A Public Administration Domain Ontology for Semantic Discovery of eGovernment Services Sotirios K. Goudos 1, 3 , Vassilios Peristeras 2 , Nikolaos Loutas 1, 3 , Konstantinos Tarabanis 1, 3 1 Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), 57001, Thessaloniki, Greece 2 National University of Ireland, DERI Galway, IDA Business Park, Dangan, Galway, Ireland 3 Information Systems Laboratory, University of Macedonia, 54006, Thessaloniki, Greece sgoudos@uom.gr vassilios.peristeras@deri.org {nlout, kat}@uom.gr Abstract In this paper we present a top level Public Administration (PA) domain ontology. For this purpose we employ the generic public service object model of the Governance Enterprise Architecture (GEA) providing PA domain specific semantics. We represent this service model using the Web Ontology Language (OWL). This domain ontology may serve as the knowledge base for eGovernment semantic web applications. A sample application is presented that finds the public services that can be executed by a citizen based on his/hers profile using semantic discovery. The input to the application consists of the user profile, while the output returned consists of the public services that match the specified profile. 1. Introduction EGovernment is an attractive field for research organizations and businesses as well. Recently, the emphasis is put on the modeling of Public Administration domain using semantic web technologies. The prevailing approach is to implement e-services using these technologies. The Governance Enterprise Architecture (GEA) [1] defines a generic domain model for PA [2]. This model defines common aspects and generic features of the domain, with emphasis on service and process models. A GEA overview can be found in [3-4]. The models are presented in detail in [1]. For the purpose of this paper, we focus on the GEA detailed service object model (Figure 1) for service provision referred to in this paper as the PA Service Model for the sake of brevity. GEA aims at introducing a consistent set of models that constitute the basis for a reference eGovernment domain ontology. Such an ontology is generic enough to cover the overall eGovernment domain while at the same time specific enough to sufficiently model PA specific semantics. In this paper we extend our earlier work [3-4]. We present a description of the GEA PA Service model in OWL. To present the applicability of this ontology a sample application is presented. This receives a citizen’s profile as input and provides as output a set of public administration services that match with this profile. The existence of such an application is clearly a business need for the smooth operation of PA. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 has the GEA PA domain Ontology in OWL. Section 3 describes the application architecture that uses our ontology. Finally, the conclusion and future work are given in section 4. Evidence Provider Concequence Receiver Other input Effect Consequence Output PA Entity Role has Evidence Placeholder Purpos e of evidence Piece of Evidence contains has PA Subdom ain Precondition validates Service Provider Service Collaborator Societal Entity Input Law sets Outcome PA Domain Effect Type Administrative Level Public Service provides participates in receives uses is governed b y produces has has has Figure 1. The GEA PA Service Object Model 2. PA Domain Reference Ontology in OWL The GEA object model in Figure 1 was shown in a UML class diagram. For simplicity, the model was not shown in its entirety. It is obvious that such a model can be implemented using a relational database. Such an approach would be complex since it would not exploit the advantages of declarative knowledge representation. The main requirement today is to be able to share information 1-4244-1476-8/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE.