Access-eGov: Accessible eGovernment embracing the Semantic Web - Progress Released by: Karel Van Isacker Web Site: http://www.accessegov.org/ Access-eGov aims at increasing the accessibility of public administration services for citizens and Email: karel@e-isotis.org Keywords: accessibility of public administration services for citizens and business users Update Date: 1/23/2007 12:02:38 PM Hits: 70 Descrption:  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. 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.In the first project year, a design of the overall system architecture that Access-eGov will consist of was established. This design provides an overview of the conceptual, logical and physical architecture from different points of view: security-focused, functional, structural and data-based perspectives. In this respect, the architecture adheres to the planned pilot applications and the user requirements that have been identified in the first project phase (first six project months). These requirements are dealt with on the conceptual architecture level, by describing the system interaction with the user(s). In addition, a number of possible software architectures were researched for use in Access-eGov. Furthermore, a logical architecture has been proposed, taking the researched architectures into consideration, while also outlining some details of the envisioned physical level and its possible implementation. At this point in time, major software risks have also been identified and analysed. In the next six months, Access-eGov will continue with the development of the various services that will constitute the Access-eGov platform, and will also present its first results to the European Commission beginning of February 2007 during its yearly review meeting. 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 Contact infomation: e-ISOTIS: 40 klitaimnistras str, 13122, Ilion, Athens, Greece