Encoding of Public Records and Procedures in Electronic Registries

An electronic registry is the main mechanism for the official distribution of public records, which are created within the framework of administrative procedures and business transactions. The encoding of public records within a registry is realized according to a certain format to facilitate information management. However, these formats do not refer to semantics, which are considered essential for: a) the description of the administrative procedures, and b) efficient information retrieval. This paper aims to provide a digital library architecture for the encoding of public records and administrative procedures. It introduces the usage of semantic tools for the management of knowledge within the proposed integrated system. 1. Problem Statement The main condition for the development of government information systems is the ensuring of interoperability for public services to exchange data in machine-readable form. Hence, worldwide interoperability frameworks (e.g. NZ e-GIF [10], UK e-GIF [15]) and thesauri (e.g. EUROVOC [3], FONZ [4], SONZ [14]) have been developed, in order to determine the required information matrix for the encoding of public records. However, public records management requires the representation of administrative procedures and transactions, along with their semantics and relations. Administrative transactions refer to dealings with professionals or citizens, as well as dealings that are realized exclusively between public services and are intended to meet the fundamental needs of public administration. The first category may be divided into: a) the transaction that a citizen/professional has with the responsible public service (G2C), given the fact that he/she needs to be informed about the documentation requested, and/or submit an application in order to initiate the procedure, and b) the internal procedures within the public service (G2G) independently of citizen/professional’s request. G2C transactions maintain personal interest and therefore the search and retrieval of information is based on personal criteria. On the other side, G2G transactions require the existence of several access points since an information search needs to be based on the semantic correlations between records. However, both transactions are part of an information and workflow cycle that may be distinguished according to the following five stages that a public service needs to follow: a) accomplish the required tasks by creating the records Georgia Prokopiadou, Christos Papatheodorou, Dionysis Moschopoulos needed, b) handle the delivery of the file either to internal departments or to external services, c) manage and control the transactions, d) update the database regarding the service that accesses / creates the file in a given instance, and e) carry out any transactions necessary for the completion of the administrative action. Currently, public services use different systems for record-keeping and workflow supervision. Thus, electronic registry meets only the first two stages of the information life cycle, while the remaining stages are managed and controlled by specialized workflow systems. Our proposal ensures the management of public records and procedures within the same information context enforced by semantic indexes. In particular the main objective of our approach is to: a) modulate an advanced registry for the monitoring of public records using thesauri, taxonomies and ontologies, and b) to encode the administrative procedures, as well as the workflow of public services within the same registry as public records. The proposed architecture introduces the creation of taxonomies for the structure of public administration and uses these taxonomies for the monitoring of public records and administrative procedures. 2. Information Needs 2.1 Bibliographic Information Metadata Bibliographic metadata are mainly used to uniquely identify a public record by encoding, for example, its title, the date of mail / delivery, the register number, as well as the name of sender(s) and receiver(s). They may be described implementing the ISO 15489 standard, which defines the technical specifications for the management of public records and classifies the criteria for their efficient control [7]. Bibliographic metadata encoding for public records may be realized by adopting and implementing standards such as Dublin Core, which is considered to be an open standard for the development of interoperable online metadata [2]. However, the offered meta-fields cannot describe government information in its entirety, as only a 15-element set of descriptors [9] are offered. Over and above indicative meta-fields for the encoding of the official records, there may be: a) the administrative “functions” of the Service from which the public records are derived, b) the “availability” of the records and how they can be obtained, c) the “audience”, i.e. the target group of the encoded official records, d) the “mandate” that requires the record to be created, i.e. acts, regulations, rules, court cases, e) the conditions of their “disposal” and “preservation”, and f) the “location” of the official records. Due to the lack of essential fields for the depiction of the aforementioned metadata, many countries have proceeded with an extension of the Dublin Core standard, in order to meet the information needs of public records. Such cases are: a) GILS (Government Information locator Service) [5] for United States of America, b) e-GMS (UK Government Metadata Standard) [16] for United Kingdom, c) AGLS Metadata Standard (Australian Government Locator Service) [1] for Australia, and d) NZGLS Metadata Standard (New Zealand Government Locator Service) [11] for New Encoding of Public Records and Procedures in Electronic Registries Zealand. Due to different extensions of the Dublin Core standard, the aforementioned countries proceeded to issue crosswalks, in order to ensure interoperability and system compatibility [8]. The depiction of the process and the accomplishment stages of an administrative procedure are considered as an essential parameter in the management of administrative data. However, public administration procedures are totally dependent on the public records that justify them. Public Records become an entity as soon as they are inserted in the registry. Therefore, the meta-fields for the encoding of administrative procedures need to be developed in absolute correspondence with the electronic registry. In these meta-fields it is essential to encode: a) the responsible organization and its qualified department/office for this procedure, b) the stages of processing required, c) the services involved, d) the stage of the transaction in a given moment, e) the public service processing the file at a given instance, and f) time estimation for the closure of a particular file. The encoding of such information may be implemented only on a semantic basis. In particular, the values of these meta-fields need to be derived from knowledge management tools that depict the hierarchy of public services and their corresponding procedures. 2.2 Semantic Information Metadata The proposed architecture implements two knowledge management tools: • A semantic network built according to thesaurus principles, in order to: a) establish administrative controlled and interlinked terminology, and b) represent the hierarchy of administrative procedures as they depict the stages required for the fulfillment of an administrative action. • A taxonomy for the: a) encoding and depiction of the administrative hierarchy of the public sector, and b) navigation by end users of the structured information representing the arrangement and relationships of each hierarchical level. The proposed system interlinks: a) names of corporate bodies public services in central, regional and local administration, b) geospatial names places of state that fulfill some form of administrative activity, and c) topical terms which are conceptually related. Geospatial relations link names of places with public services and organizations holding some form of administrative activity. These categories represent the geospatial and thematic hierarchy of the public sector and form a semantic network. Apart from these hierarchies, government information also calls for representation and depiction of the administrative hierarchy, which refers to terms that need to be linked due to administrative activity and is essential to connect public services with procedures. However, the thesaurus may represent the conceptual and geospatial connections but is unable to depict multiple hierarchical levels each of them related with the proportional procedures. In particular, the development of administrative hierarchy within conceptual relations results in the usage of the same indicators (Broader Term, Narrower Term, Relation Term) for different concepts, i.e. topical terms and corporate bodies. Consequently, the administrative hierarchy may be represented in a taxonomy schema capable of establishing multiple hierarchical levels all connected with the Georgia Prokopiadou, Christos Papatheodorou, Dionysis Moschopoulos corresponding procedures and public authorities derived from the semantic network. An algorithm has been proposed to detach the corporate bodies from the semantic network and to organize them into a hierarchical structure based on their vertical associations (broader and narrower terms) [13]. The proposed algorithm may also search and detach the entries of the procedures of public services. Within the scope of the taxonomy, these procedures are linked with the responsible hierarchical entity. Since the taxonomy derives from the semantic network, clearly the two knowledge representation and management tools interact and complement each other, providing an integrated framework for the management of government information. The coexistence of the thesaurus and taxonomy forms an ontology, which enables the management of the semantic information derived from public records. Moreover, ontology provides for navigation tools allowing the map-reading of the public sector’s hierarchy tree. Furthermore, the ontology ensures data interoperability and policy compliance between different information systems, even if the latter do not adopt the same terminology, due to the fact that it provides for a common realization of the conceptual world [6]. The two knowledge management tools support the depiction of the administrative procedures. Specifically, the semantic tools accommodate values for the following elements: the responsible organization and its qualified department / office for an administrative procedure, the services involved, and the public service processing a file at a given instance, which are derived from the taxonomy schema. On the other side, the stages required for an administrative procedure are derived from both the thesaurus and the taxonomy since the thesaurus represents the administrative functions and these are correlated with ‘services’ in the taxonomy.