# Presentation: 301167

## Advancements in Electronic Government

- Professor Yelena Yesha
- Dept. of Computer Science University of Maryland at Baltimore County

## Outline

- Introduction
- Stages of E-Government Development
- Trend Shifts
- Extracting Business Rules
- Customized Workflow Generation
- Workflow Execution
- Business Location Service
- Research at UMBC
- Conclusions and the Future work

## Introduction

- In the past years, there has been a noticeable shift in the way government is using technology to provide services and disseminate information.
- The change has begun with larger governments and is slowly moving to the local and county organizations which closely interact with citizens.

## Definition and goals

- E-government can be defined by the following goals:
- Electronically or Internet-based website
- Secure and protected documents.
- 24 hours a day; seven days a week.
- Distribution of services and information to citizens.
- Online government interaction to allow businesses to  register.
- Maintain security to prevent users from “Google” searching and retrieving this private information
- Recent Washington Post article: _[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24053-2004Feb8.html](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24053-2004Feb8.html)__ _

## Stages of E-Government development

- This model provides a manner to measure the development of an organization’s structure.
**Catalog** –  Users can view or download brochures, forms, and other static information.
**Transactional**  – Possess the ability to exchange information with users and accept payments

## Stages of E-government Development

**Vertical Integration **
- Allow businesses to interact with various departments from one government to register electronically.
**Horizontal Integration**
- Complete transactions with various levels of government.
- Allow businesses to request permits/services  from state and federal governments.

## Research Topics in E-Gov

- Customized workflow generation
- Decentralized workflow management
- Automatic execution of the workflow

## E-government for State Business Services

## Current Situation

- Opening a New Business and registering with the government

- HOW is it Done?

## An Example

- Registering a business with the state government in New Jersey using the Internet.
- This solution can later be used on a broader scale with government agencies  such as the One NASA project to link several sectors together.

## Steps to Do

- Determine Your Type of Business
- Register Your Business's Name and File Original Business Certificate
- Obtain the Licenses and Permits You Will Need
- Obtain Information about Environmental, Health, and Safety Issues
- Learn about Unclaimed Property Reporting Requirements
- Register Your Business for Tax and Employer Purposes

- www.state.nj.us

## Agencies Regulation

- Applicants who are registering as **Sole Proprietors or Partnerships **
**must **file pages 15-17 of the NJ-REG.

- If a business requires spray painting more than 1/2 gallon in an hour, it requires **air quality permit** and DMV permit.

- Please note that the **Public Records Filing **(pages 21 and 22)may be
- submitted prior to the completion of pages 15-17 of the NJ-REG to establish the Business Entity,but the remainder of NJ-REG (pages 15-17)must be submitted within 60 days of filing the new business entity.

- Hidden in WebPages, forms, instructions, manuals, etc

- If location is in Meadowlands jurisdiction require permit to develop from the NJ Development Commission

## Is there a way to (semi) automatically extract these regulations from forms, documents and web pages?

- Research Goal 1:

## Ontology Process

- STEP 1: Term Discovery

**REGISTRATION FORMS AND INFORMATION**
- [[ This_DT packet_NN ]] (( contains_VBZ )) [[ information_NN ]] and_CC (( forms_VBZ )) [[ you_PRP ]] (( will_MD need_VB )) (( to_TO register_VB )) [[ your_PRP$ business_NN ]] with_IN [[ the_DT State_NNP ]] of_IN [[ New_NNP Jersey_NNP ]],_, [[ Division_NNP ]] of_IN [[ Revenue_NNP ]]._.
- By_IN completing_VBG and_CC filing_VBG [[ a_DT NJ-REG_NNP ]] with_IN
- [[ the_DT Division_NNP ]] of_IN [[ Revenue_NNP ]],_, [[ a_DT business_NN ]] (( will_MD be_VB registered_VBN )) for_IN [[ applicable_JJ taxes_NNS ]] and_CC [[ related_JJ liabilities_NNS ]] [[ that_WDT ]] (( are_VBP administered_VBN )) by_IN [[ the_DT Department_NNP ]] of_IN [[ Labor_NNP ]] and_CC [[ Division_NNP ]] of_IN [[ Taxation_NNP ]],_, as_IN well_RB as_IN [[ those_DT ]] of_IN [[ the_DT Secretary_NNP ]] of_IN [[ State_NNP ]]._.

## Ontology Process

- STEP 2: Determine Equivalence between  terms

- [[credit card]] == ||(|| [[master card]] [[visa]] [[discover]] ||)||
- [[employer's federal employer identification number]] = ||(|| [[fein]] ||)||
- [[electronic funds transfer]] == ||(|| [[eft]] ||)||
- [[business entities]] [[i.e.]] [[foreign or domestic corporations]] <<,>>
-  			     [[partnerships]] <<,>>
- 			     [[limited liability companies]]
-                                [[limited liability partnerships]]
- [[alternate name]] == ||(|| [[business]] ||)||

## Ontology Process

- STEP 3: Determine Relations between terms

- mysql> select * from relation_instances where relation_id=‘hasAttribute’ or relation_id=‘hasPart’ ;
- +--------------+------------+------------------------+
- | relation_id  | first_term | second_term            |
- +--------------+------------+------------------------+
- | hasPart      | address    | street                 |
- | hasPart      | address    | number                 |
- | hasAttribute | business   | trade name             |
- | hasPart      | address    | city                   |
- | hasPart      | address    | zip                    |
- | hasPart      | address    | state                  |
- | hasAttribute | business   | business location      |
- | hasAttribute | business   | business code          |
- | hasAttribute | business   | registration number    |
- | hasAttribute | person     | social security number |
- | hasAttribute | person     | last name              |
- | hasAttribute | person     | first name             |
- | hasAttribute | person     | title                  |
- | hasAttribute | person     | home address           |
- +--------------+------------+------------------------+
- 14 rows in set (0.01 sec)

## Ontology Process

- STEP 4: Obtain the Business Rules

-  DMV

-  DEP

- Dept of State

- Air Quality Permit

- If kind_bus involves
- Spray_paint > 1⁄2 gallon per hr

- 2

- DMV Permit

- If kind_bus= Autobody Shop

- 3

- 1

- TASK

- BUSINESS RULE

- ID

- AGENCY

- certificate of incorp

- If kind_bus=Incorporation

- If location is in the Meadowlands jurisdiction

- Apply for development

- NJ Meadowlands
- Commission

- 4

## How can we make use of the automatically extracted regulations? 

- Research Goal 2:

- Customized Workflows

- generate the exact steps required for the specific business type, and the sequence in which they need to be executed, and by which agency (we call this a workflow)
- Guide Entrepreneurs through various steps involved by automatically identifying agencies and forms for a specific business.

## Customized Workflow generation

- Direct the user to the correct agencies’ forms and existing online services
- Find the correct order
- Customization on each specific business
- Transparent to the entrepreneur
-  Easy to understand

- Advantages:

## Business  Registration Process

- Geographically and functionally dispersed agencies
- Entrepreneurs interact with each agency
- duplicate information is submitted for each agency

- complex process

**Notes:**
Geographically and functionally dispersed agencies
Autonomy of agencies with their own business policies and processes
Individual clients interact with each agency
duplicate information is submitted for each agency

## With Customized Workflow Generation ...

-    The user is directed to the correct forms and online services

*WHAT IS NEXT?*

-    Fill in Data and Send data to the agency

## Fill in the form

**Register For **
**Business**

**Fuel Seller **
**Permit**

- WORKFLOW

## How to avoid redundant insertion of the same data in different forms or online services?

- Our Work:

## Issues to deal with 

- Help the user with automatically filling existing online service forms and pdf forms
- Save time
- Error-checking
- Built on the existing systems
- Allow to automatically extract data from forms

## Is there a way to automatically process the entrepreneur's applications?

- Our Work:

## Issues in Workflow Execution

- How to propagate information from one agency to the other, while preserving existing online services and autonomous systems
- Customize solutions to fit agency’s service environment
- Monitoring the complete process
- Scalable Prototype

## “Business Application” Workflow Execution Model

- Build on existing systems
- preserve the autonomy of each agency

## “Business Application” Workflow Execution Model

## Workflow Execution

## Flexible level of participation 

-  By Email
- Connection and Storage
- Application interaction
- Allow interaction with other services in agencies

## Research Work 3: Interactive-maps

- Choosing a Business
- Location

**Location, Location, Location**

## Are there any competing businesses close to my location?
Is the site strategically located to reach my customer base?
Clients, employees: demographic data, housing availability 
What is the infrastructure: transportation, parking space...
Future expansion possibility,  Crime statistics, traffic patterns.
Zoning Regulations.

- Is the site strategically located to reach my customer base?
- Clients, employees: demographic data, housing availability
- What is the infrastructure: transportation, parking space...
- Future expansion possibility,  Crime statistics, traffic patterns.
- Zoning Regulations.

- Entrepreneur

- Newark

- Business location

## Business Location

- GIS Interactive Maps

## In Summary, 

- Automatic Extraction of Regulations from documents
- Automatically Determining necessary Steps and identifying forms customized for each entrepreneur
- Reducing redundant entry of business information
- Automatic submission of information to the relevant agency in the right order
-  Flexible level of agency participation
- Providing information that helps in identifying business location

## http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/

## Ebiquity @ UMBC

- “Building intelligent, adaptive systemsfor open, mobile and pervasive environments.”

**Faculty**
- Scott Cost
- Tim Finin
- Anupam Joshi
- Hillol Kargupta
- John Pinkston
- Zary Segal
- Alan Sherman
- Yelena Yesha

**Students**
- ~ 10 PhD
- ~ 12 MS
- ~ 5 Undergrad

**Partners**
- DARPA
- NSF
- NIST
- NSA
- IBM
- Fujitsu
- HP
- Aether

## eBiquity Group Technical Roots

## Research at UMBC

- Wireless Sensor Network Security
- Security in heterogeneous WSNs
- Secure Key Management
- Intrusion Detection
- Multi-level Wireless Security
- Service Discovery and Composition
- Routing in mobile ad-hoc networks