Distributed knowledge repositories for pan- European public services
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Abstract:
Abstract. The free movement of persons is a concept that has been settled on a European strategic level. In reality there are still a lot of steps to be followed in order to achieve this ambitious goal of mobility. Both the complexity of and the problems encountered in pan-European administrative processes interfere this aim. Interferences can be Knowledge Management (KM) specific decentralization, implicitness, non-reusability, creation of process knowledge) as well as KM non-specific problems (linguistic, legal, document handling, cultural problems). To solve these problems both administrative processes have to be made transparent to the citizen and the knowledge about these processes has to be managed. Thus, public administrations must interact seamlessly vertically (Europe, nation, region, municipality) as well as horizontally (between countries) with each other. This implies not only the use of standards but also the interoperability of process systems. Coping with the above mentioned problems a solution requires Knowledge Management. As public administrations are in strongly heterogeneous legal environments a centralised and harmonised solution is not feasible. In this article a possible solution is described that has been developed in the European research project “InfoCitizen”. Within InfoCitizen a Distributed Knowledge Repository and an intelligent agent-based Architecture is identified as an appropriated approach. InfoCitizen is a “proof-of-concept” project in which a Distributed Knowledge Repository and an agent platform are core concepts. The experiences and intermediary results of the successfully ongoing project are presented.