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Introducing a Public Agency Networking Platform towards
supporting Connected Governance
Alexandros Dais, Mara Nikolaidou, Nancy Alexopoulou,
Dimosthenis Anagnostopoulos
Harokopio University of Athens, Department of Informatics and Telematics,
El. Venizelou 70, 17671, Athens
{adais, mara, nancy, dimosthe}@hua.gr
Abstract. Connected governance constitutes the current trend regarding the
provision of electronic governmental services. In the connected governance
paradigm, public agencies share objectives across organizational boundaries, as
opposed to working solely supporting autonomous portals in the e-government era.
The establishment of connected governance poses new requirements, such as cross-
organizational connectivity as well as back-office to front-office integration.
Towards supporting this concept, we propose a Public Agency Networking
Platform (PANP) facilitating personalized cross-organizational services, based on
the concept of life events which represent human situations that trigger public
services. The key feature of the platform is the simplification of the process
execution workflow, as life events are accomplished through a user orchestrated
process combining the functionality of discrete public agency applications.
Emphasis has been laid on the citizen data protection by adopting a profile
mechanism that enables the citizen to administer his/her own data loaded in his/her
profile.
Keywords: Connected Governance, Cross-organizational Services, Personalization,
Citizen Profile, Life Events, Governmental Portal, Privacy
1 Introduction
E-government should significantly contribute to government transformation process
towards a leaner, more cost effective government. In particular, personalized electronic
government services are supposed to give public organizations tremendous possibilities
for their e-government strategies [1]. Fully personalized e-government portals, for
example, should provide citizens with exactly those services they need, increasing citizen
satisfaction levels, making communication between governments and citizens more
effective and efficient while reducing bureaucracy. In a move towards efficiency many
countries are in the process of integrating e-government policies and strategies. The
concept of “connected governance” serves towards this direction. Derived from the
whole-of-government approach [1], it aims at improving cooperation between public
agencies as well as deepening consultation and engagement with citizens. Behind the
concept of connected governance is a systematic approach to collect, reuse and share data
and information [1]. For this concept to be accomplished, numerous e-government
interoperability frameworks have been proposed in different countries, such as UK e-
Government Interoperability Framework [2] and NZ e-Government Interoperability
Framework [3].
The existence of a “central portal” acting as a “single access point” for all services,
either cross-organizational or not, is essential for the establishment of the connected
governance paradigm. The way existing services, provided by independent public
agencies, are integrated and coordinated to fulfil citizen requests is also an important
issue. To this end, an approach has been proposed on the concept of “active life event
portal” ([4], [5], [6]). Life events constitute a grouping mechanism of public e-services
according to citizen needs. In particular, each life event corresponds to a workflow
composed by existing e-services. In such a case, a number of issues mainly related to
legal or governance-based obstacles may arise. Such issues mainly concern the transfer
and processing of the citizens’ data among different public agencies and the way the
cross-organizational processes are orchestrated and by whom. Towards this direction, this
paper proposes an alternative approach supporting personalized cross-organizational
services, while focusing on citizens’ awareness and acceptance over the overall workflow
corresponding to a life event. Our approach is based on a platform accommodating
personalized information produced by public agencies with the explicit consent of the
citizen. This constitutes an alternative implementation for personalization in the context
of e-government that ensures authorized usage of citizen data.
The proposed platform resembles a “virtual representative” for citizens using a profile
mechanism. The platform utilizes the life events concept as described in numerous public
sector portals ([7], [8]). Furthermore, it facilitates the maintenance of private citizen’s
folders containing all citizen-related data used during service request processing. The
profile interacts with the public agencies through the Public Agency Networking Platform
(PANP), described in the paper. The platform should not be conceived merely as a way to
facilitate the implementation public e-service portals, but rather as an alternative way of
electronic interaction among citizens and public agencies. Hopefully, the platform could
contribute to the vision of the connected governance and the creation of a public agency
networking system.
This paper is organised as follows: Section 2 provides some background information
regarding the transition from e-government to connected governance. Section 3 explains
how connected governance can be supported. The functionality and architecture of the
suggested Public Agency Networking Platform is presented in section 4, while section 5
discusses an example to illustrate citizen-government interaction through PANP.
Conclusions and future work reside in section 6.
2 Background – From E-Government to Connected Governance
The term e-government or simple “e-gov” concerns the use of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector
organisations, focusing on services provided electronically (that is via the WWW) to the
public. There are three main objectives of e-government: a) improving government
processes, b) connecting citizens and c) enabling seamless external interactions between
Public Agencies (PAs) at different levels (for example local, federal, European). Access
to supported e-services is provided through e-government portals, either supporting an
individual public agency or more commonly acting as a “single access point” for all e-
services provided at local or federal level, such as DirectGov portal [9] or SIMPLEX
program [10].
DirectEGov is the e-gov portal of the UK public sector. It is considered as one of the
most sophisticated e-gov portals in Europe [1] in terms of integration. It provides “public
services in one place”. It usually redirects the user to the site of the governmental agency
in charge where an on-line form provides the necessary information. The SIMPLEX
program is a transversal instrument that groups and assembles simplification initiatives
with significant impacts in terms of improving the quality of the relationship between the
Public Administration, citizens and businesses in Portugal [10]. One of the key projects
of SIMPLEX program is the Citizens Portal. It aggregates many e-services from different
public agencies and facilitates their grouping and easy access.
The phrase “e-government” has been related to a continuous effort for public sector
modernization since the 90's, but nowadays it is losing its appeal as a slogan or concept.
As reported by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
[11], “e-government initiatives in recent years are focusing on issues, such as how to
collaborate more effectively across agencies to address complex intra-government
problems and how to enhance public satisfaction and increase e-service usage”. Public
agencies have traditionally been compartmentalised. As governments are realizing that
continued expansion in e-services is not possible without some kind of integration
between individual public agency information systems, the increasing importance of
cross-organizational coherence has clearly shifted the focus towards managing,
integrating and coordinating government e-services [1]. Whereas the phrase “e-
government” stipulates the need for developing e-services, the concept of “connected
governance” [1] indicates the provision of e-services at the front-end supported by
integration, consolidation and innovation of cross-organisational government processes at
the back-end to improve service delivery. The distinguishing characteristic of connected
governance is that public agencies share objectives across organizational boundaries, as
opposed to working solely supporting autonomous portals in the e-government era.
3 Supporting the concept of Connected Governance
Connected governance is built upon the concept of interoperability, that is the ability of
public agencies to share and integrate information using common standards [1]. The key
features of connected governance are successful service innovation and multi-channel
service delivery. Service integration depends on strategies, policies and architectures that
allow data, IT systems, business processes and delivery channels to interoperate. If
delivery channels and back-office processes are integrated, different service delivery
channels can complement each other, improving the quality of both services and the
delivery to government and citizens simultaneously [12].
As already mentioned, the establishment of connected governance presupposes the
existence of a central portal acting as a single access point for all services, either cross-
organizational or not. Existing services provided by independent public agencies should
be integrated and coordinated in a seamless manner in order to fulfil citizen requests.
Fulfilling citizens’ requests implies that their needs have been effectively identified.
However, government authorities have their own view of the world providing public e-
services either through the central portal or alternative delivery channels. Most existing e-
gov portals, as DirectEGov, group provided services based on areas of interest, to
facilitate the citizen identifying the services that he/she should use to satisfy a particular
need. An alternative approach, as stated earlier, is based on life events. A life event is
defined as “a situation of a human being that triggers public services” [6], such as “fill an
employment application” or “getting married”. In both cases, the citizen should initiate
the corresponding services, which may be executed in the relative public agency
individual site, as in the case of DirectEGov portal [9].
The active life event portal approach ([4], [5], [6]) facilitates the representation of life
events as workflows composed by pre-existing e-services. In such a case, the citizen
initiates a predefined workflow instance, corresponding to the life event describing
his/her situation, e.g. “fill an employment application”. Such an approach promotes the
concept of connected governance. Numerous ongoing research efforts focus on the way
individual services are composed to workflows triggered by life events. Some of the
current EU projects towards this direction are:
Advanced eGovernment Information Service Bus (eGov-Bus) project (www.egov-
bus.org). According to project synopsis, the eGov-Bus is a dynamically adaptable
information system supporting life events experienced by the citizen or business serviced
by European government organizations. Governmental portals are transformed into
virtual agencies, which cluster functions related to the customer’s everyday life,
regardless of the responsible agency or branch of Government. Life event workflows are
defined by the Workflow Process Description Generator (WPDG) based on the domain
ontology pertaining to a life event class presented to the system by a citizen. Existing
natural language technologies will be integrated into the WPDG environment, both
supporting the full text categorisation facility as well as providing the speech
recognition/generation functions.
SemanticGov project (www.semantic-gov.org). SemanticGov project utilizes Service
Oriented Architectures paradigm and Semantic Web Services technology to
automatically compose life events on the basis of public service descriptions that are
given in Web Service Modelling Language (WSML). The architecture proposed by
SemanticGov is based on the Pan-European E-Government Services (PEGS) [4] and uses
concepts and technologies related to Web Service Modelling Ontology. The PEGS
infrastructure includes the service requestor, the front-office application, the application
layer and service providers. The application layer includes such modules as Service
Discovery, Service Composition, Data mediation, and Process Mediation [5].
OneStopGov project (www.onestopgov-project.org). The project aims at specifying,
developing and evaluating an active life-event oriented, integrated, interoperable single
sign-on platform for online one-stop government. This platform is accompanied by a
coherent framework for realising and exploiting online one-stop government at all levels.
Active life events are modelled in Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN). Their
definitions are expressed in Business Process Execution Language for Web Services
(BPEL4WS). The public services are specified in Web Service Description Language
(WSDL) and handled by a Universal Data Description Interface (UDDI) [6].
The main goal of the above projects is to facilitate government service delivery to
citizens in an automated and seamless fashion. The citizen has a “black box” view of
each life event, since he/she is informed about the outcome without having any notion of
individual workflow steps. Thus, a number of issues mainly related to legal or
governance-based obstacles may arise concerning the transfer and processing of the
citizens’ data among different public agencies and the way the cross-organizational
processes are orchestrated and by whom. Legal obstacles refer to collecting and storing
data on user characteristics. In many countries, the transfer and processing of citizen’s
data between different agencies of the public sector is prohibited by the legislation, thus
making cross-organizational cooperation unfeasible, even though such effort is
technologically safe. Governance-based obstacles relate to the question “what
department, administration, ministry, and ministers are responsible for what?” [13]. This
question is particularly relevant when implementing cross-organizational services that
combine several processes of different public agencies. Where should each service be
executed? Who is responsible for the citizen’s data exchanged between public agencies?
To overcome such difficulties, we propose that the citizen should obtain a “white box”
view of the services provided to him/her through the central portal. That is, the citizen
should be able to monitor individual steps of the workflow triggered by each life event,
give his/her consent before initiating each individual service offered by different agencies
and be actively involved in where, how and for how long individual data will be stored
while his/her request is being processed. Such an approach may increase citizen’s trust to
the provided services [14].
An additional aspect of connected governance is the enhancement of public
satisfaction and increase of e-service usage. A way to augment citizen satisfaction from
government services is the provision of personalization capabilities. The objective of a
web personalization system is to “provide users with the information they want or need
without expecting from them to ask for it explicitly” [15]. To achieve these objectives,
web personalization process usually consists of (a) the collection and pre-processing of
Web data, including content, structure, usage and user profile data, (b) the analysis and
discovery of correlations between such data, and (c) the determination of the
recommendation methods for hyperlinks, queries, products and user interface [16]. The
means to analyse the Web data include demographic filtering, collaborative filtering,
content -based filtering, case-based reasoning, rule-based filtering, Web mining and some
hybrid approaches [17]. The main idea behind these algorithms is to compare the
navigational behaviour of an active user with previous users in order to cluster similar
users and detect user patterns.
Personalization, in the context of the connected governance paradigm should be
revised. The user profile should provide personalized dynamic information about the
public agencies in question with the explicit consent of the user. None of the information
that the profile contains should be shared with the recommendation engine for the
necessary statistical reasoning, even thought this could be done anonymously. This
notion is a way to prohibit the privacy violation and enhance the trust between the
platform and the citizen. Furthermore is compliant with the Directive 1995/46/EC on
Data Protection (section VIII) and the Directive 2006/24/EC on Data Retention (Article
7). The citizens, through their profiles, should feel that they are the exclusive
administrators of the information that is loaded into the profile. However, as discussed in
[13] and [18], there are obstacles towards the personalization of electronic services
provided by the public sector. These obstacles concern both the citizen and public
agencies and are analytically discussed in [13]. Some of the most important ones
concerning the citizen are: a) access mechanism of services, b) control the user has over
the whole process, c) privacy of sensitive user data, d) trust and e) acceptance of the
delivery channels and the back-end processes. Some of the most important ones
concerning public agencies relate to legal, process-based, financial, governance-based
and technical issues. Building a connected governance platform overcoming most of the
identified obstacles should lead to a more personalised citizen view of electronic services
offered, which would consequently enhance public satisfaction and increase e-service
usage.
4 Public Agency Networking Platform
The aim of our effort is to suggest an alternative approach for connected governance
focusing on personalization and citizen acceptance issues. Thus, a “white box” view of
the provided services is adopted. To this end, we propose an integration platform, named
Public Agency Networking Platform (PANP), ensuring a single sign-on access to cross-
organizational services in a personalized fashion based on life events. Cross-
organizational life events are accomplished through the citizens’ active involvement, thus
enhancing citizens’ trust in the platform. Another key feature of the platform is the
modular design which enables the use of the platform in every administrative level (local,
federal, European). In the following, PANP proposed functionality is analytically
described.
Through PANP, citizens are able to create a profile and progressively arrange his/her
private space included in the profile by integrating applications specifically implemented
for this purpose by public agencies. Public Agency applications can be considered as the
main execution component of the platform and are executed within PANP. They act as
gateways between the citizens and the public agencies. They can be installed and
uninstalled in the citizens’ profile, with his/her consent, in a modular fashion. The profile
can be considered as a private virtual folder where citizens’ data from the government
agencies can be stored either permanently or temporarily, e.g. during a life event
processing. Special effort has been made so as the platform to be compliant with the
Directive 1995/46/EC on Data Protection (section VIII), the Directive 2006/24/EC on
Data Retention (Article 7) and the Directive 2002/58/EC on Privacy and Electronic
Communications. In the conceptual level, the owner of the profile and the data it contains
is the citizen himself. In the physical level, the platform should be hosted by a commonly
accepted and independent authority, constitutionally and legislatively responsible for the
protection of citizens’ personal data. Additionally, it is up to the citizen to define whether
his/her sensitive data will be permanently stored within the platform or be acquired in
real time from the public agencies, upon citizens’ log-in, and stored in a temporal session.
Citizens have full control on all the data and applications stored or used in their
profile. In that sense, the accomplishment of a life event is user-orchestrated. To
accomplish a specific life event, one or more public agency applications may need to be
integrated in the profile. The communication between them is accomplished by the
information they obtain or store within the profile. Thus, each public agency application
has no notion of the existence of others, while the workflow corresponding to a single life
event is formulated based on data exchange performed within the profile, fully controlled
by the citizen. A recommendation mechanism assists citizens to identify the proper
applications needed to accomplish a specific life event. Citizens can be authenticated by a
central authentication mechanism in PANP. However, user authentication may be
independently performed for a specific application either via standard login/password
fashion or using electronic signature stored in a certificate, if additional security is needed
by the corresponding public agency.
It is worth mentioning that cross organizational interoperability is achieved through
the user profile that acts as a “meeting point” or a “point of interaction” for the public
agencies to interact. A profile mechanism as such, can replace the government-to-
government interaction with multiple government-to-citizen interactions. The platform
should provide the necessary tools so that the applications can be integrated and
consequently seamlessly present the information to the citizen. This can involve news
feeds, notifications and alerts.
The platform provides two main interfaces, one for citizens and one for public agencies.
PANP interacts with citizens using profiles, while public agencies interact with it using
the Public Agency Application Discovery and Integration (PAADI) registry. Profiles are
created based on the Profile Management mechanism. Profile management updates the
citizens’ profiles based on the public agency applications they have installed. In a similar
fashion, PAADI is administered by the PAADI Management module, which is
responsible for ensuring public agency applications authentication and availability. Alerts
and Feeds Mechanism supply the profile with the public agencies’ news feeds. Public
agencies news feeds, also available through PAADI, can be considered as a personalized
way of communicating with the citizens. They include information such as notifications
about the tax filling or the payment of a public fee. Alerts are urgent notifications. The
Recommendation Mechanism is a part of the personalization features provided by the
platform. This module assists the citizen to arrange his/her profile, for example install the
necessary applications to accomplish a life event. Upon removal of an application, this
module will notify the citizen for the possible implications on the execution of the
depended applications. The recommendation mechanism uses semantic tags to identify
the related piece of information for a specific task and consequently proposes the
applications to be added.
All the modules mentioned before are based on a platform-specific API and PANP
ML. The proposed API should utilize web services of government agencies,
corresponding to applications registered in PAADI. It should act as a gateway between
custom agency web services and the platform. The main concern in API implementation
focuses on confidentiality, data integrity, and availability of information. While
confidentiality deals with the unintentional disclosure of information outside the
authorized parameters, data integrity assures the trustworthiness of the information, and
availability ensures that the information is made available to requesting authenticated
clients. The mark-up language (PANP ML) should contain the required tags to implement
citizen’s profile. Thus, it should contain presentation and semantic tags facilitating
citizen-related data presentation and exchange between public agency applications. The
implementation of the PANP ML is still an open issue as many requirements should be
fulfilled concerning the way the information is extracted and retrieved from the user’s
profile data and the way the processed data is represented to the user. It should also be
extendable. The framework is supported by proper Authentication, Data Integrity,
Availability and Authentication mechanisms. An overall view of the proposed framework
is presented in figure 1.
Communication between the citizen and the PANP may be done using HTTPs/SSL
mechanisms. After registering for the first time, the citizen is asked to ensure the validity
of some personal information that is preloaded by the corresponding agencies, for
example social security number. He/she is also asked to change the initial password to a
new sophisticated one. Then, the citizen may search for a public agency application in the
PAADI. The applications have been implemented by the IT sector of the agencies using
PANP ML and the platform API. Before the application is installed in the user profile, it
requires the user consent to use the profile data. This is crucial to enforce citizen’s data
and privacy protection acts. Citizens may add as many applications as possible, thus
initiating multiple connections with the public agencies. In order to accomplish a life
event, the citizen orchestrates the relative applications already installed in his/her profile.
We believe that this approach will simplify the complex process execution mechanisms
proposed in the related projects and will enhance the citizens’ trust to the platform.
Fig. 1. Public Agency Networking Platform
The anticipated benefits will affect both citizens and public agencies. From the citizen
point of view, the benefits, compared to other approaches such as active life event
portals, come in the form of the explicit information management and user orchestration,
as far as profile applications are involved. This assumption requires the user to obtain a
clear view and knowledge of his/her profile applications involved every time a service is
requested, i.e. a life event appears, and especially the data required and produced by
them. The recommendation mechanism may assist the citizen to include in his/her profile
all the public applications needed to service a specific life event. PANP approach may
also contribute to overcome personalization obstacles, identified in [13], from the
citizen’s point of view as discussed in Table 1.
Table 1. User Obstacles to personalization [13] and PANP proposed solution
Obstacle Solution
Control The citizen has full control of both his/her data and public
applications that will use them.
Privacy Profiles are private by default. Additionally, every action made to the
citizen profile requires explicit consent.
Trust The citizen owns his/her data and is responsible for the use or the
misuse. The only concern is addressed to the reliability of the public
agency in charge to administer the platform.
Acceptance We can not predict the acceptance of the platform. However, at first,
some motives should be given to the initial users so as the network
effects to take place.
Access Single sign-on vision supports user accessibility. The platform could
be easily deployed to mobile devices for further use.
Authentication
Profile
Management
Profile
Alerts and
Feeds
Mechanism
PAADI
Management
API PANP ML
Availability
Data Inte
g
rit
y
Recommendation
mechanism
Confidentialit
y
PAADI
From the public agencies point of view, along with the increased efficiency and quality of
public service delivery, many legal and technical issues can be resolved as shown in
Table 2.
Table 2. Organizational obstacles in the personalization [13] and PANP proposed solutions
Obstacle Solution
Legal The user owns his information and is responsible for the use or the
misuse. Every action made to his profile (application installation and
information access) requires his explicit consent.
Process based The public agencies will maintain their infrastructures concerning the
processes they accomodate. However interfaces will have to be
implemented so as to offer their applications in the PANP Platform. It
is assumed that this is less demanding than altering the internal
infrastructures to offer cross-organizational services. We believe that
this approach will require the minimum of public agencies’ process
re-engineering, as web service interfaces will interact with the
platform through the API and the PANP mark-up language. No
business process orchestration is needed as the platform is user
orchestrated.
Financial The implementation of the required interface can be regarded as an
extra cost. However, overall the use of the platform will eliminate the
need of having a personalized portal in every public agency, thus
reducing cost.
Governance
Based
The user himself is responsible to orchestrate the application
workflow.
Technical The user profile acts a common place for the public agencies to post
the user information. The installed applications can access the user
information. With this approach, no common databases are required to
share the cross-organizational data .
5 A C2G example
To illustrate the benefits of PANP approach, let us assume an example involving a new
PANP user, named Helena Pap. Helena wants to accomplish a specific life-event, i.e. to
fill an application for a job opening in the public sector. It is worth mentioning that
employment and job seeking is considered as a common e-government service,
implemented in most government portals. Helena has graduated from the Department of
Informatics of the University of Athens and holds an M.Sc from the Harokopio
University of Athens. She has been working as freelancer for three years, as certified by
the Public Insurance agency. In the real world, Helena would collect the necessary
transcripts from different public agencies and submit an application to personnel
selection agency. The whole procedure should recur in case Helena wishes to apply for a
new job opening. The conventional way to submit such an application is presented in
figure 2, as UML activity diagram.
Fig. 2. Conventional procedure of applying for a job opening in the Personnel Selection Agency
In the electronic world the procedure is simplified. Upon log-in in PANP, Helena enters
her profile. Some personal data (name, surname, ID number) have already been uploaded
and Helena is asked to check their validity. Since Helena’s task is to apply for a job
opening, she searches the PAADI and adds in her profile the “Apply for job position”
application, specifically implemented for the job opening in question by Personnel
selection agency. Helena is informed by the Recommendation mechanism that her profile
should contain some specific information concerning her B.Sc and M.Sc studies and her
experience for the application to use. The information concerning the B.Sc can be
obtained using “Issue pf a UoA BSc transcript” application that initiates the interaction
with the University of Athens. The application explicitly requires Helena’s consent to use
her personal data. Then, a corresponding web service initiated in the University of Athens
site receives her name, surname and ID number and returns her degree title, grade and
date of graduation, which are stored in her profile. Helena is able to decide whether the
results will be permanently or temporary available within her profile or whether they
should be periodically update or not. Consequently, she adds a similar application created
and registered in PAADI by the Harokopio University of Athens that provides
information about her M.Sc. Then, Helena installs “Issue an experience certificate”
application initiating a channel with the public insurance agency that proves her
experience. The agency returns and posts the information that Helena has been insured
for 3 years in her profile. The “Apply for job position” application can now be performed
using all her profile information mentioned above. Explicit user consent is required. The
information is transferred to the Personnel selection agency for further processing and a
receipt is returned and posted in her profile. When the period for submitting job
applications expires, Helena will be notified with an alert from the Personnel selection
agency concerning the outcome. Unfortunately, Helena is not qualified for this job
opening, but a month later, the Personnel selection agency issues a new job opening.
PANP recommendation mechanism can notify her for this. To do so, it uses her profile
information after acquiring her consent, thus implementing personalisation services. The
only thing Helena has to do is to add the application for the new job opening in her
profile. The information about her bachelor and master degree remains the same, while
the information about the insurance time is altered and a month is added to her overall
insurance period. The example is demonstrated in figure3.
Fig. 3. The “Application for Job opening in the public sector” Example
In the above picture, a user orchestrated workflow is depicted to accomplish a job
application in the public sector. Multiple applications are installed gathering the required
user information from the public agencies. It should be mentioned that there is no
interaction among them. Data exchange is implemented through the user profile.
6. Conclusion - Future Work
The current trend in the provision of the e-government services is described by the
concept of the connected governance. Towards supporting this concept, we presented a
Public Agency Networking Platform (PANP) facilitating personalized cross-
organizational services. PANP a) assures the platform extensibility and modularity, b)
eases the integration with existing e-government infrastructures as the platform relies on
well defined existing mechanisms as web services and c) is compliant with the main law
regulations and directives especially in the area of security and data protection as the user
holds his/her own data in his profile and every action made in the platform requires
his/her explicit consent. In contrast to other platforms and integration frameworks, PANP
simplifies the process execution workflow as life events are accomplished through a user
orchestrated process combining the functionality of discrete public agencies applications.
Our future work involves the implementation of a prototype. The platform API
libraries should be implemented and the semantic and presentation tags of the PANP
mark up language should be defined. It is our intention to provide a quite flexible and
safe infrastructure for the public agencies IT departments to implement PANP
applications. In addition, security issues will be thoroughly examined. Finally, we will
further explore information extraction from the profiles, as it remains an open research
issue.
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