An e-government knowledge model: 'e-customs' case study

In e-government domain, an efficient semantic interoperability of services is a big challenge. Thus, for modelling semantically the public services, we have adopted semantic web services (SWS) technology. However, this technology allows only semantic description of services without giving a cognitive semantic representation of them. It allows modelling the relationships between services with their different situations through conceptual structures (CSs). In this paper, we develop an approach for modelling efficiently the public services based on SWS and CSs technologies. For this purpose, we extend OWL-S ontology with an e-government knowledge represented through a set of ontologies. Besides OWL-S ontology, we use the conceptual graphs theory as implemented in AminePlatform for structuring and organising the cognitive knowledge about services. Thus, for our application domain, that is, 'e-customs', we extend this platform to support simultaneous use of multiple domain-specific ontologies. Our approach enables as well enhancing service discovery and composition. Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.