A process-oriented ontology-based knowledge management system for facilitating operational procedures in public administration

Public organizations produce daily a great volume of administrative documents, in order to fulfill their mission. This requires the use of a certain, unique for each procedure, legal framework. This article adopts a process oriented approach, through a web-based knowledge management system that provides this legal framework in an up-to-date and accurate manner. The system also supports the interpretation of the legal framework, supplying civil servants, citizens and businesses with precedents and opinions. The system employs an ontology in OWL for representing the public administration structure and any kind of document that flows among administrative units, during the execution of the procedures, which are mapped into OWL-S service models. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.