Title: The Public Service ontology: a formal model for describing domain-specific semantics

Authors: Nikolaos Loutas; Vassilios Peristeras; Konstantinos Tarabanis

Addresses: Information Systems Lab, University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia str, Thessaloniki, 54006, Greece; Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, 6th km Charilaou-Thermis rd., Thessaloniki, 57001, Greece; Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland Galway, IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan, Galway, Ireland. ' Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland Galway, IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan, Galway, Ireland; Greek National Center for Public Administration and Local Government, Thessaloniki, Greece. ' Information Systems Lab, University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia str, Thessaloniki, 54006, Greece; Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, 6th km Charilaou-Thermis rd., Thessaloniki, 57001, Greece

Abstract: The Public Service ontology provides researchers and practitioners with a formal, standardised and unambiguous way for modelling public services. To develop the Public Service ontology, a formal ontology development methodology was followed and a generic Public Administration (PA) service model (Peristeras and Tarabanis, 2008) was used as a blueprint. The ontology played the role of the PA Service ontology in the SemanticGov project. The Public Service ontology has also been used for resolving semantic interoperability problems between different PA information systems and for creating Semantic Web Service with rich PA domain semantics.

Keywords: public service ontology; public administration; semantic interoperability; modelling; public services; information systems; semantic web; web services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMSO.2011.042462

International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, 2011 Vol.6 No.1, pp.23 - 34

Received: 18 Feb 2010
Accepted: 16 Sep 2010

Published online: 12 Feb 2015 *

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