Ontologies for E-government

Serious efforts have been made for years to bring e-government forward. Although according to an e-government study 2006 nearly 50% of the examined services offered by EU states are fully available online (Capgemini, 2006) the majority of services on governmental web sites (especially of small municipalities) are in “stage 1” (information) or “stage 2” (interaction)1. That is: providing online information about public services, e.g. opening hours or addresses of departments or provision of downloading of forms. Processing of forms, including authentication, (“stage 3” two-way interaction) and mainly “stage 4” (transaction, that is full case handling, decision and delivery e.g. payment) is reached only for a few services. Taking into consideration that only 20 basic public services (12 for citizens, 8 for businesses) have been evaluated in the study (Chevallerau, 2005) – out of more than 1,000 (e.g. in Switzerland approximately 1,200 services have been identified (eCH0015, 2006)) – the necessity for new approaches is palpable. There are recent developments and trends on various levels that can have significant influence on the progress of e-government: