Towards an Ontology to Support the Deployment

Towards an Ontology to Support the Deployment of eParticipation Environments Cleyton Slaviero1, Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia1, and Cristiano Maciel2 1

Universidade Federal Fluminense – Rua Passo da Pátria, 156, Bloco E - São Domingos – Niterói – RJ – Brazil {cslaviero,bicharra}@ic.uff.br 2 Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso – Av. Fernando Correa da Costa, 2367, Boa Esperança – Cuiabá – MT – Brazil [email protected]

Abstract. A strong democracy is created if citizens are able to interact among themselves and with the government by giving their opinions. In this context, eParticipation comes with ICTs to consolidate these interactions. However, there are problems in selecting such tools. One tool does not comprise all stages in an eParticipation process and using a set of tools allows us to cover them, but there are problems in selecting the appropriate tools. To do so, the initial step is to understand the domain in order to make this choice, and if we are able to use this knowledge in this context, we can provide more appropriate ICTs for an eParticipation process. This paper discusses the understanding of the eParticipation area, aggregating it in an ontology for the eParticipation domain, called ePDO. We describe the steps used to build this ontology and how this knowledge can be used to improve the deployment of eParticipation environments. Keywords: eParticipation, ontology, electronic government, decision-making.

1 Introduction In the past, when communities consisted of small groups of citizens, each one had their own voice heard in political discussions. As the population grew, choosing representatives became the way to ease decision-making since it is not easy to give a voice to everyone with so many discussions to be made. Unfortunately, as time goes on this disempowerment has decreased the voice of citizens in making decisions. The Greek word “democracy” means “the rule of the people,” but when citizens are not fully capable of having their voices heard and making decisions, a “full” democracy is not achieved. Aiming at reaching this “full” democracy, there are many practices being applied in several countries in order to empower citizens and give them voices in decisions [1]. In this context, there is a need to formulate ways of creating channels of interaction between the government and citizens to promote participation. Given the power to reach a larger number of citizens than other forms of communication, the Information and Communication Technologies – ICTs are able to widen the spectrum of citizens’ participation. Such strategy is commonly called eParticipation [2] [3]. K.N. Andersen et al. (Eds.): EGOVIS 2011, LNCS 6866, pp. 146–160, 2011. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

Towards an Ontology to Support the Deployment of eParticipation Environments

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There are many distinct participation forms and ICTs that can be used in order to promote the democracy through citizen participation. In literature chats, discussion forums, blogs, voting polls, e-mails, wikis, web applications and many other ICTs are employed as ways of bringing discussions and decisions from a real world context into virtual environments [2][4] [5]. It is possible to promote participation using these ICTs with or without integration. However, using these resources in an integrated way may be harmful, since one tool cannot comprise all the goals in an eParticipation process [5]. Upon the integration of these tools, all the distinct aspects in a participation process can be addressed. However, such integration should be done conscientiously by performing analyses regarding which participation method is to be followed and the set of ICTs that should be used in the participation process, thus aligning these choices with respect to characteristics of actors and goals desired by the government and the citizens. However, doing such analyses is not simple when we do not know how tools and participation methods are related to one another and with other eParticipation aspects. Considering this, in order to make these analyses possible, the initial step is to understand the eParticipation area and these relationships. Tools and technologies to represent and analyze this area as well as to theories and models still need further research [6]. Representing the domain in a given area leads to a better understanding of the peculiarities in participation processes, which helps us in developing better models and theories. Additionally, we must have ways to reuse this knowledge in our favor when modeling these eParticipation initiatives. Representing the knowledge in a domain with an ontology allows us to work with this knowledge in many ways, e.g. using the ontology to assist in the deployment of virtual eParticipation environments. For this reason, using this type of representation is a natural choice in this context. Ontologies are used in the electronic government area in promoting interoperability among governmental systems, providing services and exchanging information [7]. In eParticipation literature, there are references to a categorization in order to help the assessment of eParticipation tools [4], an ontology to represent eParticipation research [8], an eParticipation domain representation with UML [9] and an ontology to structure political programs [10]. Although these researches already outline the eParticipation area, they do not present a deeper investigation or mapping regarding the relationship between ICTs and participation processes, e.g. which types of ICTs are used in a given eParticipation process. Another question is that these representations are not machine-readable, which make it difficult for reusing it in eParticipation initiatives. By representing the eParticipation area in a machine-readable way we are able to use the knowledge in our favor, considering the advantages belonging to this type of representation, e.g. the possibility of sharing and making inferences with this knowledge [11]. If this representation contains knowledge about participation methods, ICTs and the relationship between them, we are able to use this knowledge in order to support decision-making, but from the perspective of participation process management. Choosing the right tools is important if we want to promote citizen participation [12]. In this context, the knowledge aggregated by an ontology could support the decision for participation methods and a set of ICTs in order to deploy an eParticipation environment.

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As a way to bring a representation of the eParticipation domain in a machinereadable way and thus allowing reuse of this knowledge in eParticipation processes design, especially the relationship among the terms in the eParticipation domain, this paper brings the initial version of an ontology called ePDO (e-Participation Domain Ontology). We conducted our research by analyzing the eParticipation area and works that have already described models, in order to extract a more general representation to represent the eParticipation area with the ePDO. We describe ePDO’s scope, terms, classes, subclasses and ontology properties regarding the relationship among the classes and mainly, but not limited to, ICTs and participation methods using a methodology to create ontologies. Last but not least, we describe the use of this ontology to help government representatives making decisions from an eParticipation process management perspective, related to the deployment of eParticipation environments. This paper is divided as follows: firstly, we describe the electronic government area, focusing on the eParticipation area and its research challenges. Next, we describe the use of ontologies in the electronic government and traces of a categorization in the eParticipation area. Following, we describe the ontology proposed in order to aggregate the eParticipation knowledge. We also discuss its use in order to support decision-making in the deployment of eParticipation environments. Lastly, we present a conclusion and planned future work.

2 Electronic Government and eParticipation The electronic government area comprises many aspects related to interaction between citizens and the government using ICTs [2]. It is possible to separate such interactions in information, service and participation categories [13]. Research regarding information and service has reached an appropriate level of maturity [3]. Participation, the last category, has been gaining attention and maturity as research is being done [6]. As ways to consolidate democracy, information and services are considered initial steps in this direction [14], by using ICTs to achieve this goal. Once the citizens have access to public administration information and are able to access public utility services, the next step described by the author is to promote citizen participation through distinct ways, allowing them to discuss topics and act as decision makers. However, in order to guarantee that the participation process is correct, we must understand the background related to it. Macintosh, Coleman and Schneeberger [6] summarize six main research questions and describe them as a) breadth of research, relating to the research fragmentation and weak persistence in approaches; b) research design, which highlights the lack of methodological quality; c) technological design, which refers to the insufficient number of ways to represent and analyze the eParticipation area; d) institutional resistance, related to the need for investigations into the reasons for few eParticipation initiatives; e) equity, which considers the need for equality of stakeholders and f) theory, related to the under-theorized area. Velikanov [12] states that we can reach a higher participation if we provide the right tools for deliberation in an efficient and productive way. Phang and Kankanhalli [5] point out that in order


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to broaden citizen participation it is necessary to select the right tools and techniques. There is also an investigation of the eParticipation area [3], where the authors comment about the lack of definitions, analyses related to tools and participation methods and the lack of boundaries related to what is inside or outside of it. These authors have come up with a research agenda, containing six items, namely: normative, evaluative, technological, theoretical and methodological, describing gaps in research under these topics. As in the electronic government area, authors present distinct separations in the eParticipation area. Wimmer [8] proposes a division under four characteristics: stages in policy-making, stakeholders, engagement level and participation areas. Figure 1 shows these characteristics and their peculiarities.

Fig. 1. Draft analytical framework to characterize eParticipation research and application [8]

Staiou and Gouscos [15] present two dimensions for the eParticipation area: ways of interaction and information (political participation, policy participation and social participation) and citizen engagement (information, consultation and participation levels). According to the UNPAN report [1], there are three axis in eParticipation, namely eInformation, eConsultation and eDecision-making. The IAP2 spectrum of participation divides the eParticipation area into five categories: information, consultation, involvement, collaboration and empowerment, ranging from the least to the most decision-making power [16]. As we can notice, there are many distinct divisions presented in literature, some of them giving distinct names for the same categories. These different terms often lead to confusion for researchers and in research. We consider that it is necessary to bring more aligned distinctions among such subdomains in the eParticipation area in order to make advances in this area. We present some works that bring unification in these terms and their relationships.

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3 Ontologies in Electronic Government An ontology can be described as the representation of a given domain [11] and can be used to a) share the knowledge among people or software agents; b) allow reuse of this knowledge; c) make explicit domain definitions; d) separate domain knowledge from operational knowledge and e) analyze the domain knowledge. Wimmer [8] describes the advantages in using ontologies, and the most relevant in our context is the possibility to create an inference base using such knowledge, which can be employed in many contexts. Despite the advantages, defining ontologies is not an easy task [8] [11]. It requires a number of iterations and can be time-consuming. Even so, they are largely used in many areas with success and it is a natural choice to organize the knowledge in a domain, which in our case is eParticipation. Ontologies are widely used in the electronic government to allow interoperability among systems related to information and service availability [7]. In the eParticipation area, there is little evidence of the use of ontologies. However, other techniques are used to depict terms and relationships in this area. We present these works in the next subsection. 3.1 Ontologies and eParticipation References to ontologies in eGovernment are presented in [7], being employed to promote interoperability among eGovernment systems. When we turn our focus to eParticipation, we can notice that there are few references to ontologies in the literature. Nevertheless, if we expand our search and look for domain representations, we can find interesting references. Tambouris, Liotas and Tarabanis [4] bring a framework to assess eParticipation tools, and they depict a categorization of the eParticipation area, although superficially. These authors describe the area in three categories: participation areas, tools and technologies used. They also mention the actors in an eParticipation initiative and, briefly, the existence of participation methods and participation levels. There are other points mentioned, but they are related more to the characteristics of an assessment than to eParticipation initiatives, and this is why we do not mention them here. Another relevant work comes from [8], who presents eight key concepts in order to describe the eParticipation research domain with an ontology. From these eight characteristics, we consider five as inside the eParticipation scope, namely: actors, participation areas, participation levels, stages in policy-making and finally, technologies and tools. Kalampokis, Tambouris and Tarabanis [9] identify and present important aspects in order to bring organization to the eParticipation domain. They use UML to describe this domain, separating it into three categories: stakeholders, participation process and ICTs for eParticipation. Each one of these categories has subdivisions and present an extended viewpoint of the domain. Another interesting work comes from [10]. In this work, the authors describe an ontology to represent political programs aiming at helping to discover solutions for questions in this domain. However, it was not possible to find this ontology for further comments.


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Excluding [10], we use the representations mentioned in this subsection to describe our ontology. In the next section, we depict the representation of the eParticipation domain with an ontology.

4 Building the Ontology In this paper our focus is to introduce a representation of the eParticipation domain with an ontology. We call this ontology ePDO (eParticipation Domain Ontology). Since building an ontology is not an easy task, we must consider the use of a methodology to guide us. We rely on [11] in this case, being this methodology well suited to an early ontology development stage, compared to other ontologies. This methodology has seven needed steps to build an ontology. In this paper, we describe five of these seven steps for building ePDO. The last two steps (definition of facets of the slots and creation of instances) require a more detailed research, and thus are omitted in this paper. We consider it as a future work in the iterative process of building this ontology [8]. 4.1 Defining the Scope of the Ontology The first step in the methodology proposed by [11] is the definition of the scope of the ontology. In our case, we aim at describing eParticipation concepts, which bring comprehension to the area and allow the reuse of this knowledge, promoting interoperability in eParticipation systems once they share the same ontology. From another perspective, we might employ the ePDO ontology as an inference mechanism, helping us to build eParticipation environments, answering questions such as: Which participation method is well suited for a given group of actors and a specific outcome? Or which ICTs are better suited for a given participation process? Answering these questions helps us in the deployment of an eParticipation environment. ePDO can answer these questions since it contains relationships between participation methods and ICTs along with relationships between actors and participation methods and outcomes. These mappings help when creating 4.2 Considering Reuse of Existing Ontologies Noy and McGuiness [11] relate the need for using existing ontologies. This is because if we use the same descriptions in these ontologies, we are able to bring more interoperability to systems in this domain. In ePDO we are guided by distinct domain representations which are not ontologies per se, but are reliable representations of the eParticipation domain [4][8][9]. The terms and connections found in these works are used in our ontology. We describe these works in more detail on the next section. 4.3 Enumerating Important Terms in the Ontology The next step in the construction of this ontology is the enumeration of important terms in its scope. We took into consideration [4], [8] and [9] works that present

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investigations about the eParticipation domain and some representations of it. We looked for relevant terms in these works. However, it was common to find distinct denominations for the same thing. In order to bring a common understanding to our ontology, we present in Table 1 a comparison of these works under six topics commonly mentioned. When we look at Table 1 it is perceivable that these works cover aspects of eParticipation in distinct ways. Tambouris, Liotas and Tarabanis [4] present a set of eParticipation terms, but superficially. Wimmer [8] brings more categorization to the topics, but the author still uses superficial definitions. In addition, not all of the related terms are relevant to the eParticipation area, being related only to research. Kalampokis, Tambouris and Tarabanis [9] present an arrangement of the subdivisions from a when compared to the other works. An interesting distinction among the three works comes from the topic “participation process”. In the first two works, the “participation process” is related only to the existence of phases in a participation process. In the last work, the “participation process” topic covers all aspects of the eParticipation initiative, and the stages related in the other works are mentioned as stages in policy cycle. Another observable fact is the weak acknowledgement of participation methods. In this context, we rely on the mention of participation methods present in [17], namely referenda, public hearings, public opinion surveys, negotiated rule making, consensus conference, citizen jury/panel, citizen/public advisory committee and focus groups. However, these are not the only existing methods. For example, [18] and [19] comment about other participation methods. We mention them in our ontology because they are a fundamental piece in the participation process. They dictate how the process is followed. Once we have the terms in our ontology, we should now put them in place in classes and subclasses. This is the goal of the next subsection. 4.4 Defining Classes and Subclasses in the Ontology Now that we have the common terms in our domain, the next required step is to organize these terms in classes and subclasses inside the ontology. Based on the aforementioned works, we have obtained the following classes: • Participation area – comprises 19 participation areas mentioned by the works analyzed. • Actor – has as subclasses owner/initiator, moderator/facilitator, decision maker and information provider, mentioned by the authors and present in Table 1. • Phase – most of the authors in Table 1 mention that the participation process has well defined phases or stages. We consider them being agenda setting, analysis, policy making, policy implementation and policy monitoring. • ICT – this class represents the ICTs used in a participation process. We also divide them into tools and techniques.


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Table 1. Common eParticipation characteristics in related works

Participation Areas

Stakeholders/ actors

Tambouris et al. (2007) [4] Mention 19 citizen’s involvement and engagement areas in a democratic process Divides it in specialists and non-specialists, but only briefly

Participation Process

Called stages by these authors. They divide the participation process in five stages

ICT’s

They mention technologies and tools that are related to the participation process The authors divide the eParticipation levels in eConsultation, eInvolvement, eCollaboration and eEmpowerment Take into account the existence of participation methods, but by no means a deep investigation

Participation Level

Participation Method

Wimmer (2007) [8] Select 11 participation areas, considered practical to deploy ICT’s

The author mentions the existence of Stakeholders and tool users, dividing them in moderators and administrators The author mentions the participation process dividing them in stages for establishing the process The author also presents a division in technologies and tools for eParticipation

Kalampokis et al. (2008) The authors consider it as a subcategory of participation process, with 11 areas

The authors define it as a subdomain of the participation process.

In this work, the participation process is the domain. However, the closest mention related to the other works is the so called “policy lifecycle”. They consider it an subdomain, containing three subdivisions: channel, category and technology

This author comments about the level of involvement, quoting the same division that the work in [4]

This aspect is considered another subdomain, Comprises the same levels commented in [4]

The author does not mention participation methods.

Called participation techniques. These authors also relates the participation methods related in [17] but do not make further analysis

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Table 2 shows us all the subclasses identified after analyzing the abovementioned papers. Table 2. Classes and subclasses of the ontology Class Actor ICT Participation Method

Participation Area

Participation Level

Phase

Subclasses Decision-Maker, Facilitator, Information Provider and Initiator Technology and Tool Referenda, Public hearings, Public opinion surveys, Negotiated Rule-Making, Consensus conference, Citizens Jury/Panel, Citizen/public advisory committee and Focus Groups Information Provision, Community Building, Consultation, Campaigning, Electioneering, Deliberation, Discourse, Mediation, Spatial Planning, Polling and Voting, eCollaboration, eConsultation, eInvolvement, eInformation and eEmpowerment Agenda Setting, Policy formulation, Policy implementation, Policy Monitoring and Decision-Making

4.5 Defining Class Properties As our last step, we describe the properties present in the ePDO ontology, considering that only mapping classes and subclasses are not enough to answer all the questions we want to address [11]. These properties can be intrinsic, e.g. the authors in a participation method; extrinsic, like the name of the method; or parts and relationships with other objects. Once we have these properties, we have a machine– readable representation of the knowledge in the domain, which allow us to work with this knowledge. Table 3. Properties related in the ontology

Class Participation Area Phase Participation Method

Properties Nome hasLevel

Related Class Participation Level

hasParticipant hasImplementation hasParticipant hasImplementation hasLevel hasPhase hasArea

Actor ICT Actor TIC Participation Level Phase Participation Area


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Table 3 describes some properties analyzing correlated works. The properties related here define relationships among classes, and they are only a snapshot of which relationships can be found in further research. However, they give us a clearer view of the relationship present among these classes. A graphical representation of our ontology can be seen on Figure 2. We used Protegè [20] to build this representation. In this representation we have classes and properties relating these classes. To show a clearer view, we omitted the subclasses. As we can see, the ontology describes the many aspects in an eParticipation process. Such a process depends on actors acting in participation phases or stages. The participation methods rely on these stages in order to be accomplished. Also, these participation methods belong to a participation area and each one of these areas has one participation level. Participation methods are implemented by ICTs.

Fig. 2. Graphical representation of the ontology proposed

In the next subsection, we describe how we can use this ontology in order to help the deployment of eParticipation environments by the government.

5 Using the Ontology to Support Decision-Making in the Deployment of eParticipation Environments According to [21], there are three levels in decision-making from a management perspective: strategic, tactical and operational. Considering an eParticipation initiative as an information system considering the use of ICTs to achieve an outcome (e.g. the result of a voting pool) we can bring this perspective to our domain and relate these levels with the implementation of such initiative in the following way: in the strategic level, we consider definitions of initial characteristics of the eParticipation process. In

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the tactical level, we have decisions regarding process models. In the operational level, we take into account elements used for implementing the process, allowing the deployment of the eParticipation environment. Figure 3 shows us the representation of these elements and how each level of management can use the ontology when designing an eParticipation process. We should now look into each one of these decision levels from the perspective of a representative of the government representative who wants to create an eParticipation initiative and knows characteristics of the process, e.g., actors and desired outcome. He may query the ontology, asking which participation process should be instantiated considering these characteristics. In the strategic level, the ontology can give him information about a participation method suited for his goal. In the tactical level, the ontology maps activities necessary to create a process model of this participation method. At this point we may a business process modeling language like BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) to model such processes [22].

Fig. 3. Using the ontology to support decision in a management level

Also in the operational level, once we have the process model, we can start the analysis of which ICTs are well suited to address each stage in the modeled participation process, and our ontology can help us by relating these ICTs to each activity. In the operational level we have a set of frameworks, components and libraries that allow us to implement these ICTs. Concerning the operational level of the participation process management, an implementation of a platform with “eParticipation components” is already being done, with further details related in [23].


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Another perspective of the design of an eParticipation process may be the designer’s one. Figure 4 shows us graphically how this designer may visualize this model, indeed in a lower level than the government representative. It is important to mention that we may have two kinds of designers at this time: the ontology designer who creates and maintains the ontology; and the process designer. While the first one has sufficient knowledge to edit the ontology, the latter may not have it. Nevertheless, the process designer will still be able to design the eParticipation process, since he has the adequate knowledge of other parts of this design process. It is important to point out that the decision-making we mention in this context is related to management decisions in the deployment of an eParticipation environment. Once we have this environment instantiated, we allow interaction among citizens and government. Citizens are able to give opinions, be consulted and make decisions. Environments created following this model should have the appropriate tools to guarantee expressive and smooth progress in the eParticipation process.

Fig. 4. Graphical description of the management levels and activities in each level

6 Conclusions Dialogue between citizens and government is fundamental to keep an active democracy, and promoting such initiative in an online context is a great way to achieve this goal. As stated, organizing the tools for initiatives in this context in an adequate way is fundamental. Though, having an understanding of the area is crucial to assure that eParticipation initiatives have success.

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In this context, we proposed ePDO, an ontology to represent the eParticipation domain in order to help the development of eParticipation initiatives. To create the ontology, we relied on a methodology which allowed us to describe this ontology, defining terms, classes and properties. Finally, we described how we could use this ontology in order to help the deployment of eParticipation environments, assisting in the decision making from a management perspective on the deployment of these environments. We are dealing with the initial version of this ontology. Like any other ontology, refinements must be made, especially because the eParticipation domain is growing quickly and, as new aspects appear, their representation in this ontology should be considered. With respect to such development, further investigations must be made regarding relationships between classes and subclasses and particularly between ICTs and participation methods. Further, tests will be made to evaluate this ontology. In this paper we showed how this ontology could be used as part of a support system to help the deployment of eParticipation environments. It could support decision-making from a process management perspective, helping in the selection of ICTs, process models and implementations to create such environments. Further research should deeply investigate the relationship between the different types of ICTs and participation methods, in order to characterize which set of tools are appropriate to implement each one of these methods. We must also investigate the modeling of these participation methods using a process modeling language, how it can be done and how representative this modeling language can be when modeling eParticipation processes and different implementations for these ICTs. As mentioned before, an implementation of a platform is being designed and once it is done we will be able to integrate it with the other management levels described, thus testing and validating the ontology here presented. Acknowledgements. The authors would like to thank CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) for supporting the development of this research.

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