17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

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Mary Rowlatt, Strategic Information Manager

January 17th 2003

E-government

ESSEX COUNTY COUNCIL

DIP meeting

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

Essex County Council

•Large local authority in UK

•Covers 1,300 square miles in S E England

•Delivers services (together with 12 District

Councils and other agencies) to 1.3m citizens

•e-Government is a key issue (Government

targets for 2005 and standards)

•Relevant projects:

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

seamlessUK

•NOF (lottery) funded

•8 other local authorities + 15 key national

information providers + 45 local organisations

•one stop citizen’s gateway to integrated local

and national information

– health, education, employment, rights, benefits, local

government etc

•www.seamless-uk.info

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

seamlessUK 2

•Distributed, multiple sources - single search

produces integrated ‘hit list’

•Standards based:

– SOAP, XML query, Z39.50, Harvest

– seamlessUK application profile based on e-GMS (DC)

•Tools for participating organisations:

– seamless.dot (metatagging tool) linked to:

– thesuarus

– ‘geocoder’

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

Thesaurus

•Cross domain and designed for the public

•ISO standard, synonyms, browse, query rewriting

•Mapping - GCL, APLAWS, partner vocabularies

•Integrating into our content management system

– Essex CC + partner organisations & Essex Online portal

•Piloting it’s use to improve commercial semantic

metadata/semi-automatic tagging tools

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

ePSINet

•www.epsinet.org

•e-Content Programme - 15 countries (+CEE?)

– help create the conditions for effective implementation of

the EC Directive on reuse and exploitation of PSI

– portal - standards, management, regulation, performance

– Europe wide network - individuals, companies, public

sector organisations, associations (EU + international)

– database, email list, faq, online enquiries

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

PULMAN

•www.pulmanweb.org

•EC funded Network of Excellence - 37 countries

•Public libraries & cultural heritage institutions

•Guidelines (social, management, technical)

•Standards - key issue

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

Relevant experience

•Developing & implementing terminology tools &

standards to support interoperability in real world

situation with multiple partners from different

sectors

•Thesaurus development, use and mapping

•Technical & management issues involved in

creating and maintaining distributed (peer to peer)

information systems

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

Relevant experience 2

•Co-ordinating & managing large multi-partner

projects (national and EU)

•Good access to partners (technical, local

administrations, publishers, content providers,

libraries, museums, archives across Europe and

beyond)

•Good access to effective dissemination channels

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

e-Government/e-Europe agendas•Joined up services

•Services available electronically

•More transactional services (not just information)

•Customer focussed services

– what sort of person am I (businessman, child, elderly

person)

– where I am geographically

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

What we would like to achieve

•Pull together - existing work on

– distributed (peer to peer) systems (multiple suppliers)

– improved semantic interoperability

– easier on the information/service providers

• costs of good metadata v. high

– delivery via web services (including personalisation,

authentication, payment etc)

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

Focus on delivery of public services at local level

• Create citizen’s (community information) ontology support

interoperability, joint working, system integration

• Support development of web service applications for e-delivery

– machine interoperable

– use apparent

– (Essex Online Portal)

• Huge benefits if new (& developing) public service

terminologies are guided by a sound conceptual framework

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

Potential roles

• Ontology development

• Application, testing, implementation (with partners)

• Dissemination

• Existing partners:

– BT Syntegra (IT and IS for ECC)

– MDR Partners (dissemination, partners, project management)

– Thesaurus consultant (Belgium) & System Simulation (terminology

stuff)

– Gauss (content management)

– etc etc

17th January 2003 Essex County Council

DIP meeting

Contact details:

• Mary Rowlatt

• Strategic Information Manager

• Essex County Council

• PO Box 11, County Hall

• Chelmsford

• Essex, CM1 1LX

• tel: +44 (0)1245 436524

• email: maryr@essexcc.gov.uk

• www.essexcc.gov.uk