J. Theor. Appl. Electron. Commer. Res., Volume 3, Issue 3 (December 2008) – 8 articles

Digital watermarking is a promising technology to embed information as unperceivable signals in digital contents. Various watermarking techniques have been proposed to protect copyrights of multimedia digital contents over Internet trading so that ownership of the contents can be determined in subsequent copyrights disputes. However, their applications in preventing unauthorized distribution of intelligence document have not been studied. In this paper, we propose a watermark-based document distribution protocol, which complements conventional cryptography-based access control schemes, to address the problem of tracing unauthorized distribution of sensitive intelligence documents. The reinforcement of document distribution policies requires a concrete support of non-repudiation in the distribution process. The distribution protocol is adapted from our previous work on the watermarking infrastructure for enterprise document management. It makes use of intelligence user certificates to embed the identity of the users into the intelligence documents to whom are distributed. In particular, keeping the identity secrecy between document providers and users (but yet traceable upon disputes) is a key contribution of this protocol in order to support for intelligence applications. We also outline an implementation of the distribution protocol and watermarking scheme employed. Full article

We typically think of documents as carrying information. However, certain kinds of documents do more than that: they are not only informative but also performative in that they represent rights. When these documents are in paper form or some other physical medium, holding the document indicates holding the right. Since the document represents a right, a hazard is that by duplicating the document, one may fraudulently claim a new right. For this reason, physical documents that represent rights are both tamper resistant and copy resistant. However, problems arise when such performative documents are converted to electronic form: duplicates are bit for bit perfect and undetectable. Thus, the normal heuristic of uniqueness of the document token as representing the uniqueness of the right no longer holds for performative electronic documents. This is especially challenging when the rights are transferable, as with various financial instruments such as stocks and bonds. This paper presents an analysis, based on deontic logic, about the necessary requirements for electronic documents and their corresponding electronic procedures in order to guarantee the uniqueness of rights and prevention of fraud. A design is sketched, based on a notion we call digital parchment, which offers improved flexibility. Full article

e-Government can be defined as Internet applications for public administration processes and decision making on local, regional, national as well as cross-national level. Therefore, the strong necessity to ensure vertical and horizontal interoperation of administrative units is arrived. The main goal of the paper is to reveal how interoperability is built into the public administration engineering process. The paper covers explanations how interoperability is important for e-governmental processes covering documents flows and what activities have been realized with EU agencies to ensure interoperability development. The first part of the paper comprises explanation of e-Government document engineering and administrative process development. The second part covers consideration on interoperability for e-Business and public administration. The third part includes analysis of what standardization is demanded for interoperability of e-Government agencies and how different countries’ governments are prepared to ensure such interoperability in public administration in the light of documents, institutional norms and open standards. Full article

Data heterogeneity in the public sector is a serious problem and remains to be a key issue as different naming conventions are used to represent similar data labels. The e-government effort in many countries has provided a platform for government entities and their business partners to exchange data through Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and standards such as RosettaNet (B2B data exchange standard), EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce, and Transport), XML (Extensible Markup Language) and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). However, e-government efforts have not really resolved data heterogeneity problems significantly due to limitation of these standards. One such limitation is the inability of data inheritance. In order to solve this problem with emphasis on Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Web Services, a semantically enriched web service for the public sector is needed. Thus we propose an ontology-based solution which allows data inheritance and polymorphism. This goal of this paper is to show how heterogeneous e-government documents can be semantically matched. We propose a shared hierarchical knowledge repository approach and a detailed process methodology for semantic mediation. A two-part semantic mediation approach using SRS (Semantic Relatedness Scores) and SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) is highlighted. Both measures are complimentary and provide the semantics necessary for resolving schema heterogeneity. Our approach incorporates a rule-based engine that reads and executes SWRL rules (i.e. RacerPro). We also adopted several tools for proof-of-concept such as Protégé (i.e. ontology editor) and JESS (Java Expert Shell System). Full article

In the effort of Governments worldwide to effectively transform manual into electronic services, semantic interoperability issues pose as a key challenge: system-to-system interaction asks for standardized data definitions, codification of existing unstructured information and a framework for managing governmental data in a unified way. Integrating and extending recent developments in Germany, Hong-Kong, UK and US governments - but also eBusiness interoperability research results in Europe, the proposed approach is applied within the Greek e-Government Framework and bears the following steps: (a) Gathering and analysis of governmental service forms at field level, so that common structures can be identified, (b) Customization of UN/CEFACT Core Components, (c) Semiautomatic XML Schema Definition (XSD) files creation, using sets of naming, structuring and verification rules, (d) Adoption of international or development of country-specific Codelists, (e) Development of guidance material for the application of the approach by government officials at central or local level. Discussion on the results is targeting best practice examples that can be drawn at scientific and organizational level, but also the key difficulties that have to be tackled – in relevance with the administrations and industry readiness in each country. Future steps include enhancing the paradigm in order to cover vertical data standards and applying the approach to other EU or associated countries. Full article

Innovative eCustoms solutions play an important role in the pan-European eGovernment strategy. The underlying premise is interoperability postulating a common understanding of processes, services and the documents that are exchanged between business and government organizations as well as between governmental authorities of different EU member states. This article provides a stringent approach for deriving documents and services from current eCustoms procedures based on the UN/CEFACT standards framework and for embedding these in a service oriented architecture for Collaborative eGovernment. In doing so, we put a special focus on document engineering by applying the UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS), a conceptual framework for modeling document components in a syntax neutral and technology independent manner. By relying on CCTS, we want to tackle the challenge of handling different document configurations imposed by divergent national legislations, different customs procedures (export, import, transit, and excise) and different industries. The resulting conceptual model is transferred to XML schema serving as a basis for Web Services design and implementation. These Web Services are designed for seamless interoperable exchange of electronic customs documents between heterogeneous IS landscapes both on business and government side. Beyond the theoretical deduction practical insights are gained from a European research project implementing the artifacts proposed in a real-world setting. Full article

The adoption of advanced integration technologies that enable private and public organizations to seamlessly execute their business transactions electronically is still relatively low, especially among governmental bodies and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Current solutions often lack a common understanding of the underlying business document semantics and most existing approaches are not able to cope with the huge variety of business document formats, stemming from highly diverse requirements of the different stakeholders. Developed and applied in the course of the EU-funded research project GENESIS, this paper presents a comprehensive core component-based business document modelling approach that builds upon existing standards such as the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) and the UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS). These standards are extended by introducing the concept of generic business document templates out of which specific documents can be derived according to the actual user’s needs. Key principle to achieve this flexibility is the integration of business context information that allows for modelling standard-based but at the same time customized business documents. The resulting modelling framework ranges from (tool-supported) graphical data models to the technical representation of the business documents as XML schema documents designed in compliance with the UN/CEFACT XML schema Naming and Design Rules (NDR). Full article