Publications

The availability of domain frameworks to enable rapid development of Electronic Public Services (EPS) is essential to meet the increasing demand for mature EPS by various government stakeholders. This paper presents a composite domain framework comprising frameworks to build the Front-Office and Back-Office parts of an EPS. The framework supports a set of domain requirements obtained through a detailed analysis of over 30 concrete public services. After presenting these requirements, the framework is described in four stages - architecture, design, implementation and instantiation - all using UML to capture the artifacts built during development. We also illustrate the application of the framework through a case study in developing an Electronic Licensing Service by means of framework instantiation. We conclude with some comments on the complexity, flexibility and performance of the framework. This work was carried out as part of the e-Macao Project to build a foundation for e-Government in Macao, funded by the Government of Macao SAR.

 The availability of domain frameworks to enable rapid development of Electronic Public Services (EPS) is essential to meet the increasing demand for mature EPS by various government stakeholders. This paper presents a composite domain framework comprising frameworks to build the Front-Office and Back-Office parts of an EPS. The framework supports a set of domain requirements obtained through a detailed analysis of over 30 concrete public services. After presenting these requirements, the framework is described in four stages - architecture, design, implementation and instantiation - all using UML to capture the artifacts built during development. We also illustrate the application of the framework through a case study in developing an Electronic Licensing Service by means of framework instantiation. We conclude with some comments on the complexity, flexibility and performance of the framework. This work was carried out as part of the e-Macao Project to build a foundation for e-Government in Macao, funded by the Government of Macao SAR.

The availability of Electronic Public Services (EPS) is essential for achieving meaningful e-Government. As governments deliver many services to citizens, businesses and other customers, making all these services available online requires a systematic and rigorous approach. A crucial element in this approach is the availability of an Infrastructure to enable rapid EPS development. This demo presents an Electronic Licensing (e-Licensing) Service developed upon a prototype Software Infrastructure for EPS. The Infrastructure comprises: (1) frameworks for design of Front-Office and Back-Office applications, (2) services for workflow management and cross-agency messaging, and (3) an Infrastructure Management Service. The demo shows the process of developing an EPS upon the EPS Infrastructure and demonstrates the various use cases of the e-Licensing application rapidly developed upon the Infrastructure. This work was done in the context of the e-Macao Project, funded by the Government of Macao SAR to build a foundation for e-Government in Macao.

This paper presents a software infrastructure to support the execution and rapid development of Electronic Public Services (EPS). The infrastructure provides frameworks, components, services and tools to aid analysis, design, implementation and deployment of EPS in cross-agency environments. In its current version, the infrastructure include: two frameworks - Front-Office and Back-Office, three services - Workflow, Messaging and Infrastructure Management, and two components - Tracking and Notification. The paper presents the requirements, architecture and elements of this infrastructure. It also presents a software process for developing EPS based on the infrastructure. This work was done as part of e-Macao Project, funded by the Government of Macao SAR, to build a foundation for e-Government in Macao.

The paper presents the development of a dependable messaging infrastructure for Electronic Government. Based on a few simple concepts like messages, members and channels, the infrastructure was developed to facilitate the exchange of messages by government agencies in a dependable and automated way. The dependability requirement was addressed on various levels: design, development and application. Considering design, the infrastructure comprises a small core offering plain messaging services, a repository of extensions to provide additional services, and a development framework to rigorously specify, implement and verify messaging extensions. Considering development, the infrastructure was build through rigorous use of modeling and analysis in various development stages. Considering applications, government agencies can use the infrastructure to exchange messages through carefully managed logical communication channels and the prudent use of necessary extensions, including extensions to implement required security measures. The paper presents the development and explains why the outcome satisfies the dependability requirement.

 The paper presents the development of a dependable messaging infrastructure for Electronic Government. Based on a few simple concepts like messages, members and channels, the infrastructure was developed to facilitate the exchange of messages by government agencies in a dependable and automated way. The dependability requirement was addressed on various levels: design, development and application. Considering design, the infrastructure comprises a small core offering plain messaging services, a repository of extensions to provide additional services, and a development framework to rigorously specify, implement and verify messaging extensions. Considering development, the infrastructure was build through rigorous use of modeling and analysis in various development stages. Considering applications, government agencies can use the infrastructure to exchange messages through carefully managed logical communication channels and the prudent use of necessary extensions, including extensions to implement required security measures. The paper presents the development and explains why the outcome satisfies the dependability requirement.

 The e-Government Activity area in UNU-IIST has grown since the beginning of the e-Macao Project in 2004. A portfolio of projects has been established and successfully executed, from the e-Macao Program - Building a Foundation for Electronic Government in Macao, through the UNeGov.net initiative - Bulding a Community of Practice for Electronic Governance, to concrete research and development projects on: Strategic IT Planning for Public Organizations, Standards and Best Practices for e-Government, Software Infrastructure for e-Government, Semantic Interoperability for e-Government, etc. UNU-IIST is increasingly recognized as a center of research and practice on e-Government, evidence of significant external funds brought to UNU-IIST through such projects, many workshops and schools organized in developing countries, a number of invited presentations, and increasing requests for assistance from various governments and public sector organizations. In order to support the running of such projects, enhance visibility and further increase funding opportunities, a Center for Electronic Governance at UNU-IIST was established in January 2007. The mission of the Center is - working in partnership with institutions from developing countries as well as international and other UN organizations, to build capacity and provide know-how and advice in planning, implementing and evaluating programs for Electronic Governance. The Center will fulfill its mission through a range of activities including: academic research, best practice development, research and development projects, human capacity development, institutional development and development of communities of practice. The purpose of this report is to introduce the Center: Rationale - reasons for establishing the Center; Mission - what is the Center going to do and who will benefit from it; Vision - what do we want the Center to become; Strategies - how will the Center fulfill its vision; Organization - how is the Center going to be organized; and Sustainability - how will we ensure the future success of the Center.

 Electronic Government offers a great potential for improving performance, increasing quality of services and reducing costs in the public sector. In order to gain these benefits, organizational changes and re-engineering of administrative processes within and between public agencies has to take place. This, in turn, requires strong government leadership. Countries considered the worldwide leaders in e-government have all created central coordination offices to lead, manage and promote e-government initiatives. In this paper, we present the experiences of Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Singapore and the United States in e-government coordination, as well as discuss the best practices in organizational structures for managing e-government. We also present some recommendations for establishing a central coordination office for Macao.

 This survey examines the current state of South-South Cooperation in Software Technology. Results from the survey show that there has been a surge in South-South Cooperation in Software Technology (SSC-ST) in general since 2003, with significant increase in regional, in addition to bilateral cooperation. A significant increase has also occurred in the contributions of UN organizations (e.g. UNCTAD, UNDP and UNU-IIST) as well as donor OECD countries (particularly Japan, South Korea and a few EU countries) to both the development of software technology capacities and their applications in the areas like agriculture, e-governance, transportation and the Information Society in general. SSC-ST in the areas of e-governance and e-learning is particularly high. However, there is a pronounced divide even among the countries of the South in the area of software technology, with India, China and a few South-East Asian countries providing almost all capacities of the South. So far, not much inter-regional cooperation was documented. SSC-ST cooperation in the area of Open Source Software (OSS) has been growing rapidly in the past three to five years. This has been strongly supported by UN organizations primarily as a means to affordable access, catalyst for capacity acquisition, and a possible solution to reducing the scale of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) problem.

 The paper presents a formal model for a knowledge repository shared by members of a Virtual Community of Practice (VCPs), describes how the repository can be used to underpin collaborative problem solving, and how to build computer support for such processes. The repository comprises the resources used and developed by VCPs particularly through problem solving. As a case study, the paper illustrates how the problem solving process and the underlying repository can be applied in disaster prevention and handling. The repository and the process are formally described using the RAISE Specification Language

The paper presents some challenges to Seamless e-Government, and proposes a technical solution – Government-Enterprise Ecosystem Gateway (G-EEG)to address them. G-EEG is a framework through which multi-organizational processes and applications can dynamically build, apply and evolve complex communication structures to asynchronously exchange messages in specific application contexts, e.g. to deliver seamless public services. In addition to basic messaging, G-EEG supports high-level messaging functions through dynamically-enabled horizontal (process-independent) or vertical (process-dependent) extensions. A number of extensions are described as solutions to the challenges for seamless e-Government. Currently a research prototype, G-EEG is specified formally and implemented using open standards

 The paper presents some challenges to Seamless e-Government, and proposes a technical solution - Government-Enterprise Ecosystem Gateway (G-EEG) to address them. G-EEG is a framework through which multi-organizational processes and applications can dynamically build, apply and evolve complex communication structures to asynchronously exchange messages in specific application contexts, e.g. to deliver seamless public services. In addition to basic messaging, G-EEG supports high-level messaging functions through dynamically-enabled horizontal (process-independent) or vertical (process-dependent) extensions. A number of extensions are described as solutions to the challenges for seamless e-Government. Currently a research prototype, G-EEG is specified formally and implemented using open standards.

 Many governments worldwide are establishing one-stop portals to provide access to various public services based on the needs of citizens or businesses and not the internal structure of the government. A critical support for such one-stop portals is a workflow infrastructure, supporting the matching of the needs against provided services and coordination of the implementing processes, often spanning several government agencies. This paper describes a generic workflow infrastructure for one-stop government - GovWF. GovWF supports the operations of a Virtual Government Organization - a hierarchy of agencies providing collectively a set of public services, while offering a uniform one-agency view to its customers. Conceptual and formal models are provided to rigorously describe the operations of GovWF. We describe how GovWF is implemented and also present a case study for illustration.

We present a model for collaborative problem solving in Virtual Communities of Practice. The model applies a repository, comprising resources, properties and statements, to underpin the process of problem-solving. The process allows for formulating, exploring, matching and gradually refining abstract problem descriptions (one kind of resource) into the corresponding concrete solutions (another kind of resource), expanding the underlying repository with new resources, properties and statements in the process. The model is defined formally, its usefulness is argued with a simple case study and a possible implementation is described using Semantic Web.

 We present a model for collaborative problem solving in Virtual Communities of Practice. The model applies a repository, comprising resources, properties and statements, to underpin the process of problem-solving. The process allows for formulating, exploring, matching and gradually refining abstract problem descriptions (one kind of resource) into the corresponding concrete solutions (another kind of resource), expanding the underlying repository with new resources, properties and statements in the process. The model is defined formally, its usefulness is argued with a simple case study and a possible implementation is described using Semantic Web.

 e-Macao is a two-year project to build a foundation for Electronic Government in Macao in terms of readiness assessment, software research and development, and capacity-building for government workforce. The project focused on five main activity areas: (1) survey - a detailed survey of the current state of e-Government practice was carried out, both locally and globally; (2) training - a comprehensive training program was organized for government workforce in technical and management skills for e-Government, promoting collaborative, cross-agency development among government trainees; (3) development - a prototype software infrastructure for e-Government was developed, with example Electronic Public Services delivered to citizens, businesses and government built on top of this infrastructure; (4) research - relevant research was conducted in foundational and applied aspects of e-Government; (5) dissemination - the findings were disseminated inside the project, locally among e-Government stakeholders, and internationally. The project was carried out from July 2004 to June 2006. It was led by UNU-IIST and funded by the Government of Macao SAR through Macao Foundation. UNU-IIST partners on the project were: the Government of Macao SAR, including 44 agencies in all vertical areas of the Government (Administration and Justice, Education and Culture, Finance and Economy, Security, and Transport and Public Works), University of Macau and INESC-Macau. The second phase of the project has been approved by the Government, promoted to a program framework, and extended to last for three more years until end of 2009. The aim of this report is to explain the project, from its aim and objectives, through activities and deliverables, to its organization and evaluation. More information about the e-Macao Project can be found from the project portal at http://www.emacao.gov.mo.

 The UNeGov.net Initiative - Building a Community of Practice for Electronic Governance - was established in order to transfer the experience gained through the e-Macao Project to other parts of the world, particularly to developing countries. The aim is to build a global Community of Practice, comprising experts and practitioners interested in developing, sharing and applying concrete solutions for Electronic Governance. The Initiative established an activity framework comprising: (1) a community portal to document all activities of the community, coordinate its work and maintain a repository of resources relevant to Electronic Governance, (2) a series of network-building workshops around the world, (3) a series of capacity-building schools and courses on various aspects of Electronic Governance, (4) a community-wide practice in collaborative problem-solving based on the common repository of resources, (5) a series of state-of-the-art and state-of-practice reports about Electronic Governance in various countries, (6) a curriculum for training public officials in planning, development and management for Electronic Governance, (7) projects promoting Good Governance through Electronic Governance, and (8) International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance. Within this framework, community actions are carried out in the scope of various thematic areas including: legislation, financing, organization, planning, coordination, human capacity development, e-readiness, e-participation, e-procurement, software infrastructure, public services, interoperability, standards for Electronic Governance, and others. The aim of this report is to explain the UNeGov.net initiative, from its aim and objectives, to concrete deliverables obtained and activities carried out during 2005 and 2006. More information about UNeGov.net can be found at http://www.unegov.net.