DEAR FELLOWS,CHAI-REIN(=BE HAPPY),
EPAPHOS ADVISORS TEAMWORK,HAD THE HONOUR IN PARTICIPATING INTO TWO IMPORTANT ICT EVENTS,
WHICH TOOK PLACE AT BRUSSELS EUnion's PREMISES:
7-9/9/11 INTERNET & SOCIETIES
In order to avoid major risks of breakdown, our societies will need to follow, sooner or later, an alternative way forward based on a true sustainable development, more sustainable economic and financial models, more equally shared resources.
The PARADISO initiative, launched in 2007, addresses how ICT in general, and the Future Internet in particular can contribute making this future happen.
PARADISO activities are open to any interested individuals or organisations. They include the organisation of international events, the release of a reference document, and the preparation of recommendations to the European Commission. They are developed by Sigma Orionis and the Club of Rome, with the support of an international expert panel and of the European Commission under FP7.
450 INTERNATIONAL HIGH POLITICAL LEVEL DELEGATES FROM ALL AROUND EUROPE AND OTHER COUNTRIES WERE GATHERED AND CONTRIBUTED FOR THE DEVELOPMENT ON STRATEGIES WHICH SHOULD BE FOLLOWED,IN ORDER THE FUTURE INTERNET TO BE BUILT.
15/09/11 E-GOVERNANCE EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES
AN INTERESTING DIALOG BETWEEN EXPERTS WAS CREATED AT EU ICT PREMISES ,ABOUT THE METHODS WHICH SHOULD BE IMPLEMENTED ,
IN ORDER CITIZENS TO GET A BETTER AND MORE EFFECTIVE,EFFICIENT E-SERVICES.
OUR TEAMWORK PRESENTED THE ECOUMENIC THESIS,AS ANOTHER OPTION AGAINST GLOBALIZATION AND PROPOSED SPECIFIC ACTIONS IN ORDER
REGIONAL ELECTRONIC SERVICES TO PROCEED FASTER FOR THE SAKE OF CITIZENS,APART THAT URGENTLY IT IS IN NEED THE EMPOWERMENT OF DIRECT DEMOCRATIC METHODS IN THE EUROPEAN SOCIETIES.
TECHNICALLY IT WAS MENTIONED THE PUBLIC DATA REUSE POLICIES,PRIVACY ISSUES WHICH HAVE TO DO WITH THE SECURITY OF CRYPTOGRAPHIC CERTIFICATES,AGAINST HACKING AND FREE OPEN DATA USE.
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR ATTENTION AND SUPPORT
A.
SOURCES http://paradiso-fp7.eu/
PS.IT IS LIKED TO BE MENTIONED THAT DUE TO SITE'S MAINTENANCE REASONS OUR POSTINGS WON'T FOLLOW THE REGULAR BASIS FOR SOME TIME.
DEAR FELLOW READERS,HELLO,
ON 18/5/11 THE ANNUAL MEETING OF EUROPEAN SEMANTICS SOCIETY WAS HOLD IN EU COMMISSION'S ,ALBERT BORSCHETTE CONFERENCE CENTRE AT BRUSSELS.
THE EVENT WAS FOLLOWED ,APART FROM EUROPEAN STAKEHOLDERS AND BY THE U.S.AFederal Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP) ,BEING REPRESENTED BY ITS DIRECTOR DR.BRAND NIEMANN.
THE SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGIES ARE THE NEXT STEP BEFORE WEB 3.0 AND WEB 4.0.
OUR EPAPHOS TEAMWORK HAD FOLLOWED ALSO THE E- PROCUREMENT WORKSHOP ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISES ON THE PROCUREMENT PROCEDURES ,ON 25/11/11 .
WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK DR.NIEMANN FOR HIS GENTLE RESPONSE AND PROVIDED INFORMATION,TO OUR QUESTIONS,WHICH INSPIRED US FOR THE PRESENTATION LAID BELOW,ABOUT THE FUTURE OF SEMANTICS INTEROPERABILITY.
EUCHARISTΩΜΕΝ
A.CH.
Semantic Wave Report: Industry Roadmap to Web 3.0 and Multibillion Dollar Market Opportunities.
Project10X’s landmark industry study charts the evolution of semantic technologies and applications and projects the growth of multi-billion dollar markets for Web 3.0 products and services. Semantic Wave maps the frontier.
The technology section of the report examines five strategic technology themes and shows how innovations in these areas are driving development of new categories of products, services, and solution capabilities. These themes include: executable knowledge, semantic user experience, semantic social computing, semantic applications, and semantic infrastructure. The study examines the role of semantic technologies in more than 100 application categories. An addendum to the report surveys more than 300 companies that are researching and developing semantic technology products and services.
The market section of the report examines the growth of supply and demand for products, services and solutions based on semantic technologies. Specifically, the report segments and discusses semantic wave markets from five perspectives:
research and development, information and communication technology, consumer internet, enterprise horizontal, and industry verticals. Viewed as horizontal and vertical market sectors, each presents multi-billion dollar opportunities in the near- to mid-term. The study presents 150 case studies in 15 horizontal and vertical sectors that illustrate the scope of current market adoption.
Semantic Wave Report tells the story of web 3.0.
The semantic wave embraces four stages of internet growth.
The first stage, Web 1.0, was about connecting information and getting on the net. Web 2.0 is about connecting people — putting the “I” in user interface, and the “we” into a web of social participation. The next stage, web 3.0, is starting now. It is about representing meanings, connecting knowledge, and putting them to work in ways that make our experience of internet more relevant, useful, and enjoyable. Web 4.0 will come later. It is about connecting intelligences in a ubiquitous web where both people and things can reason and communicate together.
Over the next decade the semantic wave will spawn multi-billion dollar technology markets that drive trillion dollar global economic expansions to transform industries as well as our experience of the internet. Drivers and market forces for adoption of semantic technologies in web 3.0 are building. The Semantic Wave Report projects:
Public and private sector R&D relating to semantic technologies in the 2008-2010 period will exceed $8 billion.
Global ICT markets for semantic technology infused products and services will grow from $2.1 B in 2006 to $52.4 B in 2010.
During this same period, number of suppliers with R&D, products, and services in the semantic space will more than double, as major IT, telecom, and consumer electronics players enter the semantic space.
Consumer internet will become a major growth area for semantic technology. Consumers account for about one-fourth of global ICT spending. Drivers for semantic technology here include the growth of internet enabled mobility and the success of web 2.0. However, the study projects that the double-digit growth rates for internet and mobile advertising, content and entertainment will prove to be the most powerful economic driver for adoption of semantic solutions.
Enterprise adoption of semantic technologies will increase dramatically. Public and private sector enterprises represent three-fourths of global ICT spending. Where do semantic technologies apply in the enterprise? Everywhere, according to the case studies summarized in the report. Service oriented computing middleware and a broad range of conventional commercial off-the-shelf software will move to semantic technologies.
Industry verticals will buy semantic technologies packaged as whole solutions that address specific business problems and deliver value. Near to mid-term the semantic wave will drive restructuring of publishing, media, entertainment, information services, and software industries. Longer term, the impact knowledge technologies will transform government, manufacturing, and service sectors worldwide.
What is the Role of Cloud Computing, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 Semantic Technologies in the Coming Era of Transparent, Collaborative, Connected E-Governance?
The US has a new administration that values transparency, citizen participation, collaboration, information sharing, and internet technology. This presentation maps the role of information and communication technologies (specifically, cloud computing, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 semantic technologies) in the evolution of government information systems from e-gov (silos with web front ends) to connected governance (e.g. distributed social computing environments for collaborative work, information sharing, knowledge management, and participatory decision-making.) We suggest steps that government at all levels should consider taking now.
Web3 And The Next Internet - New Directions And Opportunities For STM Publishing
The new ecosystem for scientific, technical, and medical (STM) publishing is digital, trans-semiotic, data and knowledge intensive, social, connected, collaborative, community-driven, mobile, multi-channel, immersive, and massively networked and computational.
In this era of open, co-evolving, networked techno-socio-economic processes, commercial publishing models based on exclusive literature collections are simply not enough.
By understanding changes coming with Web 3.0 and the next internet, STM publishers can identify new roles and profitable business opportunities.
Semantic Technology Solutions for Gov 2.0: Citizen-Friendly Recovery.gov and Data.gov with Transparency, Opennes, and Collaboration
The Obama administration has set the goal of achieving and unprecedented level of openness, participation, transparency, and collaboration in government. This applies especially to the accessibility of government information and the tracking of stimulus expenditures. This presentation discusses ways that cloud computing, web 2.0, and web 3.0 semantic technologies can be used to deliver citizen-friendly solutions for recovery.gov and data.gov that fulfill the goals of the new administration, and includes a practical demonstration based on technology developed by Cambridge Semantics.
DEAR FELLOW READERS ,HELLO,
LAST WEEK AND ON 10-11/5/11 WE FOLLOWED AN OPEN DATA WORKSHOP,AT EUROPEAN COMMISSION'S BORCHETTE CONFERENCE CENTER AT BRUSSELS.
ALL MAIN STAKEHOLDERS AROUND THE GLOBE,WERE THERE AND AN INTERESTING DEMOCRATIC DIALOG WAS DEVELOPED.
DURING THE SESSIONS IT WAS CONCLUDED THAT THE OPEN DATA COMMUNITY HAS A LOT MORE TO WORK ON,DUE TO A LAPSE OF PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY,COMMON STANDARDS AND RAPID EVOLUTION OF TECHNOLOGY.
OUR EPAPHOS TEAMWORK PROPOSED ,AT A EUROPEAN LEVEL,AN ALLIANCE WITH THE OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY,IN ORDER OUR EUROPEAN TARGETS ,TO BE ACHIEVED FASTER.
THE PROGRAM WAS AS BELOW:
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
13:00 Opening Remarks by Richard Swetenham (Head of Unit Access to Information, EC DG INFSO & Media) (slides)
13:15 Setting the scene – the Potential of Open Data
Moderator: Jose Manuel Alonso
Open Data need a vision of Smart Government by Tijs van den Broek, Bas Kotterink, Noor Huijboom, Wout Hofman and Stef van Grieken (TNO, Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) (slides)
Towards a Federation of Government Metadata Repositories by Gofran Shukair (DERI), Nikos Loutas (DERI), Vassilios Peristeras (European Commission, DG DIGIT), Klaus Reichling (]init[ AG), Fadi Maali (DERI), Konstantinos tarabanis (University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki) (slides)
The White House is reviewing whether to ask for new authorities for the Defense Department and other government agencies to ensure that the nation's critical computer systems are protected in the event of a major attack, the commander of the Pentagon's new Cyber Command said Thursday.
If an adversary were to penetrate the U.S. power grid or other critical systems with an "unknown capability," those systems probably would "shut down," Gen. Keith Alexander told members of the House Armed Services Committee.
Cyber Command is tasked with protecting only military computer networks. "It is not my mission to defend, today, the entire nation," Alexander said.
Deciding who should execute what role in defending the nation against cyberattack is a thorny issue, complicated by the fact that the agency tasked with assisting the private sector - the Department of Homeland Security - lags the Defense Department in personnel, resources and capabilities.
Alexander said the White House is discussing how to form a team with the FBI, Cyber Command, DHS and other agencies to "ensure that everybody has the exact authorities and capabilities that they would need to protect the country." The White House may have to ask Congress for new authorities.
The $120 million Cyber Command was launched in May and will be fully operational on Oct. 1.
MORE AT http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/23/AR2010092305431.html
IN EU WE ARE MAINLY HAVE TWO ORGANIZATIONS WHICH ARE HANDLING CYBER SECURITY THEMES
A)INSTITUTE FOR PROSPECTIVE TECHNOLOGICAL STUDIES (IPTS )
cybersecurity.jrc.ec.europa.eu
AND
B)EUROPEASN NETWORK AND INFORMATION SECURITY AGENCY (ENISA)
www.enisa.europa.eu
EU cybersecurity policy
This morning I gave the following invited speech to a session of the European Parliament's industry committee, which was considering a draft report on the Commission's recent Communication on Internet Governance. Also speaking was Ambassador Janis Karklis, chairman of ICANN's Government Advisory Committee; Frederic Donck from the Internet Society; and Prof. Adrian Cheok, director of the National University of Singapore's Mixed Reality Lab. Due to technical difficulties (!) the Internet Governance Forum secretariat's executive coordinator, Markus Kummer, was unable to participate remotely as planned.
Internet governance and cybersecurity
Clearly, European society is increasingly dependent on the Internet and related communications systems. But the security of those systems is not yet at a level appropriate for that dependence. Mr Sosa Wagner's draft report is right to stress the importance of improving the "availability, robustness and resilience" of critical information infrastructures.
The Commission and the Parliament have taken some important steps in improving this situation, especially through the recent telecoms reform package and its obligation for operators to identify risks and ensure continuity of service. I want to outline five key additional steps that the EU should take towards this goal (many of which are being discussed by the institutions):
Bring member states up to a common high level on cybersecurity, with national Computer Emergency Response Teams or networks of sectoral teams. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) should continue to develop forums for information-sharing, and provide support to less capable member states.
Further increase the effectiveness of ENISA, which needs significantly greater resources. With the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty, ENISA should be able to take action on former third pillar matters such as criminal use of Internet.
Ensure the resilience of key industry sectors through appropriate regulation. There should be further discussion of the designation of critical information infrastructures under Council Directive 2008/114/EC (while addressing concerns over information sharing), and requiring isolation of critical utility systems from public networks.
Widen requirements for security breach notification from communication network operators to other information society services.
Reinforce system and network diversity through competition law, state use of open standards, and procurement policy.
The Commission's Communication on Internet governance states that "the EU should take a leadership role in working towards the goal of increased security and stability of the Internet by initiating dialogue with international partners." The Commission should develop concrete plans with the Parliament and member states on what this leadership role should entail. In addition to promoting at the international level the measures I previously described, this could include:
Support for ICANN in its work to ensure the security and stability of the Domain Name System;
Work in international venues such as the OECD, United Nations and Council of Europe to improve applicable laws and national coordination on cybersecurity;
Discussions on limited liability for software security faults, particularly in the operating system and browser software that is critical to system security.
Finally, it is critical that the Parliament continues its role in promoting fundamental European values such as freedom of expression and privacy. The draft report's suggestion to extend the Rome II regulation to include violations of data protection and privacy is positive, as is the suggestion on the negotiation of international agreements for effective redress. But the EU institutions should be extremely cautious in introducing measures such as powers to revoke IP address blocks and domain names, which was suggested last week by the Council, or requiring Internet blocking (as Commissioner Malmstrom has proposed). These measures would set an extremely damaging precedent for Internet governance by repressive states that do not share European values.
IAN BROWN
May 04, 2010
SOURCE http://dooooooom.blogspot.com/
3.4 Stepwise introduction of shared e-government back-end services
Mr Hans Arents (Co-ordination Cell Flemish e-Government, (CORVE))
discussed the stepwise introduction of shared eGovernment back end
services.
The introduction of service orientation into the back-end shared IT services
that support eGovernment service delivery faces its own particular challenges,
as a result of the stove-piped nature of government. The Flemish government
has adopted a stepwise approach, starting with the development of data
sharing services and only gradually moving towards application integration
services. By focusing on opening up authentic data sources within
government, major efficiency gains in key government process were realised.
To achieve this, a service oriented platform had to be built that not only
delivers web services, but a range of other types of services as well. Not
following a pure web services-based approach, but offering additional types of
“backwards-compatible” services (such as FTP, and e-mail) has been a key
success factor in the uptake of this platform.
The presentation discussed how the necessary political and organisational
buy-in was achieved, and what governance structures were set up to manage
this platform. In addition, Mr Arents discussed the technical and organisational
challenges that the Flemish government is still facing to open up these data
sources for cross-border use (e.g. the exchange of certified diploma
information about prospective employees, or the exchange of harmonised
company dossiers for public eProcurement).
Mr Arents concluded with a discussion of how this data sharing platform will
be used to “open up” Flemish government data sources in order to improve
government transparency and data re-use. In addition, the introduction of data
sharing in government has to be done in a stepwise manner. A capability gap
needs to be crossed before moving to the next step. A major capability gap
still needs to be crossed to move to the pan-European level.
In Belgium, a key role is played by sectoral services integrators. There are not
many, but unavoidably more than one for political or organisational reasons.
When they are there; they are used as the core of the data governance
structure in their sector and the providers of essential shared data services.
This could apply also at the European level as well.
Replying to a question from the audience on the SEMIC.eu initiative, Mr
Arents commented that SEMIC.eu is only a collection of objects, but it lacks
governance. What is needed is first to agree on what to do, and then
someone to take the lead and actually do it.
3.5 SOA for Pan-European Public Services
Mr Michiel Malotaux (VP Gartner Consulting) presented on SOA for pan-
European public services.
The Public Services Framework, as published in the European Interoperability
Framework (EIF) version 2.0, is in fact a pan-European SOA. Conditions to
enable this framework include: legislation, governance, (open) standards,
certified base registries accessible via web services, networks supporting
(federated) security services and certified intermediaries to provide composite
pan-European public services to administrations, businesses and citizens.
Mr Malotaux began his presentation with providing examples of pan-European
services that have been used in many engagements of Gartner with the EC.
According to the legal framework set with the Lisbon Treaty, Member States
should work together in order to provide services across national borders. In
addition, the Service Directive of 2006 requires that Member States should be
able to provide information services within and across borders. Very few
success stories can be accounted in 2010.
Mr Malotaux continued that the Malmö declaration urges Member States to
work on the freedom of services and their electronic dissemination of data
across borders. This framework is SOA. Technical interoperability has been
achieved on a global scale. Semantic interoperability has been achieved in
many cases, but still remains a challenge on other domains. Organisational
and legal interoperability remain to be achieved.
In terms of a public services framework, and the way to realise it, public
administrations should be able to serve other administrations, businesses,
and citizens. Pan-European composite services are services that draw upon
other different basic services delivered to individual companies through
portals, and gateway systems of public administrations.
Basic public services together make composite services and basic public
services can be delivered by base registries. Authentic data sources,
interoperability services (i.e. index, translation services, coding), external
services (payment module; Google maps) are being used in the industry and
public sector.
Between these basic and composite public services it is necessary to
establish secure communication and confidential login. Several examples
validate this statement: EULIS, INSPIRE, Data.gov etc. connect to Member
State base registries; which part of land is owned by whom. Inspire is about
geographic data; Eucaris, ensures that police can find a person’s stolen car
anywhere in Europe; TMView enables a person to find out whether a
trademark is occupied and where to find a specific trademark through the pan-
European Index of trademarks and the owner of that trademark; CCN/CSI and
NCTS of the Taxation and Customs Directorate-General provide an
operational communication network that enables free movement of goods
within Member States. In general, experience has shown that once a specific
architecture has been proposed, it needs to be tested since different systems
may use architecture in different ways.
Mr Malotaux concluded that there is a necessity of intermediaries, i.e., of
portal and gateways (not necessarily public) certified that know how to protect
a person’s data. Different constituencies need to know of specific expectations
to act upon. Private parties can exploit portal industries; local governments
cannot create pan-European systems, due to budget constraints.
Mr Malotaux noted that security must be federated, i.e., the details related to a
Member State’s security is the responsibility of each Member State. In
addition, EC could address the issue of a pan-European web service interface
standardisation and promote the use of certified base registries for national
authentic sources of information in Member States. EC could act as the
certification authority certifying the Member State’s sources. This framework
can work in the regional, national, and European public services’ levels.
3.6 Experiences of the development of the Hungarian Interoperability Framework
Mr Balazs Goldscmidt (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)
presented the experiences of the development of the Hungarian
Interoperability Framework.
As part of a research group at the Budapest University of Technology and
Economics cooperating with the Hungarian public administration, authors took
part in the design of the next generation Hungarian eGovernment Framework
(HeGF), which is similar to the EIF (EU), SAGA (Germany) etc. national and
international initiatives and it is based on SOA principles.
The New Hungary Development Plan (NHDP, 2007-2013), co-funded by the
EU, is implemented through the State Reform Operational Programme
(SROP) and the Electronic Administration Operational Programme (EAOP).
The framework is built around interoperability requirements, an application
development, and architectural framework, IT security requirements, project
management methodology, process description methodology and toolkit,
eAdministration pilot projects and a standards repository.
In the current presentation the focus was on the system architecture defined
in the Interoperability Framework. At first, the technological and organisational
requirements of the architecture were introduced. Then, the components of
the architecture were discussed including the eGovernment Service Bus.
During the design process of the architecture, non-eGovernment scenarios of
SOA were examined to gain experience of the problems and issues of
enterprise SOA systems. The environments of the enterprises were compared
to that of the Hungarian public administration. The similarities and differences
of the two were shown, and it was demonstrated that, despite their
differences, understanding the problems of one area can help to address the
problems of the other.
A series of tests was performed at the end of 2008. The tests concerned the
compliance and interoperability for products and standards. The tests were
limited in coverage, and they examined the key features of major vendors’
products. The test identified products that are mature enough to be
considered for eGovernment. The testing methodology appears to be
applicable to other fields as well.
The main issues of the eGovernment that were solved using this technique
include the heterogeneous software systems; the different interpretation of
data; the distributed responsibilities and the legal burdens, including privacy
issues. According to the presenter’s view even the technical problems
disclosed can help making general eAdministration better.
In conclusion, a summary of the lessons learned from the design process
were provided. Although SOA is still maturing, it is reliable and standardised
enough to be introduced in the Hungarian, or any other, eGovernment
framework. The experiences of the enterprises and earlier integration
technologies might help to solve problems arising in eGovernment
environments; however, the differences between eGovernment and eBusiness
domains should not be forgotten.
The presenter emphasised that although modular, flexible, and standardsbased
design is sine-qua-non in projects of such scale, another aspect is
equally important: Achieving an interoperable electronic public administration,
necessitates that the role of semantic and structural interoperability is not
underestimated. Wilful cooperation, the unification of high-level concepts,
workflows and law, and a formal ontology are absolutely necessary.
4 Summary
The European Commission organised a workshop on "Service Oriented
Architecture pushed to the limit in eGovernment" in the context of its
“ePractice.eu” initiative. Following the Ministerial declaration on eGovernment
adopted in Malmö in November 2009, the European Commission is in the
process of drafting its eGovernment action plan for the period 2011-2015.
The workshop focused on two main subjects, one technological and one
business-oriented. The technological subject related to using SOA for
structured composition of services, through the adoption of object orientation.
The business subject relates to the discussion of past experience of the use of
SOA in eGovernment and future plans.
The morning session was devoted on technological trends in SOA. Mr
Sobolewski presented the service object-oriented architecture stressing that it
is necessary to create domain specific programming languages (as opposed
to software languages) that will best address the needs of the specific domain
and which will be able to be implemented in a software, hardware and network
neutral manner. Ms Ţicău brought up the importance of inherent security in
eGovernment processes, which sets a different landscape from any other
application domain. Ms Donovang-Kuhlisch proposed the utilisation of a
“business process management language” that would allow governments turn
“smart” by becoming network enabled, effect oriented and context and history
aware. Mr Mrugalla presented an architectural framework that uses SOA as a
natural consequence of the federated steering environment of Germany, and
Mr. Love presented the bottom-up approach where the eGovernment
principles find their way in the implementation of working eGovernment
solutions.
A round table discussion with the participation of the workshop audience and
speakers overviewed the technological trends and implementation problems
when applying SOA in eGovernment. Main discussion points related to the
need for user friendliness of eGovernment solutions, the need to focus on the
different levels of abstraction necessary when designing complex and unified
eGovernment solutions and how S(O)OA can be used to facilitate this design.
The afternoon session discussed lessons learnt in eGovernment
interoperability and speakers were provided the opportunity to present their
vision on the way forward. Mr Ziehm presented the case of an eJustice
solution used in the German state of Hessen, which resulted in a significant
reduction in resource usage and cost savings. This case exemplified how
strong political support was necessary to overcome inter-departmental and
inter-organisational barriers in order to arrive to a successful solution. Mr.
Rodrigues Frade presented the e-PRIOR platform that applies SOA in the
eProcurement context in order to bring together legacy systems and services
of public administrations and their suppliers. Mr Declercq proposed a SOA
reference framework to be used in a pan-European context. He stressed the
need for a reference list of services, and a clear split between business and
infrastructure services.
(CONTINUED FROM 25/05/10,clicking on the title you are redirected)
The afternoon session presentations related to SOA in eGovernment practice
and consisted of six presentations.
3.1 Service-Oriented e-Processing and Case Management of Law Violation
Mr Oliver Ziehm, CSC presented the service-oriented eProcessing and case
management of law violations. The use of SOA in the eJustice system for law
violations processing in the German federal state of Hessen shows how
current modernisation goals of public administration can be reached by
applying SOA-based information technology principles.
The solution significantly accelerates a multi-agency process; reduces the
corresponding cost and sets up the preconditions for IT-driven administrative
modernisation. The approach is process-driven, combining service orientation,
legacy service integration, business process management and enterprise
content management. The solution is distributed and completely paperless.
eJustice SOA is not restricted to law violations; the solution blueprint is
applicable to a wide range of multi-organisational integration problems.
eJustice SOA is a recipient of the 2009 CSC Chairman’s Award.
The objectives of eJustice SOA were to introduce electronic legal relations for
law violations in the German state of Hessen, to introduce multi-department,
multi-agency, electronic collaboration, and to modernise judicial processing by introducing fundamental techniques. Such techniques include Enterprise
content management (ECM), Business Process management (BPM), and
Application systems integration.
In addition, the system accelerates the process avoiding transport of paper
files between and within agencies and data re-entry, reduces cost by the
abolishment of paperwork and reduces revenue loss as a result of expired
cases.
It is important to note that the system crosses the hierarchical structure of
administrative organisations and at the same time complying with some of the
strongest legal principles of the German constitution, i.e., the autonomy of
involved agencies and the independence of the judges who can veto the
process.
The eJustice SOA has been in production since March 2007. It has been used
in 3 Hessian agencies and the ECM client is used by 44 assistants,
prosecutors, and judges in their daily work. About 3,000 user operations on
electronic case files, each and all aspects of prosecuting traffic offenses are
fully digitised, while there is digital signature of court decisions. The plans for
2010 increase the number of involved agencies to 56, and the number of
processed cases to more than 50,000 per year.
Mr Ziehm concluded stressing the strong project political sponsorship that
allowed changes in legislation when necessary and the activation of a multistakeholder
management process that was necessary. The use of standards
contributed to the project success, as well as the excellent understanding of
the relevant processes by the project team.
Finally, Mr Ziehm underlined that SOA is not to be considered as a primarily
technical approach, but a management one.
In reply to a question by Mr Sobolewski, Mr Ziehm clarified that a set of twenty
services were created and one public service registry.
3.2 Practical application of SOA in the Public Procurement processes of the European Commission
Mr João Rodrigues Frade (PricewaterhouseCoopers, Performance
Improvement Consulting) discussed the practical application of SOA in the
public procurement processes of the European Commission.
According to Mr Rodrigues Frade, EU public procurement plays an important
part on the single market and is governed by rules intended to remove
barriers and open up markets in a non-discriminatory and competitive way.
Total public procurement in the EU – i.e. the purchases of goods, services and
public works by governments and public utilities – is estimated at about 1 per
cent of the Union’s GDP or € 1,500 billion in 2002.
Based on the i2010 eGovernment Action Plan, the high level take-up of
electronic procurement is highly desirable for Europe. Its widespread usage could result in savings in total procurement costs of around 5 per cent and
reductions in transaction costs of 10 per cent or more. Consequently, this
could lead to savings of tens of billions of euro annually and easier access to
public procurement markets for SMEs. As a result, this action plan points out
to eProcurement, and in particular cross-border eProcurement, as the area on
which to focus in the application of key electronic services.
The e-PRIOR platform
To support these objectives, the IDABC electronic invoicing and electronic
ordering project started in the summer of 2007 as a joint IDABC action of the
Directorate General for Internal Market and Services and the Directorate
General for Informatics of the European Commission.
Based on the experience of this project, the presentation explored how SOA
and platform-based development were used to satisfy a wide variety of
business and technical requirements, which were the foundation of the service
oriented platform named e-PRIOR (electronic Procurement Invoicing and
Ordering).
e-PRIOR is an e-Procurement system, exposing a number of web services
linked to particular steps in the procurement process of the European
Commission. Broadly, it helps public authorities manage their procurement
processes electronically. They can use it to receive catalogues digitally, they
can submit their orders on-line and they can manage their invoices, simply by
exchanging standardised electronic business documents.
The goal
Among others, the Among others, the goal is to actively foster dialogue, interaction and
discussion, but also to address the strategic, as well as implementation
aspects of using SOA to bridge the legacy systems used by public
administrations and the systems of their suppliers. All this is to be set in the
context of achieving interoperable eServices, which are cross-border and help
making procurement faster, more transparent, greener and more secure.
Mr Rodrigues Frade concluded that the EC is paving the way for
eProcurement and the adoption of standards and SOA, promoting
interoperability in reliable eCollaboration between suppliers and customers. e-
PRIOR is a strong example of an “Enterprise Service Bus” platform
independent of the back office systems that can be reused in different
document exchange contexts.
Ms Lahti asked about the schedule of bringing the e-PRIOR services online.
Mr Rodrigues Frade explained that after the eInvoicing related services
(invoice, credit note, document attachment) which are already online, the rest
of the eProcurement services are scheduled for the end of the year 2010. The
project is working on ordering and catalogue services now and in the mean
time it is working to expand the list of involved suppliers.
Following a question from the audience on the need for e-PRIOR specific
infrastructure, Mr Rodrigues Frade explained that the project currently
operates in a point-to-point architecture, since it is at its pilot phase. However,e-PRIOR is already connected to the PEPPOL large scale pilot eProcurement
project, where cloud architecture is employed and it is e-PRIOR’s plans to
render point to point connectivity deprecated when the necessary critical mass
is achieved.
Mr. Sobolewski inquired about the number of services employed in e-PRIOR.
Mr. Rodrigues Frade explained that there are different services for each
document type, but in general there are fifteen services currently provided. He
added that the e-PRIOR platform exists in two versions, one using the BEA
Weblogic proprietary platform and one using open source infrastructure to
facilitate its reuse by public administrations, which includes implementations
of the Spring framework, JBPM and EJB3.
3.3 Time for a SOA reference framework for the European Commission
Mr Koert Declercq (Deloitte Consulting) presented the SOA reference
framework for public services.
SOA in government is rising. Public administrations evolve in a complex
environment, involving many actors at different levels. For that reason,
governments have traditionally developed systems that do not integrate with
one another. Today, public administrations face obstacles because their
applications are outdated: they do not meet business needs adequately, they
are costly to maintain, and at the same time not flexible enough to handle
policy and regulation changes efficiently.
In this context, the SOA paradigm seems particularly suited to help
government agencies. SOA should be seen as a design philosophy that
informs how the solution should be built. SOA uses a set of common
applications or services that extend across all systems and perform common
types of functions and business processes, without having to modify all core
underlying systems.
SOA should organise existing IT solutions in such a way that the
heterogeneous array of distributed, complex systems and applications can be
transformed into a network of integrated, simplified and highly flexible
systems. Therefore, the adoption of SOA principles across public
administrations is getting stronger by the day.
Examples of successful SOA implementations can be found: the Overheids
Service Bus in the Netherlands, the e-Health Platform in Belgium, Health and
Human Services in US, and Inspire geo-portal at the Commission. These
examples provide a simple basic infrastructure with a set of services, which
are accessible via portal or service bus.
The advantages SOA offers by its distributed nature and loose coupling also
lead to its main challenges. With SOA, the complexity is in the area of
choosing the right services, orchestrating and composing them. It is thus
essential to define the type of services that the administration would deliver through SOA and create a SOA roadmap. This can be supported by the following elements:
● Reference list of services. These services are clearly understood by the
business and imply a clear communication within the organisation.
● Logical order in the implementation of the infrastructure services. The
order is based on a SOA maturity assessment. When the SOA experience
and maturity increase, the type of services change.
● Clear split between business and infrastructure services.
● Good SOA governance that aims to increase overall quality of SOA and
enable control in a complex environment.
If these elements are considered, it seems clear that guidance is essential
when starting a SOA initiative. In that sense, a key success factor to a
successful SOA transition is a reference architecture.
Necessity for reference architecture
Architectural guidelines are essential in order to organise a successful SOA
transition, with appropriate governance and roadmap. At the European level,
reference architecture can provide a helpful framework to progressively
implement the services needed. European SOA reference architecture will
provide a blueprint for creating or evaluating architecture and depict how to
leverage on existing systems, providing systems’ integration and reusable
services across public administrations.
Mr Malotaux asked about the relation of the proposed reference model to the
EIF of the European Commission. Mr Declercq replied that the proposed
reference model fits in the EIF provisions and the EIF sets the landscape, but
we should start filling it up.
Mr Sobolewski commented that the reference architecture is not SOA as it
only proposes a list of services with no workflow or service orchestration.
According to Mr Sobolewski, citizens should be in the position to decide what
services to get in line with their needs. Mr Declercq commented that the
customer in the proposed reference architecture is not the citizen, but a
specific user relevant to a business case.
Ms Donovang-Kuhlisch commented that she considers the proposed
reference architecture positively as it approaches the definition,
categorisation, and implementation of services in different levels. The lowlevel
infrastructure and the business processes define a matrix that forms the
Ms Silvia-Adriana Ţicău (MEP, Committee of Industry, Research and
Energy, European Parliament) discussed the importance of security in relation
to the future EU Digital Agenda and how SOA can be used in this context.
Ms Ţicău stressed that the future interoperability solutions for electronic public
administrations will be greatly dedicated to the interaction among them and
the implementation of the Community policies and activities. According to Ms
Ţicău, the future EU Digital Agenda focuses on eGovernment Interoperability.
A main barrier in eGovernment interoperability has been identified in the lack
of interoperable public key infrastructures (PKI), even at the national level.
The new eGovernment action plan of the Commission should begin where the
last action plan ended, because not all the goals of the i2010 action plan have
been achieved. For example, i2010 aimed at achieving 50 per cent of all
public procurement to be performed electronically by 2010, which is not the
case.
There is a definite trend towards the creation of a single centralised
eSignature infrastructure, which allows specific applications to simply plug in.
Nevertheless, it is important to find the right granularity: services should be
user friendly and able to support wide information-sharing and reusability of
services. Applications that can benefit from SOA include pluggable security
services, security management, and cryptographic services. They also include
pre-packaged services, in terms of user-friendliness and security of
eGovernment services.
As far as the SOA eGovernment systems are concerned, they provide a
service of a loosely coupled architecture designed to meet business needs.
SOA can facilitate the cross-border interoperability of eGovernment Systems
and help public authorities to be interconnected easily and facilitate
eParticipation.
Ms Ţicău noted that there is a need for a service registry for eGovernment
services for the transparent provision of services to the citizens and as for
eGovernment, SOA is considered to be the future. It is important to use
standards and separate services from interfaces. Standardisation, competition
and regulation should be balanced and this requires collaboration between all
stakeholders, mainly for security services that could be designed through
SOA.
Mr Sobolewski asked Ms Ţicău about the meaning of the term “sharing” noting
that only through meta-programming sharing can occur. Ms Ţicău explained
that there are interoperability problems at the national level requiring the
definition of the correct level of granularity so that public administrations can
integrate existing services. It is important to define the right level of trust for
each service provided. A Member State cannot easily use part of services
existing in another Member State, in case insufficient credentials are involved.
Smart e-Government Services based on the Recognition of
common Intent
Ms Margarete Donovang-Kuhlisch (IBM Deutschland GmbH) discussed
Smart eGovernment Services based on the recognition of common intent.
Ms Donovang-Kuhlisch explained that as Europe develops towards a
politically and economically integrated body, agencies, organisations, and
enterprises from various nations face the challenge of having to collaborate
and provide services to achieve common goals and create prior negotiated
and intended outcomes.
While European and national legislations set context and rules for such
business conduct; in multi-national service-oriented ecosystems, agile
business process management necessitates more than an underpinning
ontology to ensure semantic interoperability. It requires a complete business
process management language (BPML) based on a formal grammar to
support inter-nation administrative business processes automatically.
Governments turn “smart” by becoming network-enabled, effect-oriented and
context- and history-aware.
According to Ms Donovang-Kuhlisch, IBM has done a first case study that
addresses the collaborative exploitation of common intent in the context of
pan-European eGovernment services for a typical life event of a citizen, in
particular, a family’s residence relocation from Germany to Belgium. Based on
this example, the presentation explained how this could be applied to “extend
the SOA paradigm in semantic interoperability in the eGovernment context”.
In conclusion, the presentation argued that any European Initiative (e.g.
PEPPOL) should leverage the emerging capabilities of the future “Internet of
People, Things, and Services”. IBM invested into the Government Industry
Framework to deliver an instantiation of the “European Generic Public
Services Conceptual Model”. As both an analytics and infrastructure service
provider, IBM and its business partners offer a strategic partnership to develop
the eGovernment business model.
The Architecture framework for Federal IT Governance –
SOA and EAM for the German Federal Administration
Mr Christian Mrugalla (German Federal Ministry of the Interior) presented
the architecture framework for “Federal IT Governance – SOA and EAM for
the German Federal Administration”.
In December 2008, Germany’s Federal Government adopted a new steering
concept for its IT. One of the main tasks of the corresponding implementation
plan was setting up active architecture management. It soon became clear
that the special challenges of a cross-sectoral IT-steering could not be faced
by a pure technical approach and a more comprehensive view was needed.
Currently, Germany’s federal administration is on the way to set up an
Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) bridging political goals via
business processes towards technical patterns and standards. Within one
year, the fundamentals of a meta-model have been developed (an English
version is available) and adopted. This model reused many ideas from
international schemas like TOGAF and especially FOAF – an architecture
framework developed by the US federal government.
According to Mr Mrugalla, it soon became clear that service orientation is the
first-choice instrument for building a bridge between business processes and
technical solutions. Services are basically logical collections of functionalities
with the potential to be implemented in technical components. On one side,
this view is generic enough to respect the technological independence of the
IT service providers for the German government; on the other side it can still
provide the means to enable authorities to formulate and follow strategic IT
planning. Thus, SOA does not appear as an a priori element; instead it is a
natural consequence of the federated steering environment.
This could also be the future of pan-European cooperation in the field of EAM.
The primary scope of the architecture framework is the back office. This term
includes the IT infrastructure within federal authorities, and the internal IT
service providers in terms of classical eGovernment. In order to achieve the
main potential of eGovernment by seamless integration of process chains in an interoperable way, the importance of the back office architecture must not be underestimated. The EAM (by linking technical decisions and information models with business processes and strategic goals appropriately) is believed
to be one of the key elements in obtaining high-class eGovernment services
and interoperability in a way that is both economic and sustainable.
Summing up, the presentation gave an overview on the meta-model, the
status already achieved and the next steps.
SOA in Online Planning: Case Study
Mr Richard Love (Mayo County Council, Ireland) discussed SOA in online
planning by using a concrete example of how SOA was used with Mayo
County Council to enable the local authority to accept applications and
observations online, and how SOA is currently expected to underpin the
proposed national ePlanning portal.
In this case, several systems were tied together, using web services to
leverage data between discrete systems. In the case of the national portal, it
is planned that web services will be the method of communication used
between the national portal and local authorities to allow customers to search
and monitor applications as well as to validate online submissions so that
forms can be accepted centrally and processed locally.
Mr Love also presented how SOA was used in smaller scale applications,
such as the provision of road information during a weather crisis (displaying
Twitter feeds using an RSS reader).
The experience gained indicates that distributed systems needed to be in
fixed locations (ex. URLs cannot move, web service locations cannot move).
In addition, significant changes to the overall system generally require
cooperation and coordination of all parties that may result in down-time if not
carefully managed.
The main lesson learned is that SOA is actually the quickest and least
expensive option for integrating disparate systems. Furthermore, it is the best
option for sharing data between agencies as the alternative is massive datatransfer,
copying or reducing security to allow real-time access to databases.
1st Roundtable
The morning session concluded with a roundtable discussion.
Questions by Mr Pascal Verhoest:
Is SOA the right solution to the right problem?
Mr Sobolewski noted that the definition of the problem is the most important
aspect in every computing issue. In addition, the data representation cannot
be addressed in a universal manner. For example, XML is appropriate for describing arbitrary documents, however, in cases where high volume data
are needed to be stored and transferred, XML cannot be used as it greatly
increases the amount of data needed to provide the same information.
Therefore, it is important to agree that there is no single type of data
representation or technology for every eGovernment service. Everything
should co-exist; a frame should not be designed for one service –
implementation and configuration is what should be thought first when
designing a service.
Mr Sobolewski continued that a design should isolate the business logic
regardless of the technical aspects and provide services that are location
dependent, always replicated, managing documents, and providing reliability.
Basically, there is a need to identify the data, eGovernment operations, and
control strategies that can be reused.
Question from the audience:
The proposed approach is generic and this may cause problems
in the implementation of services. Shouldn’t eGovernment stay
focused on the current needs?
Mr Mrugalla agreed that complexity has to be reduced and that the approach
should not be mainly technical. Information technology should be run for
business purposes. Technological details are getting in the way of business
and communication needs, instead of focusing on functionalities and
business. He also stressed that an analysis of interoperability in the Member
States could potentially support and identify the way to move forward.
Ms Donovang-Kuhlisch added that service orientation should be adopted by
the business sector. It should be functional and citizen-oriented, alongside
implementing technology. However, due to security standards, and semantics,
the technical interoperability of web services becomes too complicated. In the
context of eGovernment across Europe, the service implementation should be
industrialised, highly scalable, and trustworthy deriving from a credential
platform.
Question from the audience:
Do the problems persist due to the current models in place?
Mr Mrugalla agreed that in many ways, this is true. The Information models
and designed solutions are great for technology purposes, but they cannot
apply to real business issues. Thus, a current shift is necessary in the design
of technology that corresponds and serves specific business needs.
Question from the audience (Aggelos Charlaftis):
The Public sector should serve the citizens first. Citizens are not
clients and the current solutions do not provide a citizen-oriented
approach. It seems that there is an interest to solely serve
businesses. Is there an option for the citizen?
Ms Ţicău agreed that eGovernment should be citizen-centric and userfriendly.
Citizens should be empowered through services they are authorised
to use, and the user interface should be dynamic, presenting only available
services tailored to the needs of the citizen.
Mr Love presented a different perspective: based on a survey that Mayo
County had administered with title “All our Services are Customers” – it seems
that significantly more service requests come from businesses in comparison
to citizens. For this reason, from an IT perspective, it makes mores sense that
eGovernment focuses in the automation of business related services.
However, citizens also benefit from this, as the reduction of effort necessary to
handle business requests allows public administrations to address citizens’
service requests quicker than before.
Ms Donovang-Kuhlisch added that eGovernment must equally serve both
citizens and enterprises; and if it serves the society and economy, actual
implementation will come out of it.
Mr Sobolewski commented that there is a need to showcase the functionality
of eGovernment. The identification of use cases could become a useful start.
Ms Donovang-Kuhlisch replied that there are numerous use cases that show
what governments can do. For instance, one Danish initiative two years ago
dealt with the challenge to come up with a catalogue of eGovernment cases
and identified 12 categories in which these cases could be classified. The
service catalogue recorded 5,000 use cases broken down in different
organisations, public sector, insurance companies, etc. to serve the business
and citizens.
Mr Mrugalla noted that when dealing with enterprise architecture for
eGovernment, one should expect the unexpected and be flexible. New needs
arise every day; therefore modelling each use case would not be very useful.
Mr Sobolewski commented that use cases can support the definition of how to
reach eGovernment. In order to find what service would be necessary, there
should be more services to choose from. For instance, in the case of the
network, the web became useful because of the huge number of services that
are available. Nevertheless, architecture is necessary in this case and for this,
it is important that use cases have been identified.
Question by Mr Pascal Verhoest:
The level of granularity has not yet been solved. Why is this, the
case?
Mr Hugo Kerschot replied that a reason could be the complexity behind
public services. What is necessary to identify is how and in what sense SOA
can help to force simpler processes or simplify services.
Mr Sobolewski added that simplification is not related to complexity of the
environment or IT. It is related to abstractions. Following the history of
information technology, the increase in complexity led from procedural
programming to structured programming, then to object oriented programming and now to distributed-programming. SOA necessitates the existence of
Service registries. Web services as a technology does not require a service
registry and can be thus reduced to client-server architecture. However, this
leads to the current software crisis, because client-server architecture does
not scale well in a distributed computing environment.
There is a need to turn from protocol oriented services to object oriented
services to deal with new operations. More services are necessary to decide
which system can have all the semantics for the domain of interest. A
distinction must be made between software languages, such as Java, and
programming languages, which must be domain specific; in this case, a
programming language for eGovernment would be needed that is not
currently used by anyone.
Ms Ţicău replied that services should be user-friendly and value the citizen. It
is important to follow the process of granularity and define the architecture. It
is also important to identify how every piece of information may be
encapsulated into different types of services and thus reduce complexity. Cost
savings could be achieved if the analysis of eGovernment operations could
identify the right services (now provided in parallel from different public
authorities) and have them separate from the interface.
E-GOVERNMENT -SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE (A)
WE WOULD LIKE TO PRESENTING THE E-GOVERNMENT WORKSHOP,HOLD AT BRUSSELS ON 17/02/10 “Service Oriented Architecture pushed to the limit in eGovernment”.
AT THIS EVENT OUR CONSULTANCY AFFILIATED EPAPHOS TEAMWORK HAD THE HONOUR PARTICIPATING IN.
Using SOA for structured composition of services
Ms Mechthild Rohen (Head of ICT for Government and Public Services Unit of the Information Society and Media Directorate-General) opened the workshop and stated that the purpose of the workshop is to bring people together to discuss ideas and good practices in the area of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). SOA is only a part of the activities that the Unit is currently dealing with, among which are policy, legal and technical as well as research issues related to eGovernment.
The objective of the workshop is to exchange experiences on SOA. Ms Rohen
noted that in her capacity as the chairperson of the eGovernment subgroup of
the i2010 high level group, she has observed that SOA is considered one of the key elements of innovation for many Member States.
According to the Ministerial Declaration adopted in Malmö in November 2009,eGovernment should focus on four policy priorities. These priorities, defined and supported by the Member States, include an overall improvement in terms of the (i) empowerment of citizens and businesses; (ii) the single market; (iii)
efficiency and effectiveness and (iv) pre-conditions supporting achieving the priorities above.
The fourth priority, pre-conditions, includes innovation in administrations,
where SOA is believed to be a key element. Technology is maturing and the
Member States are ready to develop new public services. New architecture
paradigms should be used to make administrations more efficient and effective. Several Member States have already started with the implementation. The EC is planning to look into the possibilities offered by
SOA for eGovernment through pilots and other actions together with the ISA (previously IDABC) Unit of the European Commission's Informatics Directorate-General.
The European Commission is currently in the process of developing an eGovernment action plan for 2011-2015 – based on the Ministerial eGovernment Declaration of Malmö (Nov 2009) - with the intention to include SOA related activites. However, currently not enough experience on implementing SOA exists in Member States. This is also what the workshop is aiming to achieve: to share experiences and knowledge on SOA.
In conclusion, Ms Rohen pointed two questions that this workshop will aim to
address:
1. What is the level of granularity to which it is possible to break down the components of services to build new services?
2. What is the expected economic impact of using SOA? The current economic crisis necessitates the use of efficient and cost effective development and delivery of services. Therefore, the question relates to
the allocation of cost towards developing SOA or migration of services to SOA and the maintenance costs of these services.
In conclusion, Ms Rohen anticipated a fruitful workshop and encouraged speakers and attendees to participate. Following Ms Rohen’s introduction, Mr Pascal Verhoest and Ms Hannele Lahti (ICT for Government and Public Services Unit of the Information Society and Media Directorate-General)
acting as the workshop moderators introduced the morning session and the first presentation of Mr Sobolewski.
Object SOA for Structured composition of services
Mr Michael Sobolewski (Texas Tech University (TTU), US) discussed service-oriented computing in the context of object-oriented (OO) distributed platforms. Mr Sobolewski argued that a platform consists of virtual computer resources, a programming environment allowing for the development of
distributed applications, and an operating system to run user programs and to facilitate the solution of complex user problems. Therefore, in his presentation,Service Protocol-Oriented Architectures are contrasted with Service Object-Oriented Architectures, and a meta-computer platform (SORCER) based on a service object-oriented architecture is described and analysed.
Furthermore, Mr Sobolewski presented a new object-oriented network programming methodology that uses the intuitive metacomputing semantics and the new “triple command” design pattern. Basically, the pattern defines how service objects communicate by sending one another a form of service requests called exertions that encapsulate the triplet: data, operations, and control strategy.
He continued that one of the first OO metacomputer platforms were developed under the sponsorship of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) – the Federated Intelligent Product Environment (FIPER),with funding of $ 21.5 million.
The goal of FIPER is to form a federation of distributed services that provide engineering data, applications, and tools on a network. A highly flexible software architecture had been developed (1999–2003), in which engineering tools like computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided engineering (CAE),product data management (PDM), optimisation, cost modelling, etc., act as federating service providers and service requestors.
The “Service-Oriented Computing Environment” (SORCER) builds on top of FIPER to introduce a metacomputing operating system with the necessary system services, including a federated file system, and autonomic resource management to support service-oriented metaprogramming. It provides an
integrated solution for complex metacomputing applications. The SORCER metacomputing environment adds an entirely new layer of abstraction to the practice of service-oriented computing – exertion-oriented (EO) programming with complementary federated method invocation.
The EO programming makes a positive difference in service-oriented programming primarily through a new metaprogramming abstraction as experienced in many service-oriented computing projects including systems deployed at GE Global Research Center, GE Aviation, Air Force Research Lab, and SORCER Lab, TTU.
Following the presentation, Mr Sobolewski provided further technical details on how the SOOA concept operates, as the result of a question from the audience (Mr. Aggelos Charlaftis, Belgium). More specifically, he presented the difference in terminology in the OO paradigm, where the collection of services is abstract and the service definition itself is an interface; services are not provided by servers as in the case of the client-server architecture, but by service providers, who implement the service interface. He also presented the mechanism that allows a service to be requested, a service provider to be identified, and the service result to pass to the service requestor in a distributed environment, where objects are not confined within a computer, but they are released to the network.
OUR COMPANY BASED ON SHAREHOLDING LEGISLATION CONSISTS OF EXPERTS IN THE FIELD OF ECONOMICS,LAWS,ENGINEERING,CONSULTING,TECHNOLOGY,ECOLOGY,CAPITALISING WHICH ARE WORKING WITH PASSION TO IMPLEMENT OUR VALUES.(published by think tank IAMBLICHUS team)
