Innovative Software Architecture for Interoperable E-Government Services

摘要

There is no doubt that information technology (IT) has significantly enhanced government administration, as is evidenced by the multitude of electronic government (e-government) services offered by various government and related administrative agencies. But one of the major challenges faced by such administrations is the problem of interoperability between the different IT systems and incompatible databases used by the different agencies. This lack of interoperable software has hampered the growth in the development of e-services for such applications as well as reduced the effectiveness of existing services in reducing bureaucracy, identity fraud, and in delivering optimized services to the citizens. European researchers have attempted to address this challenge through the development of a new and innovative software architecture, which involves "wrapping" the legacy system within a larger interoperable system, based on Web services. Any organization desiring to offer services that are interoperable with other agencies, can simply write a Web service interface around its existing system, which when called from the outside, will internally invoke the legacy system. The Web services-based interfaces will be designed to be interoperable with each other, thereby making the entire system including the legacy system, interoperable. The research was part of the recently concluded European Union-funded project titled, 'Impact of eGovernment on Territorial Government Services (Terregov)' and involved a consortium of universities and research institutions as well as industrial participants. The open-source software developed by the researchers, will facilitate government agencies to collaborate and offer enhanced Web-based services to their citizens.