Rule-Based Domain-Specific Modeling for E-Government Service Transactions

Introduction

The objective behind Information Technology (IT) projects in e-government contexts as argued in (Buhl & Löffler, 2011) are: simplification and realization of information, communication, and transaction processes within and between public administrations and citizens by using digital information and communication technology. There have been an increased research activity on e-government field in recent years and the development of theoretical and conceptual models to understand its different aspects (Dawes, Pardo, & Cresswell, 2004; Gilgarcia & Pardo, 2005; Gupta, 2003). This recent interest in this domain is caused by the increased government’s reliance on information and communication technologies (ICT) in their everyday transactions. One of the particular fields of interest in this domain is the study of the different relations established among the e-government actors to achieve service transactions. In (Abramson & Means, 2001) there is a classification of three major categories or relationships called Government- to-Government (G2G), Government-to-Citizen (G2C), and Government-to-Business (G2B). This chapter mainly focuses on Government-to-Citizen relationship where the information sharing between Public Administrations’ (PAs) processes and services takes place. These information interchanges or interoperability between PA organizations have been classified as a relevant subject and a critical prerequisite for the adequate performance of PA systems (Klischewski, 2004; Peristeras, Loutas, Goudos, & Tarabanis, 2007; Tambouris, Manouselis, & Costopoulou, 2007).

The European Interoperability Framework for Pan-European e-Government Services (EIF) (Overeem, Witters, & Peristeras, 2007) of the European Commission defines interoperability as the ability of information and communication technology (ICT) systems and of the business processes they support to exchange data and to enable sharing of information and knowledge.

EIF defines three interoperability types such as the technical level, semantic level and organizational level where this chapter focuses on. The interaction among different business processes and services is addressed. At this level the following aspects are covered:

• 1.

  Domain Specific Integration Modeling: This includes the definition of the metamodel that contains common processes and services elements to undertake their integration.

• 2.

  Business Rules Integration: This describes the construction of the integration knowledge base used to validate instances of the defined model both in modeling time and runtime.

• 3.

  Domain Specific Modeling Editor Development: This address the description of the necessary steps to undertake the development of a domain specific modeling tool as proof of concept for the proposals introduced in this chapter.

Background

Process modeling has gained a lot of attention over the past decade involving process reengineering and innovation (Wang & Wang, 2006). The use of Service Orientated Architectures (SOAs) has changed the process orientation to service orientation modeling approach. These architectures are mainly dedicated to issues related to advertise, discover, invoke, compose and monitor services available from multiple providers over the web. This change resulted in the development of the Web Services (Alonso, Casati, Kuno, & Machiraju, 2004; Moitra & Ganesh, 2005).