ONTOLOGY SUPPORTING E-GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES FOR DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS MONITORING IN SUB SAHARAN AFRICA

Abstract

In recent years, a number of developed countries have employed ontology in e-government projects (Ralf, 2002:4; Bettahar et al., 2005:100). On the other hand, Sub Saharan African (SSA) countries have followed the trends towards e-government and adoption of new technologies during the past seven years (Kaaya, 2004:39; Ngulube, 2007:4; Bwalya, 2009:1). Consequently, many applications have been and are currently being developed in various government departments (Kaaya, 2004:39; Kitaw, 2006:18; Bwalya, 2009:7; Shuppan, 2009:124), aimed at providing better delivery of services to citizens, businesses and organizations. However, little work has been done in building knowledge base ontologies that facilitate communication amongst stakeholders and that specify processes and data description of these applications; thereby, guaranteeing their maintainability, interoperability and sustainability. In this paper, we present a case study of constructing ontology in support of e-government initiatives in the domain of development projects monitoring in a Sub Saharan African country. The ontology presented here is not intended to provide a definitive and comprehensive account of the many aspects of development projects implementation, but it aims at serving as a foundation for further specification efforts. Case studies of development projects conducted in different SSA countries as well as related published works in various fields including project management, project monitoring and evaluation, and capacity building are reviewed and the features of the ontology are extracted. The ontology and knowledge base editor Protégé is used to create and validate the ontology. The main purposes of the ontology encompass: • Providing developers of potential e-government applications for development projects monitoring in Sub Saharan Africa and the developing world in large, with key concepts and activities of the domain, • Facilitating communication amongst all the role players involve in development projects implementation by providing a common and shared representation of concepts and activities of the domain, and • Serving as a knowledge base system to the monitoring and evaluation activities of development projects; thereby, strengthening efficiency, effective and sustainable implementation of development projects in Sub Saharan Africa. Further, our work aims at sensitizing and serving as a practical case study of building ontology in support of e-government adoption processes in Sub Saharan Africa.

Keywords

• E-government, Ontology, Knowledge Base System, Development Project, Protégé

References

1. Ahsan, Kamrul and Gunawan Indra (2009), ‘‘Analysis of Cost and Schedule Performance of
2. International development Projects’’, International Journal of Project Management. Alexopoulos, Panos, Kafentzis Kostas, Benetou Xanthi, Tagaris Tassos and Georgolios Panos (2008), ‘‘Towards a Generic Fraud Ontology in E-governement’’, International Conference on
3. Security and Cryptography (SECRYPT 2008), Porto, Portugal, 26-29 June.
4. Apostolou, Dimitris, Stojanovic Ljiljana, Lobo Tomas Parientes, Miro Jofre Casas and Papadakis Andreas (2005), ‘‘Configuring E-government Services Using Ontologies’’, IFIP International
5. Federation for Information Processing, Springer Boston, Vol. 2005, No. 189, pp. 141-155.
6. Bergeron, Gilles, Deitchler Megan, Bilinsky Paula and Swindale Anne (2006), ‘‘Monitoring and Evaluation Framework for Title II Development-Oriented Projects’’, Food and Nutrition
7. Technical Assistance, Technical Note No. 10. Bettahar, Fathia, Moulin Claude and Barthes Jean-Paul (2005), ‘‘Ontologies Supporting E- government Services’’, In Proceedings of the IEEE Artificial Intelligence Conference, Corvilha,
8. Portuguese, 5-8 December, pp. 100-1005.

9. Bwalya, Kelvin Joseph (2009), ‘‘Factors Affecting Adoption of E-government in Zambia’’, The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC), Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 13.
10. Ceccaroni, Luigi and Kendall Elisa (2003), ‘‘A Semantically-Rich, Graphical Environment for
11. Collaborative Ontology Development en Agentcities’’, iD3, Barcelona, Spain. Crawford, Paul and Bryce Paul (2003), ‘‘Project Monitoring and Evaluation: a Method for
12. Enhancing the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Aid Project Implementation’’, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 2003, No. 21, pp. 363-373.
13. Copson, Raymond (2006), Africa: ‘‘Development Issues and Policy’’, CRS Report for Congress, July 2004.
14. Goldman, Ian, Searle-Mbulu Rachel and Greenberg Stephen (2006), ‘‘Theme: Monitoring &
15. Evaluation as Learning: Rethinking the dominant paradigm’’, Sustainable Livelihoods in Sub- Saharan Africa, Issue 21, December. Estevez, Elsa, Janowski Tomasz and Ojo Adegboyega (2007), ‘‘Planning for e-government -A service-oriented agency survey’’, United Nations University, International Institute for Software
16. Technology (UNU-IIST), Report No. 361, April. Gomez-Perez, Asuncion, Ortiz-Rodriguez Fernando and Villazon-Terrazas Boris (2006a),
17. ‘‘Ontology- based legal information retrieval to improve the information access in e-government’’, rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2006), June 11 - 14, Budva, Montenegro.
18. Gomez-Perez, Asuncion, Ortiz-Rodriguez Fernando and Villazon-Terrazas Boris (2006b), ‘‘Legal ontologies for the Spanish e-government’’, LNCS, pp. 301-310.
19. Gruber, Thomas Robert (1993), ‘‘Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies used for
20. Knowledge Sharing’’, International Journal Human-Computer Studies 43, pp.907-928. Herborn, Timo and Wimmer Maria (2004), ‘‘Process Ontologies Facilitating Interoperability in eGovernment - A Methodological Framework’’, In Proceedings on the Workshop on Semantics for Business Process Management, Workshop of the 3rd Semantic Web Conference, pp. 76-88.
21. Jakachira, Tafadzwa Blessing, Muyingi and Wertlen Ronald (2008). ‘‘Implementation of a web- based E-government proxy for a marginalized rural population’’, In Proceedings of the Southern
22. Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC), Wild Coast Sun, South Africa, 7-10 September. Kaaya, Janet (2004), ‘‘Implementing E-government Services in East Africa: Assessing Status through Content Analysis of Government Websites’’, Electronic Journal of E-Government, 2, Vol. , No. 1, pp. 39-54.
23. Kitaw, Yayehyirad (2006), ‘‘E-Government in Africa, Prospects, challenges and Practices’’, Msc
24. Dissertation, Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland. Mondorf, Ansgar and Herborn Timo (2008), ‘‘Ontology-based process mediation in the European project BRITE’’, In the Proceedings of MKWI 2008, Munich, 26-28 February, pp.341-352.
25. Ngulube, Patrick (2007), ‘‘the Nature and Accessibility of E-Government in Sub Saharan Africa’’,
26. International Review of Information Ethics (IRIE), Vol. 1, No. 7, pp. 1-13. Okereke, Chima (2007), ‘‘Aid to sub-Saharan Africa: Perennial Handouts or a Regional
27. Development Program? A New and Important Role for Project Management ’’ Regional Report, PMForum & PM World Today. Quartey, Elaine (1996), ‘‘Development Projects through Build-Operate Schemes: their Role and Place in Developing Countries’’, International Journal of Project Management, Elsevier Science Ltd, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 47-52.
28. Ralf, Klischewski (2002), ‘‘Towards Ontology for e-Document Management in Public
29. Administration – the Case of Schleswig-Holstein’’, In Proceedings of the 36thHawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’03), IEEE Computer Society. Ortiz-Rodriguez, Fernando (2006), ‘‘Mexican e-government ontologies: an adaptation’’, Fourth
30. LACCEI International Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology (LACCET'2006), Mayagez, Puerto Rico, 21-23 June.
31. Mosse, Roberto and Sontheimer Leigb Ellen (1996), Performance Monitoring Indicators
32. Handbook, World Bank Technical Report, Paper No. 334. Shuppan, Tino (2009), ‘‘E-government in Developing Countries: Experiences from Sub-Saharan
33. Africa’’, Government Information Quarterly, Elsevier Inc., Vol. 2009, No. 26, pp. 118-127.
34. Usero, Jose Angel Martínez and Orenes Maria Pilar Beltran (2005), ‘‘Ontologies in the Context of
35. Knowledge Organization and Interoperability in e-Government Services’’, IRFD World Forum – Conference on Digital Divide, Global Development and the Information Society, November 14-16. Tunis, Tunisia. World Bank (1996), Designing Project Monitoring and Evaluation, Operations Evaluation
36. Department, Lessons and practices, Number 8, 6 January. http:\\www.adpc.net/PDR-SEA/eval/files39.htm [Accessed 21.10.2009]