Social Networks Applied to E-Gov: An Architecture for Semantic Services

Abstract

The technological advances establish new communication forms between people and have also reached the government sphere and its activities, improving access to information and allowing greater interaction between citizens through C2C (Citizen to Citizen) Services. Based on these aspects, this chapter presents a proposal for software architecture, using a social network to map the relationships and interactions between citizens, accounting and storing this knowledge in a government ontological metadata network. Using UML notation (Unified Modeling Language) for Software Engineering process and Java platform for development, a software prototype was modeled and developed in order to manage and handle e-Gov-driven social networks, using ontological metadata to computationally represent the social ties. This prototype is also capable of providing graphical display of social networks, enabling the identification of different social links between citizens, creating a tool intended for government agencies, since it allows a quantitative analysis of information in the social network.