy deliberations has been a key objective of eParticipation which is an emerging area of eGovernment. EParticipation aims to enhance citizen involvement in public governance activities through the use of information and communication technologies. An innovative approach towards this objective is exploiting the potentials of semantic web technologies centred on conceptual knowledge models in the form of ontologies. Ontologies are generally defined as explicit human and computer shared views on the world of particular domains. In this paper, the potentials and benefits of using ontologies for policy deliberation processes are discussed. Previous work is then extended and synthesised to develop a deliberation ontology. The ontology aims to define the necessary semantics in order to structure and interrelate the stages and various activities of deliberation processes with legal information, participant stakeholders and their associated arguments. The practical implications of the proposed framework are illustrated.This work is funded by the European Commission under the 2006/1 eParticipation call

Information systems interoperability in Public Administration : identifying the major acting forces through a Delphi study

Information Systems (IS) interoperability in Public Administration (PA) is a main goal and a major challenge for PA professionals. Achieving interoperability among IS that are technologically disparate and that exist in different organizational contexts is a complex task, being affected by multiple aspects, not yet satisfactorily known and characterized. The aim of this paper is to unveil the forces that influence IS interoperability initiatives in PA. The inquiry was inspired by Lewin’s Field Theory. The data generation process was based on a Delphi study involving 55 experts from PA, IS/IT industry, and academy. A set of 31 forces were identified and ranked based on the level of importance they assume in IS interoperability initiatives. Thirty eight propositions describing restraining and driving influences were also formulated, as well as 24 propositions about forces’ configuration in the current context of Portuguese PA that represent the specific constellation of forces acting in IS interoperability initiatives in that country. The results of this study provide an understanding of the complex of forces acting in IS interoperability, contributing to improve the study, management, and implementation of these initiatives and, consequently, to the establishment of a PA with more adequate, sustained, and sustainable levels of interoperability

Towards an information security framework for government to government transactions : a perspective from East Africa

The need for a regional framework for information security in e-Government for the East African Community (EAC) has become more urgent with the signing in 2009 of the EAC Common Market Protocol. This protocol will entail more electronic interactions amongst government agencies in the EAC partner states which are Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Government to Government (G2G) transactions are the backbone of e-Government transactions. If a government wants to provide comprehensive services that are easy to use by citizens, employees or businesses, it needs to be able to combine information or services that are provided by different government agencies or departments. Furthermore, the governments must ensure that the services provided are secure so that citizens trust that an electronic transaction is as good as or better than a manual one. Thus governments in the EAC must address information security in ways that take into consideration that these governments have limited resources and skills to use for e-Government initiatives. The novel contribution of this study is an information security framework dubbed the TOG framework, comprising of technical, operational, governance, process and maturity models to address information security requirements for G2G transactions in the EAC. The framework makes reference to standards that can be adopted by the EAC while taking into consideration contextual factors which are resource, legislative and cultural constraints. The process model uses what is termed a ‘Plug and Play’ approach which provides the resource poor countries with a means of addressing information security that can be implemented as and when resources allow but eventually leading to a comprehensive framework. Thus government agencies can start implementation based on the operational and technical guidelines while waiting for governance structures to be put in place, or can specifically address governance requirements where they already exist. Conversely, governments using the same framework can take into consideration existing technologies and operations while putting governance structures in place. As a proof of concept, the proposed framework is applied to a case study of a G2G transaction in Tanzania. The framework is evaluated against critical success factors.ComputingD. Phil. (Computer Science

A Methodology for Ontology-based Knowledge-level Inoperability among Parliaments

Most of the information systems (IS) interoperability research and practice in the e-government area has been focused on the operational level, aiming mainly at enabling the delivery of integrated electronic services involving several government agencies to citizens and enterprises based on the ‘one-stop shop’ model, and the support of co-operation among government agencies from the same or even different countries at the operational level. This paper is dealing with knowledge-level interoperability, which aims at the support of higher knowledge-intensive tasks of government, such as the formulation of legislation. In particular, it presents an ontology-based methodology for achieving knowledge-level interoperability among IS of Parliaments. It is based on the common use by Parliaments of the ontology of the ‘Issue-Based Information Systems’ (IBIS) framework for codifying the public policy related knowledge produced in the various stages of legislation formulation. Also, an application of the proposed methodology is presented for the case of the Law concerning ‘Contracts of Voluntary Cohabitation’ that has been recently passed by the Greek Parliament; its evaluation resulted in a proposal for a refinement of the above ontology that can be used for achieving a better codification of the knowledge that the main content (articles) of Laws contains

Trends and challenges of e-government chatbots: Advances in exploring open government data and citizen participation content

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-108965GB-I00) and the Regional Government of Andalusia (P20_00314 and B-SEJ-556-UGR20). The authors thank all people who participated in the reported studies.In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework composed of a number of e-government, implementation and evaluation-oriented variables, with which we jointly analyze chatbots presented in the research literature and chatbots deployed as public services in Spain at national, regional and local levels. As a result of our holistic analysis, we identify and discuss current trends and challenges in the development and evaluation of chatbots in the public administration sector, such as focusing the use of the conversational agents on the search for government information, documents and services –leaving citizen consultation and collaboration aside–, and conducting preliminary evaluations of prototypes in limited studies, lacking experiments on deployed systems, with metrics beyond effectiveness and usability –e.g., metrics related to the generation of public values. Addressing some of the identified challenges, we build and evaluate two novel chatbots that present advances in the access to open government data and citizen participation content. Moreover, we come up with additional, potential research lines that may be considered in the future for a new generation of e-government chatbots.Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-108965GB-I00)Regional Government of Andalusia (P20_00314 and B-SEJ-556-UGR20

A Modelling Framework for Evidence-Based Public Health Policy Making

It is widely recognised that the process of public health policy making (i.e., the analysis, action plan design, execution, monitoring and evaluation of public health policies) should be evidenced based, and supported by data analytics and decision-making tools tailored to it. This is because the management of health conditions and their consequences at a public health policy making level can benefit from such type of analysis of heterogeneous data, including health care devices usage, physiological, cognitive, clinical and medication, personal, behavioural, lifestyle data, occupational and environmental data. In this paper we present a novel approach to public health policy making in a form of an ontology, and an integrated platform for realising this approach. Our solution is model-driven and makes use of big data analytics technology. More specifically, it is based on public health policy decision making (PHPDM) models that steer the public health policy decision making process by defining the data that need to be collected, the ways in which they should be analysed in order to produce the evidence useful for public health policymaking, how this evidence may support or contradict various policy interventions (actions), and the stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. The resulted web-based platform has been implemented using Hadoop, Spark and HBASE, developed in the context of a research programme on public health policy making for the management of hearing loss called EVOTION, funded by the Horizon 2020

Government-to-Government E-Government: A Case Study of a Federal Financial Program

The problem with the study of the concept of electronic government (e-Gov) is that scholars in the field have not adequately explored various dimensions ofthe concept. Literature on e-Gov is replete with works on the form of government to consumer e-Gov. Much less work had been done on the government to government (G2G) e-Gov. This qualitative case study was predicated on the concepts of intergovernmental relations and intergovernmental management, and it sought to fill the gap in the literature by providing a clear understanding of G2G e-Gov by exploring a federal program in the United States. The central research question determined how G2G e-Gov enhanced accountability, efficiency, and public service value. Data were collected using face to face and email interviews, documents, and archival data. Data were analyzed with a modified content analysis technique. Findings from the study indicated that improvements in communication, process, technology, and legislative proposals are linked to programmatic success in G2G e-Gov. The study has implications for social change as the knowledge of G2G e-Gov is useful to governments because of its emphasis on accountability, efficiency, collaboration, and information sharing. It also has the potential to assist public policy officials and academics to better understand the importance of G2G e-Gov for public service delivery, and help developing countries in their e-Gov implementations