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

CAN MARKETING SUPPORT THE IMPLEMENTATION OF EFFECTIVE EGOVERNMENT? ANALYSIS OF THE SINGLE POINT OF ACCESS PORTAL FOR ROMANIAN ELECTRONIC PUBLIC SERVICES

The advances in technology hold great potential for helping Romanian government respond to its challenges namely, better service delivery, better procurement, efficient working and better communication with citizens and businesses. While the European Commission develops the main strategies on eGovernment, every member state has the freedom to identify its own necessities and decide according to specific social, administrative and economic context. Designing, cost setting, choosing the best supply channels or communicating with involved actors, are all marketing instruments which, if used accordingly, can ensure modern and efficient public services. This paper presents an analysis of the degree of development of public services available at the "www.e-guvernare.ro" portal, the single point of access for specific Romanian electronic public services.electronic government, public services, marketing instrument, development, internet

What do we know from the literature on public e-services?.

Public e-services are a broad and growing research field in which scholars and practitioners from different domains are involved. However, the increasing attention devoted to public e-services only partially captures the extreme variety of aspects and implications of the diffusion of information and communication technologies at all levels of public administrations. The paper aims to develop a meta-analysis of the literature on the delivery, diffusion, adoption and impact of public e-services and examines current research trends in terms of differences in methodologies, approaches and key indicators across five service platforms: eGovernment, eEducation, eHealth, Infomobility and eProcurement. We examined 751 articles appeared in 2000-2010 in the top international academic journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), as classified in the following fields: Communication, Economics, Education, Environmental Studies, Geography, Health Policy & Services, Information Science & Library Science, Law, Management, Planning & Development, Public Administration, Transportation and Urban Studies. We highlight a significant heterogeneity in scientific production across service domains, countries covered by empirical analyses, indicators used, and affiliation of authors. We also show an increasing diffusion of quantitative methods applied to different research fields which still appears to be constrained by data limitations. The overall picture emerging from the analysis is one characterized by largely unexplored service domains as well as scarcely analyzed issues both across and within individual service platforms (e.g. front vs. back office issues). Thus many research opportunities seem to emerge and need to be exploited from different disciplinary perspectives in this field of analysis.eGovernment, eEducation, eHealth, Infomobility, eProcurement, Bibliometrics, Metaanalysis, Innovation in services, Public e-services

Pseudo Identities Based on Fingerprint Characteristics

This paper presents the integrated project TURBINE which is funded under the EU 7th research framework programme. This research is a multi-disciplinary effort on privacy enhancing technology, combining innovative developments in cryptography and fingerprint recognition. The objective of this project is to provide a breakthrough in electronic authentication for various applications in the physical world and on the Internet. On the one hand it will provide secure identity verification thanks to fingerprint recognition. On the other hand it will reliably protect the biometric data through advanced cryptography technology. In concrete terms, it will provide the assurance that (i) the data used for the authentication, generated from the fingerprint, cannot be used to restore the original fingerprint sample, (ii) the individual will be able to create different "pseudo-identities" for different applications with the same fingerprint, whilst ensuring that these different identities (and hence the related personal data) cannot be linked to each other, and (iii) the individual is enabled to revoke an biometric identifier (pseudo-identity) for a given application in case it should not be used anymore

EU Services Directive - Design Approaches for Romania

Modernizing public administration is the basis for implementation of the EU directive, and in order to ensure this successfully, collaborative procedures between administrative institutions and countries must be put in place and further developed. This paper will present some technical design options for an architectural framework of the Point of Single Contact imposed by EU Services Directive that takes into consideration the specific e-Government background of Romania.EU Services Directive, Romanian e-Government, design, architecture, process, SOA

eCustoms Innovation and Transformation: A Research Approach

A major challenge for European governments is solving the dilemma of increasing security and control of international trade, while at the same time reducing the administrative overhead carried by commercial and public administration organisations. Electronic Customs, the transformation of paper-based trade documents to electronic ones, and the corresponding redesign of customs procedures, seems to be very promising approach to deal with this dilemma. However, while ICT is widely perceived as a key component of a solution, we argue in this paper that the complexity of the redesign of these electronic documents and procedures for international trade is far more problematic than traditional business process and network innovations. We identify key challenges facing the development and introduction of innovative eCustoms solutions and we outline conceptual and methodological approaches to address these challenges. In such a way, we outline a research approach for eCustoms innovation and transformation

E-Governance, Metropolitan Governance and Development Programming. The Case of the Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area

e-Governance has recently emerged as a new field of interest for both researchers and public policy makers. This has to do in the first instance with the rise of information and communication technologies and with the strategy for promotion of the information society. It also reflects growing interest in the capacity of various forms of governance to manage complex development issues and facilitate decision-making in the era of globalization. The potential of e-Governance extends from improvement of public services at the various levels of administration to empowerment of community engagement within decision-making processes. e-Governance is also of manifest relevance to questions such as the digital divide and democratic participation. Metropolitan areas in particular are considered to be at the centre of the developmental process. They thus become the appropriate spatial level for the implementation of development programmes aimed at enhancement of competitiveness and employment. New forms of multilevel metropolitan governance emerge, in response to the economic and institutional transformations occurring in them. e-Governance represents a new challenge for metropolitan governance and in particular for development programming. In the context of the EU structural regional policy, development programming in Greece identifies the development of metropolitan areas as one of its main policy objectives. e-Governance is in any case a basic component of the Information Society strategy. This paper examines the implementation of e-Governance in the Thessaloniki metropolitan area, in the specific context of development programming. From this starting point, lessons are drawn for the necessity of e-Governance as an element of metropolitan governance.

A Business Ontology for supporting cross border cooperation between European Chambers of Commerce

The recent EU enlargement opens up new opportunities, but poses new issues to be addressed. In particular, in order to enable and support cooperation between firms from different countries, it is necessary to address interoperability issues. The LD-CAST project aims at enabling cross border cooperation between European chambers of commerce (CCs) for supporting the development of private company initiatives. The project objective is to build a European network of portals that will enable end users (mainly private companies) to access in a seamless mode services provided by public organizations registered in each portal. This paper briefly presents a cooperation framework for semantic interoperability mainly based on the following semantic technologies: ontology management, semantic annotation, and semantic search and discovery. Finally the business ontology produced in the course of the project is presented.The recent EU enlargement opens up new opportunities, but poses new issues to be addressed. In particular, in order to enable and support cooperation between firms from different countries, it is necessary to address interoperability issues. The LD-CAST project aims at enabling cross border cooperation between European chambers of commerce (CCs) for supporting the development of private company initiatives. The project objective is to build a European network of portals that will enable end users (mainly private companies) to access in a seamless mode services provided by public organizations registered in each portal. This paper briefly presents a cooperation framework for semantic interoperability mainly based on the following semantic technologies: ontology management, semantic annotation, and semantic search and discovery. Finally the business ontology produced in the course of the project is presented.Uninvited Submission