The use of TRAO to manage evolution risks in e-government

The need to develop and provide more efficient ways of providing Electronic Government Services to key stakeholders in government has brought about varying degrees of evolution in government. This evolution is seen in different ways like the merging of government departments, the merging of assets or its components with legacy assets etc. This has involved the incorporation of several practices that are geared towards the elimination of processes that are repetitive and manual while attempting to progressively encourage the interaction that exists between the different stakeholders. However, some of these practices have further complicated processes in government thus creating avenues for vulnerabilities which if exploited expose government and government assets to risks and threats. Focusing on ways to manage the issues accompanied with evolution can better prepare governments for manging the associated vulnerabilities, risks and threats. The basis of a conceptual framework is provided to establish the relationships that exist between the E-Government, asset and security domains. Thus, this thesis presents a design research project used in the management of evolution-related risks. The first part of the project focusses on the development of a generic ontology known as TRAO and a scenario ontology TRAOSc made up of different hypothetical scenarios. The resulting efficiency of the development of these ontologies have facilitated the development of an intelligent tool TRAOSearch that supports high-level semantically enriched queries. Results from the use of a case study prove that there are existing evolution-related issues which governments may not be fully prepared for. Furthermore, an ontological approach in the management of evolution-related risks showed that government stakeholders were interested in the use of intelligent processes that could improve government effectiveness while analysing the risks associated with doing this. Of more importance to this research was the ability to make inferences from the ontology on existing complex relationships that exist in the form of dependencies and interdependencies between Stakeholders and Assets. Thus, this thesis presents contributions in the aspect of advancing stakeholders understanding on the types of relationships that exist in government and the effect these relationships may have on service provisioning. Another novel contribution can be seen in the correction of the ambiguity associated with the terms Service, IT Service and E-Government. Furthermore, the feedback obtained from the use of an ontology-based tool during the evaluation phase of the project provides insights on whether governments must always be at par with technological evolution

Development of an e-government ontology to support risk analysis

The complexity of governments is one of the biggest problems citizens face in engaging with them. This complexity is seen in the growing number of departments and services that a government is made up of and the need for citizens to interact with these departments or services independently. This research shows a lack of efficiency in the E-Government domain due to the vertical alignment of services and the need for complex collaboration across the departments, which all too often does not exist. We propose that an ontology could potentially help to foster interactions between departments and services, and thereby manage this complexity more efficiently. Although ontologies exist for different subject domains, the quality and suitability of these ontologies in the government domain at the present time gives rise for concern. Ontologies have the potential to play an important role in the design and development of government services. The key reason behind the development and design of an ontology for the E-Government domain is to use knowledge that is resident in the domain of governments to reduce risks associated with the delivery, combination and dependencies that exist amongst services so that the resilience of the E-Government domain can be improved throughout government. This paper addresses the issue of identifying and analysing risk in the development and deployment of E-Government services. Relevant information on risks that may occur with respect to services can be collected, compiled and disseminated which can serve as prediction tools for future governments as well as enable service providers make choices that would enable them fulfil service requirements adequately. The aim of this research is to contribute by constructing an ontology that is aimed at gauging the risks associated with using solutions across departments and even governments. Further, we also document how we have made use of queries to validate this ontology