Access-eGov: Accessible eGovernment embracing the Semantic Web

Access-eGov (Access to e-Government Services Employing Semantic Technologies) is an IST project partially funded under the IST Programme of FP6 (eGovernment research). A consortium consisting of eleven partners from five countries (Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Greece, and Egypt) led by the Technical University of Kosice will carry out the project between January 2006 and December 2008.
Access-eGov aims at increasing the accessibility of public administration services for citizens and business users by supporting the interoperability among existing electronic and “traditional” government services. For citizens and business users, Access-eGov will provide two basic categories of services. Firstly, Access-eGov will identify - depending on the needs and context situation (location, etc.) of the user - traditional and/or electronic government services (if available) relevant to the given life event (of the given citizen user) or business episode (in case of businesses). Secondly, once the relevant services have been identified, Access-eGov will generate a “scenario” consisting of elementary government services. In most cases these scenarios will be probably of a “hybrid” nature – i.e. a combination of elementary traditional and e-services- which will lead to a requested outcome. Access-eGov will also provide a virtual personal assistant, who will guide the user through the scenario (reminding him/her of deadlines, providing support information, initiating existing e-services, etc.). Special attention is paid to the e-Inclusion criteria to guarantee that Access-eGov will be accessible also to disadvantaged groups of users, for which the system can be considerably beneficial.
Three distinct pilots of the Access-eGov system will be implemented and evaluated. The Slovak pilot will be specified and implemented by the Kosice Self-Government Region and municipality of Michalovce City. This pilot will be focussed on the land-use and -planning and building permit. It and aims at making this rather complicated process more transparent, efficient and easier to understand, hence saving time (and thus also money) for citizens and businesses. The Polish pilot will be implemented in the Silesia Region in cooperation between the Cities on Internet and City Hall of Gliwice. This pilot will focus on the registration processes of a company. The German upgrade and field test will be implemented by the State Government of Schleswig-Holstein, which will upgrade an existing good practice, the so-called “Zustaendigkeitsfinder” ("Responsibility Finder"), by introducing a semantic layer (securing semantic interoperability between national and local governments). As a result, the quality of services to citizens and businesses will be improved when they will be looking for a service provided by national and/or local governments. In addition, the German University in Cairo, thanks to its location in Egypt, will arrange a challenging Egyptian test case: for example, a person with an Egyptian citizenship searching for e-government services or wanting to obtain a work permit in a EU country. It will include all tasks of an intra-European scenario plus additional challenges of language and cultural differences.
After its kick-off meeting in Kosice (Slovakia) on 25-26 January 2006 the project has actively engaged in the elicitation of user-requirements from the three groups of relevant actors: 1) information providers (i. e. administrations), 2) information consumers (i. e. citizens and business users), and 3) infrastructure providers (i. e. IT service providers). This requirements analysis process included the identification of obstacles and enabling factors for the implementation and adoption of Access-eGov technology by the three groups. The requirements were collected by the local partners for each of the three pilot regions in Slovakia, Poland, and Germany. These have been consolidated into a common list of requirements at a user workshop in Krakow (Poland) on 27th June 2006.
The next phase of the project will focus on technical development as well as the development and standardization of semantic concepts.
The Project consortium, in addition to the partners mentioned before, includes also the University of Regensburg, Germany; Intersoft, a.s., Slovakia; EMAX S.A., Poland; and e-ISOTIS, Greece.
Participants List
Participant name Country
Technical University of Kosice Slovakia
University of Regensburg Germany
German University in Cairo Egypt
Intersoft, a.s. Slovakia
EMAX S.A. Poland
Kosice Self-Governing Region Slovakia
Cities on Internet Association Poland
e-ISOTIS Greece
Municipality of Michalovce Slovakia
City Hall of Gliwice Poland
State Government of Schleswig-Holstein Germany

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For More Information, please contact:

Access-eGov Project Coordinator:
Assoc. Prof. Tomas Sabol
Tel.: (+421 55) 602 32 59
Fax: (+421 55) 602 32 58
Faculty of Economics
Technical University of Kosice
B. Nemcovej 32, 042 00 Kosice, SLOVAKIA
contact@accessegov.org

The Access-eGov project started on 01/01/2006 and will end on 31/12/2008. For extra details, you can also visit the project’s website: www.accessegov.org.

Date of release: 07/08/2006
This press release was brought to you by Access-eGov (www.accessegov.org)