A conceptual ontology for e-government monitoring of development projects in Sub Saharan Africa

摘要

A number of developed countries employ ontology in e-government projects. On the other hand, E-government is gaining more and more acceptance in Sub Saharan African (SSA) countries. However, little work is done in building knowledge base ontologies guaranteeing the integration, maintainability, interoperability and sustainability of applications. In this paper, we present a case study of constructing ontology in support of e-government initiatives for development projects monitoring in a SSA country. Case studies of development projects conducted in different SSA countries as well as related published works in various fields including project management, project monitoring and evaluation, and capacity building are reviewed and the features of the ontology are extracted. The resulting ontology aims at: providing developers of potential e-government applications for development projects monitoring in Sub Saharan Africa and the developing world in large with key concepts and activities of the domain, facilitating communication amongst all the role players involved in development projects implementation by providing a common and shared representation of concepts and activities of the domain, and serving as a knowledge base system to the monitoring and evaluation activities of development projects; thereby, strengthening efficiency, effective and sustainable implementation of development projects in Sub Saharan Africa. Further, the study aims at sensitizing and serving as a practical case study of building ontology in support of e-government adoption processes in Sub Saharan Africa.