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

Year 2009, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 41 - 52, 01.06.2009

Jean Vincent Fonou Dombeu

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

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