ADAPTIVE PROCESSES IN E-GOVERNMENT

A Field Report about Semantic-Based Approaches from the EU-Project “FIT”

Andrea Leutgeb

, Wilfrid Utz

, Robert Woitsch

and Hans-Georg Fill

BOC Asset Management, Baeckerstraße 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria

University of Vienna, Department of Knowledge and Business Engineering

Bruennerstraße 72, 1210 Vienna, Austria

Keywords: Business Process Management, Business Rules, E-Government, Ontologies, Public Administration.

Abstract: For increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration as well as improving the usability

and adaptability of systems state-of-the-art semantic technologies can be combined with existing business

process management (BPM) approaches in e-government. This position paper shows ontology-based

approaches as implemented within the EU-project FIT. In FIT the customer approved business process

modelling language ADOeGov

has been enriched with business rules in order to provide the necessary

transparency, flexibility and efficiency.

1 INTRODUCTION

This paper focuses on the sector of public

administration and e-government and presents two

advanced prototypes which combine semantic

technologies and business process management

(BPM).

The concepts discussed in the following

represent the current development status of the IST

project FIT

a project co-funded by the European

Commission under the “Information Society

Technologies” Sixth Framework Programme (2002-

2006). A short introduction to the project will be

given in the following:

The overall goal of FIT is defined to “develop,

test and validate a self-adaptive e-government

framework based on semantic technologies that will

ensure that the quality of public services is

proactively and continually fit to the changing

preferences and increasing expectations of e-

citizens” (Stojanovic N. et al, 2006: 1). Through

semantic technologies the actual service delivery is

adapted during run-time to the specific needs

thereby increasing service quality continuously.

FIT – “Fostering self-adaptive e-government service

improvement using semantic technologies”. Accessible:

http://www.fit-project.org, [22 Jan 07]

Historically, BOC

developed a comprehensive

BPM method for public administration called

ADOeGov

(Palkovits, S. and Karagiannis, D.,

2003), (Palkovits, S. and Wimmer, M., 2003),

(Palkovits, S. et al, 2004) by extending the general

BPM approach implemented in ADONIS

(Karagiannis, D. and Kühn, H., 2002), (Junginger, S.

et al, 2000) to the specifics of e-government. Within

the above mentioned EU-project, BOC as a project

partner has extended the classical BPM approach

towards agile BPM using business rules. Thereby

the flexibility of end-users of BPM can be increased

to meet current e-government requirements.

This paper is organized as follows: Section 2

gives a brief overview of the current challenges in

the area of BPM in e-government and gives an

introduction to the ADOeGov

modelling method.

Section 3 discusses the theoretical background of the

ontology-based approach developed within the

project, presents the actual implementation and

application as a prototype and proof-of-concept. The

conclusions will give an outlook on further

developments within the project.

BOC Homepage. Accessibile: http://www.boc-eu.com, [22 Jan

07]

264

Leutgeb A., Utz W., Woitsch R. and Fill H. (2007).

ADAPTIVE PROCESSES IN E-GOVERNMENT - A Field Report about Semantic-Based Approaches from the EU-Project “FIT”.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 264-269

DOI: 10.5220/0002410502640269

 SciTePress

2 CURRENT CHALLENGES IN E-

GOVERNMENT

In e-government applications and scenarios a

number of actors (e.g. authorities, citizens, clerks),

multi-organisational business processes and

heterogeneous technologies have to be integrated

(Kühn, H., 2001), (Palkovits, S. and Wimmer, M.,

2003). Therefore they are recognized as being rather

complex and difficult to manage. Following this fact

and due to the currently running modernisation

initiatives (e.g. i2010

) of public administration,

BPM and reorganization in general are seen as key

criteria to successfully implement e-government

summarized under the term “New Public

Management” (Lane, J., 2000).

Business process modelling and reorganization

have many advantages for e-government as has been

pointed out by various authors: The purposes of

processes models range from a knowledge

management perspective to facilitate human

understanding, communication, organisational

learning and transfer of know-how (Woitsch, R. and

Karagiannis, D., 2005) to the management

perspective for steering and supporting process

improvement and implementing process monitoring

and controlling. Through the modelling approach,

the derivation of variants and the comparison and

testing of alternatives in a save environment become

feasible before implementation. This may then

directly lead to savings in time and money in the

long run (Brücher, H., 2001).

The ADOeGov

toolkit aims at providing a

comprehensive BPM solution that integrates

different e-government specific aspects. This

includes aspects of service orientation through a top-

down based life-event approach, process monitoring

through the integration of key performance

indicators into the process flow as well as a

monitoring cockpit and aspects of security

modelling on a technical level in order to provide the

means for effective implementation of e-

government.

Although BPM leads to the aforementioned

benefits, still the current solutions lack the necessary

transparency, flexibility and efficiency to be

adaptive to different scenarios. This stems mainly

from the fact that business processes in today’s

i2010 – A European Information Society for growth and

employment, Accessible:

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010, [22

Jan 07]

administrations are highly complex, involve many

different participants and spawn multiple

information systems (Burmeister, B. et al, 2006).

Another drawback of the systems is the high

complexity to enable effective process management

and responsibility leading to the fact, that the

domain expert needs to become a process expert to

cope with the highly complex scenarios.

The combination of semantic technologies and

BPM aims to overcome these drawbacks. The

integration of the concept of business rules into

traditional business process views marks a feasible

solution in this regard. This approach allows agile

modelling and execution of business processes,

leading to a flexible and efficient way in the usage

of business processes. To be able to formulate

business rules it also becomes necessary to define a

common vocabulary as a semantic reference, thereby

leading to increased transparency in BPM.

3 SEMANTICALLY ENRICHED

BUSINESS PROCESS

MANAGEMENT

The approach developed within the project is

ontology-based and results in the definition of

transparent, flexible and efficient processes in e-

government. Within the FIT project the business

rules approach was chosen as it has grown in

importance and popularity in the last few years for

agile modelling approaches. According to the

Business Rules Group (Business Rules Group, 2000)

“a business rule is a statement that defines and

constraints some business. It is intended to assert

business structure or to control or influence the

behaviour of the business“. It is expressed using a

simple, unambiguous language that is accessible to

all interested parties: Business owner, business

analyst, technical architect etc. (Morgan, T., 2002).

The main goal of the FIT project at this stage

was to translate these theoretical requirement

defined during various work packages into an

effective and easy-to-use modelling method. It

should be integrated as a module with the

ADOeGov

method providing means to model

business rules on different abstraction layers (from

business/design view to technical/execution layers)

and the actual integration within the BPM approach.

The management of business rules is regarded as

a closely related although separate knowledge

domain. Modelling business rules as separate entities

offers various advantages, according to (Schacher,

ADAPTIVE PROCESSES IN E-GOVERNMENT - A Field Report about Semantic-Based Approaches from the EU-Project

“FIT”

265

M. and Grässle, P., 2006), (Rosenberg, F. and

Dustdar, S., 2005) and (von Halle, B., 2001) the

major benefits are: Transparency because of a

common business vocabulary that defines all terms

clearly and consistently, flexibility because business

rules can be changed in an easy and controlled way

and efficiency as some business rules can be

executed automatically.

The following subsections will describe the

theoretical frame and the prototypical

implementation within ADOeGov

. The concluding

paragraphs of this chapter provide examples of the

actual application scenarios within the projects by

giving a brief overview on the models created and

designed as pilots.

3.1 The Business Rules Modelling

Procedure: A Framework

Description

Within the course of the FIT project the project

partner Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz developed

a theoretical framework defining the different steps

necessary to get from the first level of “verbal” rule

definition to an executable level. Figure 1 depicts

these steps accordingly and provides the standards

definition and scientific research in this domain.

Document

Inspection

Process Model

Inspection

Other

Sources

Step 1

Business

Model

Ruleset

L1 L1

„Brain“

Inspection

Rule Level I

Rule Level II

Rule Level III

Step 2

Rule Level III

Step 3

Interchange

Model

Execution

Model

Ruleset

L3 L3

OWL

SWRL

BPEL Java JavaScript

Input

Figure 1: The Business Rules Framework.

The developed framework is defined as follows:

The input for the semi-formal representation of

business rules are document sources (e.g. laws,

regulations etc.), existing process models or implicit

conceptions of domain experts, as rules are often

stored in the head of the people. Other sources could

be database analyses or actual workflows in the form

of programme code. Terms, facts and rules are then

defined, grouped to rulesets and assigned to the

corresponding activities, decisions or processes. To

model these concepts two model types have been

created: The “Business process model” and the

“Rule level I model”.

To simulate and analyse the different paths of the

processes, business rules have to be transformed into

the second level formalism. This is again a semi-

formal representation but makes the rules executable

by a process stepper algorithm for easing the rule

introspection and dependencies by the user.

The second step of the business rules framework

transforms the models into an open accessible

format using OWL-S, OWL and SWRL. Process

models are represented in OWL-S. Terms and facts

are transformed into OWL, whereas business rules

are transformed into SWRL. This formal

representation of business rules makes them

interchangeable with third parties.

The last step is the machine executable

representation of processes and business rules. The

formal and thus interchangeable models created in

step 2 of the framework will be automatically

migrated into machine executable format. OWL-S

must be transformed into BPEL to execute the

workflow, whereas business rules can be exported

e.g. into Java or JavaScript.

3.2 The Business Rule Modelling

Language: A Realisation Approach

The technical frame concerning business rules as

modelling concepts has been implemented using the

concepts of the meta-modelling platform ADONIS

(Karagiannis, D. and Kühn, H., 2002). This gives the

method engineer the necessary flexibility and

efficiency in the customisation of the application

accordingly. Details on the meta-modelling

approach and customisation can be found in

(Karagiannis, D. and Bajnai, J., 2004), (Junginger,

S., 2000), (Nemetz, M., 2006), (Fill, H., 2004).

Figure 2 shows an excerpt of the business rules

meta-model, showing all relevant model types and

the relations between them. The rectangles represent

the model types and the arrows the associations

between them. The overall model stack of

ADOeGov

including all usage scenarios can be

found in (Palkovits, S. and Wimmer, M., 2003) and

(Palkovits, S. et al, 2004).

As the figure shows business rules are modelled

on three different levels, from the semi-formal to the

formal and thus interchangeable representation using

ICEIS 2007 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

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standards like OWL and SWRL. Business rules are

grouped to rule sets. If a certain rule set is assigned

only rules belonging to this rule set will be executed

at runtime. Business rules are assigned to the

business process model or to the workflow model

corresponding to the BPEL standard on a technical

level.

Business process model

OWL model

Business process model

(OWL-S)

Rule Level I - Business View

SWRL model

Rule Level III - Interchange

View

Rule Level II - Transition

View

Workflow model (BPEL)

1...m

Referenced ruleset

1...n

1...m

Referenced ruleset

1...n

1...m

Referenced ruleset

1...n

1...m

Referenced ontology concept

1...n

1...m

Referenced ruleset

1...n

1...m

Referneced process model

1...m

Referenced workflow

1...n

1...m

Referenced SWRL model

1...n

Figure 2: The Business Rules Meta-Model (Excerpt).

The Rule Level I – Business View is a semi-

formal representation of business rules according to

(von Halle, B., 2001). The added value of this model

type is that it can be modelled and understood by

business people as well as by IT people as it is

clearly structured and offers as well a verbal

definition of the rules. The three major concepts,

which can be modelled, are terms, facts and rules.

Terms and facts represent the semantics behind the

rules. Rules are declarative statements that apply

logic or computation to information values. Through

the execution of rules new information can be

discovered or decisions about actions can be made.

Rules can be classified into five groups: Constraints,

guidelines, action-enabling rules, computations and

inferences.

The Rule Level II – Transition View is also a

semi-formal representation of business rules.

Business rules defined on this level can be used for

simulation, variant and alternative testing and

represent one step before implementing the rules

within execution systems. It is particularly important

for allowing an introspection of the dynamic nature

of the rules which cannot be accomplished with

Level I models.

The Rule Level III is oriented towards a fully

machine interpretable representation. To define rules

in a formal way two further model types were

necessary. The standards agreed upon by the project

partners were SWRL and OWL. Concepts for

automatically generating a first draft of an ontology

and using this information within the SWRL models

are currently discussed within the project.

3.3 Application Scenario

The business rules approach implemented within the

FIT project is applied within e-government and

public administration within the following scenarios:

 Variable process execution to determine

activities and processes to be executed during

process runtime,

 intelligent resource allocation at run time to

select employees based on special skills, to

present information depending on user

categories or to select a particular web-service

and

 Intelligent branching and decision making at

runtime to control the process flow

accordingly.

For the FIT project a workbench as an

organisational frame has been configured and set

live providing tools and functionality for

collaborative process management using a strict

service-oriented approach and online capabilities.

The functionalities offered are web-modelling for

creation, update and editing of models, the web-

documentation for model review and commenting,

interfaces for importing and exporting information

within the platform to and from highly specialized

tools like ontology editors, workflow designers and

rule editors. The workbench is regarded as a

common knowledge space throughout the project

where all model based information can be retrieved

and stored.

ADAPTIVE PROCESSES IN E-GOVERNMENT - A Field Report about Semantic-Based Approaches from the EU-Project

“FIT”

267

Figure 3 shows how OWL classes, instances and

properties can be used to define SWRL rules. This

rule evaluates whether an application for building

permission has to be approved by the historical

conservation agency. The antecedent and the

consequent of this rule both consist of one atom with

references to object properties and individuals of the

OWL notation.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The results presented in this position paper provide

an overview on the current stage of development and

research within the area of agile process

management from the perspective of the e-

government project FIT. The presented approach

represents a step in the direction making

administrative procedures transparent, flexible and

efficient by using semantic technologies and

concepts.

Currently the applicability of the introduced

business rule methodology is evaluated by selected

scenarios of the project partners as well as the

integration potential into other domains and

scenarios is investigated.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank our partners Fachhochschule

Nordwestschweiz (FHNW) from Switzerland as well

as City of Voecklabruck (STADT VB) for their

fruitful input and discussion during the prototypical

implementation of the modelling prototype.

We would like to express special thanks to Ms.

Feldkamp (FHNW), Ms. Thönssen (FHNW), Prof.

Dr. Hinkelmann (FHNW) and Dr. Rapp (STADT

VB) for their input and discussion during various

online and offline meetings as well as Prof. Dr.

Karagiannis from the University of Vienna for

mentoring the development business rule approach.

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