Integration of Government Services using Semantic Technologies

the paper describes an approach to semantic interoperability of egovernment services applied within the 027020 fp6 ist access-egov project. the goal of the project was to improve accessibility and connectivity of governmental services for citizens and businesses by means of creating integrated scenarios and providing guidance to users while following this scenario. the scenario helps the user to identify and fulfil any needed electronic or real governmental services in a selected life situation. the access-egov project has developed software tools enabling service integration using semantic technologies. in addition to that, a methodology providing guidance to the user-driven process of creating ontologies was developed. sample ontologies were prepared for trial applications. the developed tools support browsing, discovery, and execution of government services according to a selected life event or goal. the project successfully developed and tested the proposed solutions. the software developed within the project is available as open source software.