Mary Rowlatt, Strategic Information Manager

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E-government
ESSEX COUNTY COUNCIL
Mary Rowlatt, Strategic Information Manager
January 17th 2003
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Essex County Council

• Large local authority in UK
• Covers 1,300 square miles in S E England
• Delivers services (together with 12 District
  Councils and other agencies) to 1.3m citizens
• e-Government is a key issue (Government targets
  for 2005 and standards)
• Relevant projects

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seamlessUK

• NOF (lottery) funded
• 8 other local authorities 15 key national
  information providers 45 local organisations
• one stop citizens gateway to integrated local
  and national information
• health, education, employment, rights, benefits,
  local government etc
• www.seamless-uk.info

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seamlessUK 2

• Distributed, multiple sources - single search
  produces integrated hit list
• Standards based
• SOAP, XML query, Z39.50, Harvest
• seamlessUK application profile based on e-GMS
  (DC)
• Tools for participating organisations
• seamless.dot (metatagging tool) linked to
• thesuarus
• geocoder

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Thesaurus

• Cross domain and designed for the public
• ISO standard, synonyms, browse, query rewriting
• Mapping - GCL, APLAWS, partner vocabularies
• Integrating into our content management system
• Essex CC partner organisations Essex Online
  portal
• Piloting its use to improve commercial semantic
  metadata/semi-automatic tagging tools

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ePSINet

• www.epsinet.org
• e-Content Programme - 15 countries (CEE?)
• help create the conditions for effective
  implementation of the EC Directive on reuse and
  exploitation of PSI
• portal - standards, management, regulation,
  performance
• Europe wide network - individuals, companies,
  public sector organisations, associations (EU
  international)
• database, email list, faq, online enquiries

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PULMAN

• www.pulmanweb.org
• EC funded Network of Excellence - 37 countries
• Public libraries cultural heritage institutions
• Guidelines (social, management, technical)
• Standards - key issue

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Relevant experience

• Developing implementing terminology tools
  standards to support interoperability in real
  world situation with multiple partners from
  different sectors
• Thesaurus development, use and mapping
• Technical management issues involved in
  creating and maintaining distributed (peer to
  peer) information systems

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Relevant experience 2

• Co-ordinating managing large multi-partner
  projects (national and EU)
• Good access to partners (technical, local
  administrations, publishers, content providers,
  libraries, museums, archives across Europe and
  beyond)
• Good access to effective dissemination channels

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e-Government/e-Europe agendas

• Joined up services
• Services available electronically
• More transactional services (not just
  information)
• Customer focussed services
• what sort of person am I (businessman, child,
  elderly person)
• where I am geographically

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What we would like to achieve

• Pull together - existing work on
• distributed (peer to peer) systems (multiple
  suppliers)
• improved semantic interoperability
• easier on the information/service providers
• costs of good metadata v. high
• delivery via web services (including
  personalisation, authentication, payment etc)

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Focus on delivery of public services at local
level

• Create citizens (community information) ontology
  support interoperability, joint working, system
  integration
• Support development of web service applications
  for e-delivery
• machine interoperable
• use apparent
• (Essex Online Portal)
• Huge benefits if new ( developing) public
  service terminologies are guided by a sound
  conceptual framework

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Potential roles

• Ontology development
• Application, testing, implementation (with
  partners)
• Dissemination
• Existing partners
• BT Syntegra (IT and IS for ECC)
• MDR Partners (dissemination, partners, project
  management)
• Thesaurus consultant (Belgium) System
  Simulation (terminology stuff)
• Gauss (content management)
• etc etc

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Contact details

• Mary Rowlatt
• Strategic Information Manager
• Essex County Council
• PO Box 11, County Hall
• Chelmsford
• Essex, CM1 1LX
• tel [phone]
• email maryr_at_essexcc.gov.uk
• www.essexcc.gov.uk