Contents
eGovernment Standards – suggestion for a paid activity during March/April 2006
1) The CEN Focus Group on eGovernment
In order to map the various activities in the field of eGovernmnent standardization and to discuss a roadmap for the future, CEN/ISSS created a Focus Group on eGovernment. Focus Groups are a "pre-standardization" mechanism for producing overview reports on standardization topics in a given area of activity. Focus Groups work by consensus to produce a report and recommendations, which are then formally approved by the CEN/ISSS Forum. The Focus Group on eGovernment had its kick-off meeting on 16 February 2005 and also met on 15 June 2005. A request for a Standardization Grant is in the final stages of being processed in the Europan Commission. The signature of the Grant is expected from next April onwards. Under this Grant, there will be produced a report that will Agree on a scope for eGovernment for the purposes of the funded project identify and map out the initiatives and services that exist within the agreed scope of eGovernment, including:
- frameworks;
- naming and design rules;
- good/best Practices;
- registries, repositories; and clearing houses
- existing standards and specifications, that are used, or proposed for use, by public administrations;
- mechanisms available for managing such standards and specifications (governance, processes and infrastructure);
- project-based deliverables that could provide added-value to the work of another administration;
- identify recurring or frequently encountered policy issues, with a view to providing common solutions, with particular regard to the gap between stated goals and actual delivery of solutions;
- identify any obstacles to a coherent approach to eGovernment standardisation at the trans-national level, in terms of authority, governance and infrastructure;
address the obstacles resulting from Europe's multilingual environment;
This report will be produced during a period of 1 year and will be presented to two open meetings (one halfway and one at the end).
2) The contents of this funded activity
a) Added value of a funded project complementary to the project under the future Grant
In addition to the above report, the Focus Group also discussed the need for a tool that would complement the above report, in the sense that it would enable the management of a wide variety of standards, specifications, XML-schema, etc, all being building blocks for interoperable eGovernment applications.
As an additional funded project it is therefore proposed
- To deliver initial ontology for describing government services and the use of relevant standards (see 2b)
- To produce an application using topic maps and registries as a rudimentary resource network (se 2c)
- To present and discuss these at a meeting of the Focus Group, to be convened end of April (Venue to be decided)
The work will be done by 3 experts selected by CEN/ISSS:
Marc Kuester, University of Worms (DE) (Marc Kuester has been active in the CEN/ISSS ADNOM Workshop and was the editor of the ebusiness standardization road-map some years ago) Makx Dekkers (NL) (Makx is a metadata expert as DCMI managing director) Graham Moore (UK) (Graham is a topic map expert)
These experts will also be the ones contracted by CEN/ISSS as a project Team (PT) to drive the future work on the eGovernment report.
===b) initial ontology for describing government services and the use of relevant standards:===
The PT will create an initial ontology for a well-defined area within eGov such as authentication services (other areas would serve equally well). This ontology will be expressed as a topic map.
To prove the viability of the work, the PT will use this ontology to map out subsets of the chosen field.
Subtasks:
- Sketch "our" ontology as a starting point
- Evaluate existing ontologies for government services and summarize the findings in a preliminary bibliography
- Propose the outline of "our" ontology
- Create the ontology
- Use the ontology to categorize some services + standards in the field
Estimated time: 7 man days
c) an application using topic maps and registries as a rudimentary resource network:
To integrate the ontology into a registry + Topic Map system and to create a suitable User Interface; this demonstrator will not be created from scratch. It is suggested to build on top of TMCore005, a product by Networked Planet. Networked Planet will provide anyone that needs them with licenses for the duration of the project for use with the topic map data and applications that are built.
The purpose of this demonstrator is twofold:
- it will demonstrate some content, "marked up" using the Topic Maps standard;
- it will demonstrate that such content can be used with a specific Topic Map "engine" (and, naturally, that it should be usable with any TM implementation).
Subtasks:
- Install and host the registry
- Enhance the demonstrator for the specificities of the eGov project
- Integrate the sample services + standards as registry items and the topic map alongside
- Sketch a User Interface
Estimated time: 7 man days
d) Organizing the contents for the eGov meeting at the end of April
This comprises the preparation of initial input for the eGov meeting based also on b) and c) and presentation of the results of the funded project to this meeting.
Estimated time: 6 man days
e) Summary
Total cost: 20 man days, at a rate of 650EUR/day; this rate includes the travel to the April meeting. To this may be added the cost for hiring a venue for up to 50 participants to have the April meeting.
Deliverables:
- the ontology for describing government services
- the demonstration of the demonstrator to the April meeting
- the organization of the April meeting
Task distribution
A preliminary task distribution based on mails from Graham and Makx.