A WEB-BASED ARCHITECTURE FOR

E-GOV APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Marcelo Tilli, André M. Panhan, Osman Lima and Leonardo S. Mendes

Communication Networks Laboratory, Communications Department, Eletrical and Computer Engineering Faculty

University of Campinas, UNICAMP- Cidade Universitária "Zeferino Vaz"- Barão Geraldot, Campinas, SP, Brazil

Keywords: Electronic Goverment, e-gov, web-based system, MVC, Hibernate, Struts, Service-oriented.

Abstract: In this paper we present a web-based architecture for e-gov application development. We propose to study

and characterize a software development environment of “electronic governance in cities”, with emphasis

on: legacy system integration, heterogeneous data base integration and development of an integrated web-

based environment for the provision of e-gov services. This architecture is based on a 4-layer MVC model,

the typical MVC (Model, View, Controller) plus a data layer, this architecture imposes few requirements to

its clients, mainly a HTML web-browser, which allows this architecture to be platform-independent.

1 INTRODUCTION

A great deal of the development effort of software

systems is centered on modeling, characterization

and development of business models for the solution

of specific problems. However, when you have to

deal with the development of e-gov systems,

particularly when the systems are built in an

integrated network environment, there is a great

dependency among all the systems that compose the

general solution of e-gov applications.

Systems of people registration, services, taxes,

protocol, finance, are common on a government

environment. The problem is that usually, several

different vendors, which use different platforms and

different development tools, often build these

applications. Then we end up with several

heterogeneous and independent data bases, which

are often incompatible. This scenario is very

common on e-gov systems around the world.

On the last ten years, several countries have

sponsored e-gov systems and projects of system

interoperability. Initially, these architectures were

created to access specific problems and not with the

objective of being a generic model that could be

universally accepted.

There are many research areas on the topic of

electronic governance systems (Peristeras,

Tarabanis, 2004), (Narasimha, Kumar, 2003),

(Murthy, Kumar, 2003), (Song Gang, 2005), (Lenk,

Traunmüller, 2001). The study of semantic

information processing platforms, the development

of interoperability platforms and legacy system

convergence, are some of the many research areas

that the study of advanced techniques of software

engineering, computation engineering and

communication engineering can contribute to solve

several difficulties that faces e-gov system’s

software developers.

In this paper we present a web-based architecture

for e-gov application development. We propose to

study and characterize a software development

environment of “electronic governance in cities”,

with emphasis on: legacy system integration,

heterogeneous data base integration and

development of an integrated web-based

environment for the provision of e-gov services.

2 PREVIOUS WORKS

The work of (Peristeras, Tarabanis, 2004). This

paper summarizes a broad research modeling effort,

which aims at developing a domain description for

the overall governance system. The authors propose

the Governance Enterprise Architecture (GEA) as a

set of domain models that serve as a top-level

enterprise architecture. Namely, they present the

mega-process model, the interaction model, the

public policy formulation object model, the service

provision object model and the latest development of

the object model for the overall governance system.

476

Tilli M., M. Panhan A., Lima O. and S. Mendes L. (2008).

A WEB-BASED ARCHITECTURE FOR E-GOV APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business, pages 476-479

DOI: 10.5220/0001911604760479

 SciTePress

The work of (Narasimha, Kumar, 2003) propose

an architecture for model development, for the

planning, design and implementation of e-gov

systems. The proposed model has four conceptual

layers: Business Process Architecture; Data

Architecture; Application Architecture; Technology

Infrastructure.

3 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

We propose an architecture for e-gov systems for

cities, that can access the general conditions of such

systems, such as: the existence of legacy software,

redundant, heterogeneous data bases and the

paradigm shift from client-server platforms to web-

based, integrated system for e-Gov services.

3.1 Architecture

For the architecture development, we used a

modified MVC model (Model-View-Controller).

In pursuit of greater security and flexibility, we

separated the client’s communication layer from the

business logic; hence we created an application layer

responsible for dispatching requests and controlling

its flows. The 4-layer architecture (Model-View-

Controller-Data) is show on Figure 1 (Fowler, 2003).

Figure 1: 4-Layer architecture.

This 4-layer model allowed us to reach some

objectives: Facilitates the development of a

distributed system, with security and with high

availability; Enhances the automatization capacity of

the city’s public administration sectors, offering

online services to the citizens, expediting its

execution and accomplishing greater overall quality.

This architecture imposes few requirements to its

clients, mainly a HTML web-browser, which allows

this architecture to be platform-independent. With

this architecture, there’s no need to install/update the

application software on the user’s computer.

Modifications of the system’s software are made

directly on the main server, which is transparent for

the user. This is an improvement over the 2-layer

model, where all update would have to be physically

installed in the user’s computer (Fowler, 2003).

The 4-layer model is as follows:

3.1.1 Model (Business)

This layer contains all the business logic and

manages this logic through the use of EJB

components. Therefore, this layer provides a

structure for the implementation of distributed

applications, aiming for the separation of concepts

and to improve on quality factors, such as

modularity, extensibility and reusability (Alur,

Crupi, Malks, 2001).

3.1.2 View (Presentation)

This layer renders the model into a user interface

element. It access enterprise data through the Model

and specifies how that data should be presented. We

are developing this layer with JSP (Java Server

Pages) and JSF (Java Server Faces)

3.1.3 Controller (Application)

This layer processes and responds to events,

typically user actions, and may invoke changes on

the model. Based on the user’s interactions and the

outcome of the model actions, the controller

responds by selecting an appropriate view. To

facilitate the model’s utilization, this layer should be

able to interact with default Data-Base access

technologies, such as JDBC and EJB and also be

able to interact with third-parties technologies such

as Hibernate, iBATIS, or Object Relational Bridge.

3.1.4 Data

This layer is the domain-specific representation of

the information on which the application operates. It

A WEB-BASED ARCHITECTURE FOR E-GOV APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

477

is responsible for the DAO (Data Access Objects),

or the direct Data-Base access. This model allows

for a transparent persistence of the objects models.

The data persistence allows us to aggregate

several features to the proposed architecture, like the

following: Transitivity persistence; transparent

retrieval of data-objects (on a given object graph);

The purpose of the data-layer is to allow for an

intelligent way to store object-oriented data,

allowing for the convergence of heterogeneous data-

bases.

4 AN E-GOV SYSTEM FOR

CITIES

On this section, we will present a use case for a

complete system for cities management, which can

manage all services, citizen records, processes

management and relevant data for a city’s

administration. The main purpose of this system is to

provide consistent information to the manager to

make the right decisions. From this prerogative,

emerged the SIGM (Integrated System for

Municipal e-Gov).

The application integration under a same domain

was possible with the development of a single data

base, covering, for example, citizens, business,

social data, departments, processes, internal services,

online services, systems users, addresses and others.

Therefore, all data are concentrated and correlated

under the same concept “Citizen Single Data Base”

(BDUC).

Figure 2: SIGM System Modules.

Through this concept, we achieved the

interconnection between different modules of an e-

gov system in an efficient and easy way, as show in

Figure

2. We have adopted the Hibernate

technology for data base communication, which

allows the independence of the DBSM (Data base

System Management).

As this technology works with data object’s

concept, the conventional relational data base BDUC

was created to facilitate the implementation and take

advantage of all of the Hibernate resources.

Therefore, we created a data base under two

perspectives: object-oriented and relational, thus, it

is possible to represent any data evolved with e-gov

and its legacy systems.

This modeling, as in object oriented system,

allows us to reuse data for creation of new tables,

without affecting the system operation.

In particular for this use case, we used the

Microsoft Windows 2003 Server operational system

and the Oracle DBSM, but we can also apply the

same use case to others platforms.

The SIGM can be deployed in any city, even

those that have legacy application in use; since this

kind of integration was planned by the adopted

architecture and can be done in several ways:

- SIGM control the legacy applications through

its functionalities and the BDUC data base.

- The legacy applications are incorporated by the

SIGM.

- The legacy applications can use the business

rules already implemented in the SIGM´s EJB

layer.

After deployment, the SIGM can be accessed

from any computer in any city location, by any

person (citizen or government employee) registered

in the system. These users can request certain

services through the Internet, without the need to

move to the city hall or any other service point.

This architecture also offers the possibility for

application distribution on multiple servers, not only

in the system execution, but also on its development.

By distributing the development of a system of this

magnitude, we obtain independence between the

developer’s teams and we can control more

effectively each module implementation. By

separating the business layer from the web layer, it

is possible that others systems can use its

functionalities without affecting the SIGM´s

operation. This can be done by direct access of the

EJB containers which are on the business layer.

To keep in order with the proposed architecture,

on the web layer we adopted the Struts framework,

which is an open source framework that works on

MVC architecture and provides several control

components to create dynamic Java web applications

(Husted, Dumoulin, Franciscus, Winterfeldt, 2003).

This architecture also provided the development of

an authentication system, which allows the SIGM to

manage the permissions and profile control of the

SIGM´s users and users of any other legacy

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478

application already in operation, as show on

Figure 3.

In these systems, all users and applications are

registered through SIGM, and each one has its

profile registered in different tables, so we can create

different permissions profiles to different users for

different applications. To control a legacy

application, we just need to register the profile of

this application and their permissions.

Figure 3: Legacy System Integration.

This use case was useful to demonstrate the

efficiency of the proposed architecture and the

technologies chosen for its implementation. In

regard to this, we can consider that the use case was

successful in its implementation.

The first version of the system was implemented

and it is currently in use in the Brazilian cities of São

José do Rio Preto and Campinas. We continue the

system development, with new functionalities and

features being added frequently, without hindering

the system’s operation.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presented an architecture (SIGM) for the

development of e-gov systems, taking in

consideration government environment such as: the

existence of legacy systems, redundant and

heterogeneous data bases, the paradigm shift toward

web-based platforms, the necessity of constant

services development by the government, etc. The

architecture is based on the MVC model with de

addition of a data layer.

The SIGM purpose is to integrate heterogeneous

applications under a distinct domain, to develop a

single data base, that encompass data from all the

citizens, enterprises, social, government

departments, government procedures, internal

services, online services, system’s users, address,

etc.

By using this single data base, all the data are

converged and correlated under the concept of the

BDUC, which data access is made through

Hibernate, which allows the independence from a

DBSM. SIGM can also control legacy applications

through its functionalities and the BDUC data base.

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