An eGovernment System for Temporal- and Semantic-Aware Access to Norms

In this paper, we present the results of an ongoing research involving the design and implementation, in an eGovernment scenario, of a semantic-aware system supporting efficient and personalized access to a multi-version repository of normative texts. The research activity is entitled “Semantic web techniques for the management of digital identity and the access to norms”. In the context of a complete and modular infrastructure, we defined a multi-version XML data model and developed a temporal and semantical XML query processor supporting both temporal versioning –essential in normative systems– and semantic versioning. Semantic versioning is based on the applicability of different norm parts to different classes of citizens and allows users to retrieve personalized norm versions only containing provisions which are applicable to their personal case. The whole infrastructure, which we plan to complete in the near future, will integrate the querying component with several auxiliary services, including automatic citizen identification and classification and assisted update of the repository data.