Perspectives for using software agents in e-Government applications

Governing a country includes a set of decentralised processes. Moreover, in the unions ofcountries with integrated economic space, the decentralisation issue gains the attention. The mostknown examples of federated governments are two of the biggest world economies: the UnitedStates of America and the European Union. The decentralisation is even more significant whenconsidering resources for businesses. Specifically the workforce, the land and the infrastructure arecommonly managed at the local or the sub-local level. The paper addresses the issues concerningcitizens’ mobility (both for personal and professional purposes) and businesses’ pan-Europeanoperations.Application of autonomous software agents to aid cross-border businesses operations andcitizens movements is addressed. The paper presents the possibility of making citizens’movements smoother and involving less paperwork. To support these ideas, the foundations andconclusions from Infocitizen initiative are introduced.In the conclusions of the paper, it is suggested that the agent-based technology for openingagents-ready virtual offices by agencies at all levels of government should be used. It wouldbenefit the users if they were allowed to set up software agents to act on their behalf and to searchall possible locations in order to find required resources. The mentioned task would be impossibleor extremely resource-consuming when done manually

Perspectives for using software agents in e-Government applications

Governing a country includes a set of decentralised processes. Moreover, in the unions ofcountries with integrated economic space, the decentralisation issue gains the attention. The mostknown examples of federated governments are two of the biggest world economies: the UnitedStates of America and the European Union. The decentralisation is even more significant whenconsidering resources for businesses. Specifically the workforce, the land and the infrastructure arecommonly managed at the local or the sub-local level. The paper addresses the issues concerningcitizens’ mobility (both for personal and professional purposes) and businesses’ pan-Europeanoperations.Application of autonomous software agents to aid cross-border businesses operations andcitizens movements is addressed. The paper presents the possibility of making citizens’movements smoother and involving less paperwork. To support these ideas, the foundations andconclusions from Infocitizen initiative are introduced.In the conclusions of the paper, it is suggested that the agent-based technology for openingagents-ready virtual offices by agencies at all levels of government should be used. It wouldbenefit the users if they were allowed to set up software agents to act on their behalf and to searchall possible locations in order to find required resources. The mentioned task would be impossibleor extremely resource-consuming when done manually

Proactive services ecosystem framework

Dissertation presented to obtain the degree of Doctor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, specialization on Collaborative Enterprise NetworksCollaborative-Networks (CN) have experienced a fast evolution in the last two decades. The collaboration among independent entities or professionals supported by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has attracted the research community to establish the conceptual basis for this scientific discipline. Service Orientation has been one of the key selected paradigms for that conceptual basis. Nevertheless, the service concept itself does not have a common understanding in the Business and ICT worlds. In the former, client satisfaction, resources management and business process models are some example concerns, whilst the later deals with interoperability, remote function calling or communication protocols. If for example an enterprise provides some service, it may hire specialists to wrap such service into web-services, expecting to reach worldwide potential new clients. In fact, nowadays Web Services and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) are the technological elements most commonly used. However, these are passive elements in the sense they do not perform any action towards pursuing business interests, which constitute a limiting factor from a business perspective. Another approach for the above mentioned enterprise is to follow the Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) approach, as the pro-activity is a keyword in such contexts. Nevertheless, as MAS approaches are not so commonly used and not so robust yet, the worldwide potential set of new clients is reduced; which also constitutes an inhibitor factor from the business perspective. This dissertation proposes a Pro-Active Services Ecosystem Framework, gathering inspiration from both the SOA and MAS research areas, trying to bridge the business and ICT worlds through the base concepts for the creation of a Services’ Ecosystem where business services are represented in a pro-active manner towards pursuing business interests, like finding collaboration opportunities or improving the chances each CN member has to see its services selected among competitors, for example. This work also includes a prototype system applied / validated in the area of a Professional Virtual Community of Senior Professionals

Requirements for Using Agent-Based Automation in Distributed e-Government Applications

Abstract. This paper describes some requirements for using software agents to automate many tasks in eGovernment applications. First, the architecture must be able to support workflow engines, transparent reliability, and security. Second, data must be presented in a format that can be understood by any system component that uses the data. Third, it must be possible to define processes in terms of distributed workflows. These processes may be originated from laws, internal guidelines, or technical specifications. The definitions must in any case be unambiguous, finite, deterministic, and refer only to public data structures. Agents can then be used to run the defined long-term workflows. We also present a sample Web service –based eGovernment service, based on new Finnish law governing government processes