DE4A Semantic interoperability

According to the European Interoperability Framework,

Semantic interoperability ensures that the precise format and meaning of exchanged data and information is preserved and understood throughout exchanges between parties, in other words ‘what is sent is what is understood’. In the EIF, semantic interoperability covers both semantic and syntactic aspects:

• The semantic aspect refers to the meaning of data elements and the relationship between them. It includes developing vocabularies and schemata to describe data exchanges, and ensures that data elements are understood in the same way by all communicating parties;
• The syntactic aspect refers to describing the exact format of the information to be exchanged in terms of grammar and format.

In this sense, semantic interoperability agreements need to be set up and manage as part of the interoperability governance and the public service governance. In DE4A, there are concepts and information that need to have a common understanding and the semantic assets of the Information Desk implement the corresponding semantic interoperability agreements. The main concepts of such agreements and the components that implement them are:

• Canonical evidence type: canonical form for each evidence type that has been identified by the DE4A pilots as needed by their online procedures and issued by cross-border authorities. The full semantic description of the terms that compose each canonical evidence type is available trough the DE4A Multilingual Ontology Repository (MOR).
• Provision: availability of a data service according to a exchange pattern for issuing a canonical evidence type by a issuing authority (data owner) corresponding to an administrative territorial unit within a country. Each provision can also require some additional parameters for properly identity the data subject and the evidence. The full semantic description of provisions is available through the DE4A Issuing Authority Locator (IAL), obtaining the provision information from an administrative territorial level or unit and a canonical evidence type. The additional parameters are semantically described in the DE4A Multilingual Ontology Repository.
• Data Service Endpoint: information for actually use of the data services that are part of the DE4A evidence exchange system. This information is available through the DE4A Evidence Service Locator (ESL), obtaining the data service endpoint information from a issuing authority (data owner) and a canonical evidence type.Besides, the DE4A Information Exchange Model (IEM) implements the semantic agreement for the exchange of business messages through the data services.
• Multilingual term: term uniquely identified and semantically described from the semantic and the syntactic point of view for a common understanding. The meaning of a term is described in every EU official language through automatic translations from English or translations verified by national domain experts. The data type of a term can be a simple type (e.g. string) or a complex type; complex types are compose by other simple and/or complex types. A special complex type is either a canonical evidence type, or a set of additional parameters for a provision or a code list. The full semantic description of all the terms used in DE4A is available trough the DE4A Multilingual Ontology Repository (MOR).

De4A Semantic Interoperability solutions (WP3) Deliverables:

D3.1 and D3.2: Initial requirements for semantic assets

In this deliverable, we collect and link information to design a comprehensive framework (DE4ASem) of modular semantic assets and components needed for delivering integrated cross-border public services. Towards this purpose, standards and efforts for service description (e.g. TOOP, SDG) and provision (e.g. SDG evidence data models) are considered. Moreover, existing infrastructures and standard approaches in the EU context that facilitate the access to information are utilised.

One key aspect for our approach is reusability, thus the semantic framework will reuse and extend relevant metadata efforts (e.g. EDCI data model) as well as central components and services from other initiatives (e.g. DSD, Evidence Broker) and attempt to link those with needs and requirements identified by other work packages of the DE4A project. Consequently, the work and scope of this deliverable is taking into consideration on the three following dimensions:

·       The 3 pilots of DE4A

·       The WP2 Project Start Architecture (PSA)

·       The SDG OOP Architecture

Additionally, DE4A aims to explore alternative solutions to once-only functionality or to efficient e-government services in general, with other interaction patterns that may go beyond the SDGR requirements [1].

The DE4ASem framework focuses on two aspects semantic interoperability:

·       to safeguard that the correct semantics of exchanged data and information is preserved and understood throughout exchanges between EU Member States needed to deliver integrated cross-border public services. The disclaimer that we put forward here, is that these data models are dedicated on the ones promoted and used by the 3 pilots of DE4A.

·       to provide the central components of the information desk. Information Desk (IDK) offers information to DC, and DP that is required for smooth cross-border exchange of evidences in the context of DE4A. The IDK consists of following core components: Issuing Authority Locator that helps the DC to find out the issuing authority that can provide the required canonical evidence within a particular country, Evidence Service Locator that helps the DC to locate the evidence service to request a canonical evidence to a particular issuing authority, Cross-border Access Authorisation Registry that helps the DP to check if the request has the required authorisation, and Multilingual Ontology Repository that to understand the meaning of canonical evidence attributes and, specifically, supports the Preview Component to show the user the data along with their corresponding labels in the language chosen by the user to interact with the portal. As described at deliverable D2.4 Project Start Architecture, there are two approaches for mapping between domestic and cross-border evidences: criteria-based and evidence-bases. In DE4ASem, we are considering both approaches. It is mentioned that this deliverable provides a high-level view of the Information Desk. However, according the DE4A pilot needs, criteria-based approach is not needed in the scope of the project.

Links to deliverables:

D3.1:

D3.2:

D3.3 and D3.4: Semantic Framework

This deliverable assembles the initial requirements as far as semantic interoperability is concerned within the context of Digital Europe for All (DE4A) project. To achieve this, analysis of existing taxonomies and libraries of core vocabularies is performed. While this deliverable is focusing on the initial set of requirements for semantics in DE4A, it also defines a structured way of eliciting requirements with co-operation from other Work Packages (WPs), namely work package WP4 – “Cross-border Pilots for Citizens and Business and Evaluation” and work package WP2 – “Architecture Vision and Framework”, to provide design decisions and implementation guidelines to work package WP5 – “Common Component Design & Development”, and DE4A technical partners as well.

Semantic interoperability faces various common issues at national and at European Union (EU) level in terms of semantic and syntactic aspects as well. The example of such common issues include lack of harmonised or common data structures, minimal agreements on reference data, lack of common management metadata, and absence of unique identifiers for the public services and public organisations.  Moreover, the semantic assets of EU ISA2 (Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens) Programme have a good initiative in terms of academic rather than a practical view.

The main results achieved in this deliverable are a) the vocabularies to serve as input for the framework of work package WP3 - “Semantic Interoperability Solutions”, b) the outcomes from relevant projects regarding semantics, c) Thus, existing core vocabularies from European Commission (EC) and domain specific ontology libraries identified are the ISA2 Core vocabularies (Core Public Services Vocabulary - CPSV, Core Public Organisation Vocabulary - CPOV) and generic ontologies such as Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS), Dublin core, Friend of a Friend - FOAF.  We will also gather additional requirements for piloting countries national semantic models, if any, and this will help work package  WP3 - “Semantic Interoperability Solutions” to build a common repository of semantic models and business rules. The requirements of the semantic blocks and their dependencies needed for delivering integrated cross-border public services are collected focusing on the DE4A specific pilot scenarios. Moreover, the semantic outcomes from TOOP (The Once Only Principle project) form a potential baseline, to be extended by filling in the gaps identified by the pilots conducted therein. That is why in the current document we analyze relevant results of TOOP project. An agile approach to requirement elicitation is proposed, letting requirements incrementally grow with the experiences from pilots and emerging taxonomies and libraries. Iterations thereby correspond to the pilots conducted in the project.  This approach will feed the next deliverable “Final requirements for semantic assets” and provide architectural (WP2 – “Architecture Vision and Framework”) and technical (WP5 – “Common Component Design & Development”) requirements to DE4A.

Links to deliverables:

D3.3:

D3.4:

D3.5 and D3.6: DE4A Semantic Toolkit

These deliverables describe the implementation of a toolkit in the context of WP3 Task 3.3 “Implementation of the semantic tools” for delivering cross-border public services.  This implementation process follows an agile methodology, by starting in a baseline level with D3.1 “Initial requirements for semantic assets” and D3.3 “Initial version of the Semantic framework” and incrementally improving by adding the tools resulting from the pilot requirements and the other emerging assets identified and added in these live documents.

To that end, first, the document presents a comparative analysis of the most salient tools and technologies that are available and expected to be used towards the performance of key semantic tasks. The objective was to select the most appropriate set of tools, adjusted to DE4A needs. These tools and the pilot specific ontologies, mentioned in D3.3, provided the basis for the implementation process of the common evidence data models (canonical evidences). Furthermore, the semantic components, introduced in D3.3, for obtaining requisite information and exchanging messages are designed for the first iteration of the project by using a standard approach for ontology modelling with competency questions.

The main results and findings of this deliverable are:

• Based on the tools analysis, it is recommended VocBench as the ontology editor and Virtuoso as the ontology storage tool for the DE4A related needs.
• Identification of the canonical evidence types and implementation of the respective data models in XML Schema format for the first iteration of the project.
• Initial specification and semantic model of the Information Desk (IDK) for helping data evaluators to locate the issuing authorities in the context of the first iteration of the project.
• Initial specification of the DE4A Information Exchange Model (IEM) for the provision of public procedures through modelling the payload of request and response messages for the evidence exchange.

Links to deliverables:

D3.5:

D3.6:

D3.7: DE4A machine learning algorithms

In De4a context, we will investigate the possibilities of applying machine learning algorithms to understand the usage patterns of the services and the potential of self-emerging ontologies from a collaborative tagging system to be used as an information classification structure that can be updated dynamically and continuously. The idea is not to automatically derive a fully functional ontology but expanding and integrating it with concepts and terms identified by user participatory data. For instance, analytic data, data that track the integrated e-services will be derived from piloting of the use cases, and machine learning algorithms can be applied upon these data to establish, for example, new tags and semantics upon the services utilised. Usage data can be used to draw weights in order to reinforce or deactivate initially designed relationships among properties within classes in the original ontologies. In other words, data can feed machine learning algorithms to adapt the ontology accordingly. As a result, new classes and properties may appear, synonyms may be identified, relationships among classes and properties may change. Special focus will be put on investigation of the potential of machine learning and self-emerging ontologies in providing semantic interoperability within European eGovernment networks. The idea is that the semantics themselves (e.g. ISA2 Core Vocabularies) are to be dynamically enhanced by machine learning algorithms on (training) data. These data will be initially related to public service usage data.