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People build databases to collect, systematize, and make available to users knowledge in a consistent and hopefully trustworthy form. But the largest data collection today, the web, is not systematic, consistent, or trustworthy, and the access techniques we use are provably inadequate. Focusing just on text, what would it take to extract information from the web, organize it, and form a database (both instances and metadata) from it? This paper discusses some of the core problems and provides examples of recent research in NLP: automated instance mining, metadata structure harvesting, and inter-concept relation discovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All automated coreference resolution systems consider a number of features, such as head noun, NP type, gender, or number. Although the particular features used is one of the key factors for determining performance, they have not received much attention, especially for languages other than English. This paper delves into a considerable number of pairwise comparison features for coreference, including old and novel features, with a special focus on the Spanish language. We consider the contribution of each of the features as well as the interaction between them. In addition, given the problem of class imbalance in coreference resolution, we analyze the effect of sample selection. From the experiments with TiMBL (Tilburg Memory-Based Learner) on the AnCora corpus, interesting conclusions are drawn from both linguistic and computational perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time, in 2006, the five yearly New Zealand Census was made available for completion and return online. This chapter discusses the grounding of the Online Census project within Statistics New Zealand's overall strategy for the 2006 census, as well as New Zealand's e-government goals, its multi-channel strategy, and its Bicultural and Disability strategies. The chapter then outlines how the project was set up, how the teams were established, and their relationship with other aspects of the overall Census project. The chapter describes the details of the Online Census option itself, the distribution of user ids, the construction of the web site and interface design, user support, and how the data was collected. Critical decisions related to estimates of uptake, load demand, and the choice of technology partners are discussed as well as the technology itself. Key factors in the success of the project, such as the identification of potential risks, especially risks associated with key stakeholder groups, and the communications strategy employed are also covered. In conclusion, the final uptake of the Online Census option, post-census evaluation undertaken, and some comparisons with other countries are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information is one of the most valuable resources in government. Government managers are finding however, that information needed to plan, make decisions, and act is often held outside their own organizations, maintained in disparate formats, and used for widely different purposes. Efforts to bring this data together across boundaries have provided new understanding into just how difficult cross-boundary information sharing is. Finding ways to bring together information and integrate it for use in solving pressing public problems is fast becoming a focus of attention for digital government practitioners and researchers alike. This chapter reports on one such study1 of cross-boundary information integration that revealed three important lessons for creating and sustaining cross-boundary information sharing: 1) interoperability is key, 2) a shift in agency culture is necessary, and 3) the role of policymakers is central to this type of project. Four recommendations for action derived from the case studies are presented as well. Government executives and policy-makers need to ensure the creation of enterprise-wide mechanisms and capabilities such as (1) governance structures, (2) resource allocation models, (3) scalable strategies, and (4) non-crisis capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Digital Government Project at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez is an attempt to leverage research in information technologies and computer science to identify and help overcome some of the most pervasive barriers to the adoption of IT by small and regional governments. We present a survey study that measures the level of penetration of IT in general and internet technology in particular by the citizens of the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. We then proceed to present our experience in helping this small city adopt IT to enhance its systems and processes with the end goal of improving the internal work environment as well as the quality of services to the citizens. We hope that this experience will both help and stimulate similar ongoing and future efforts by universities to improve the quality of government and thus life in their surrounding communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's emergency management environments geoinformation technologies play a vital role, but their potential has not been fully exploited. Key decision makers usually do not have direct access to Geographic Information Systems and if they receive access, complex user interfaces often hinder performance for high pressure tasks. In order to provide decision makers with direct and easy access to geoinformation in emergency situations and support group collaboration, we developed three collaborative geoinformation platforms: the Multimodal Interface Platform for Geographic Information Systems (GeoMIP), the GeoCollaborative Crisis Management platform for mobile collaboration and a web-portal for humanitarian relief logistics. The technologies developed are intelligent, multimodal (speech and gesture-based) user interfaces that allow synchronous and asynchronous collaboration between decision makers; support GIS use by mobile emergency management teams; and provide open standards-based web portal technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wide range of e-government services is being made available in both online (through Webbased portals) and offline (through physical administrative service centers with backend computer support) settings. This chapter examines issues related to developing hybrid egovernment projects leveraging both online and offline channels to maximize their impact. Three case studies based on ongoing projects initiated by various government branches in the Shanghai area are presented. The first case study focuses on Shanghai's online portal "China Shanghai." The second case study discusses a successful offline e-government project undertaken by the Qingpu District Government of Shanghai. The third case study is focused on a "Letters-and-Visits" (government customer relation and complaint processing) information system developed by the Xuhui District Government of Shanghai. The main findings of our studies indicate that hybrid e-government provides a convenient, timely, and implementable mechanism to bridge the digital divide. Its wide application is expected in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the emergence of the Semantic Web building ontologies have become quite popular and almost every conference on information science including artificial intelligence and e- Government have tracks that cover (legal) ontologies. Ontologies are the vocabularies that can be used to describe a universe of discourse. In this chapter we want to explain the roles (legal) ontologies play in the field of legal information systems and (juridical) knowledge management. We emphasize the fact that these ontologies are social constructs that can be used to express shared meaning within a community of practice and also have a normative character. Many different ontologies have been created for similar and different purposes and two of them, both core ontologies of law that specify knowledge that is common to all domains of law, will be explained in more detail. The first one, is a Functional Ontology for Law (FOLaw). This ontology describes and explains dependencies between types of knowledge in legal reasoning. FOLaw is rather an epistemological framework than an ontology, since it is concerned with the roles knowledge plays in legal reasoning rather than with legal knowledge itself. Nevertheless FOLaw has shown some practical value in various applied European ICT projects, but its reuse is rather limited. We will also explain some aspects of the LRI-Core ontology which captures the main concepts in legal information processing. LRI-Core is particularly inspired by research on abstract commonsense concepts. Legal knowledge is based upon these commonsense concepts. Since legal knowledge always refers to the ‘real world', although in abstract terms, the main categories of LRI-Core are physical, mental and abstract concepts. Roles cover in particular social worlds. Another special category is occurrences; terms that denote events and situations. In this chapter we illustrate the use of LRI-Core with an ontology for Dutch criminal law, developed in the e- Court European project and an ontology for Dutch administrative law developed in a project for the Dutch State Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been a thrust on public safety related information-sharing efforts. However, many public safety information systems are incapable of efficient data sharing due to their heterogeneous nature. Digital government research has focused on the use of ontologies as they might play a key role in achieving seamless connectivity between heterogeneous systems. In this chapter we conduct a survey of public safety information sharing initiatives and discuss the ontological implications of the systems and standards. We also include a comprehensive review on ontologies and ontology-based information sharing and integration approaches in the digital government and other domains. We discuss the importance of ontology mapping for the public safety domain and present a survey of the state-of-the-art in ontology mapping. To showcase ontology-based sharing efforts we present two case studies: the first on evaluating mapping tools with law enforcement data and the second on using ontologies for sharing and analysis of extremist data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]