The main purpose of the paper is to present a case study of the use of semantic technologies within e‐ Government context. We aim to describe the semantic layer that was designed in the scope of the SPOCS project to enable the validation of documents in the scope of cross border procedures. The SPOCS project (Simple Procedures Online for Cross‐ Border Services) focuses in particular on the transfer of documents to European administrations in the scope of procedures to deliver services across borders. One of the problems that arise is the heterogeneity of documents between countries even they have the same role. With the increase of cross border activities encouraged by the service directive in particular, electronic procedures are more important than ever. The project has therefore set up an infrastructure including the transfer of documents in a metadata container and the validation of documents. Cross‐border service pilots have been implemented to show the added value of the SPOCS infrastructure. To overcome the problem of semantic equivalence of documents, the European Commission has encouraged the implementation of a semantic layer to support the interoperability between administrative systems and the reuse of resources across government bodies. In the scope of the SPOCS project, we have implemented a set of pilots to illustrate the added value of implementing a semantic interoperability layer and developing common models and vocabularies. Common ontologies have been designed to describe documents, equivalences, and procedures. Specific access mechanisms have been implemented to automatically verify the status of European companies. Finally, semantic rules have been created to determine the procedure that needs to be used in order to provide a cross border service. SPOCS resources are posted to the JoinUp portal.

1. M. Foulonneau, F. Marrinan, N. Karalius, O. Dziamski, T-F. Gordon, H.
Hartenstein, S. Rieger, K. Weigend, D. Mitzman, S. Turki, Y. Djaghloul,
J-F. Merche
SPOCS: A semantic interoperability layer to
support the implementation of the service
directive
ECEG 2013
13-14 June
Como, Italy

2. SPOCS - Simple Procedures Online for
Cross-Border Services
• 3rd
Large Scale Pilot - CIP prog.
• Implement and test interoperable eGov. services in the
context of the Services Directive.
• Improve quality of cross-border electronic procedures and
points of single contact (PSC) for businesses.
 EU Services Directive
• procedures necessary to establish or exercise a service in
another Member State can be conducted electronically.
• Member States had to establish PSCs, as electronic one-
stop shops for all service providers.
• PSCs as intermediaries between the requesting service
provider and the national competent authorities.

3. Transfer of documents to European
administrations in the scope of procedures
 Online procedures
 Including the transfer of data (forms) and documents
 Problems:
 Heterogeneity of documents
 Multilingual environment
 Document authenticity (signature and eSafe)
 Governance and distributed set of services

4. The SPOCS semantic task force
 Henri Tudor PRC, Luxembourg
 European Business Register, Belgium
 iTree Group, Lithuania
 Instytut Logistyki i Magazynowania, Poland
 Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany
 Federal Office of Administration, Germany
 Infocamere, Italy

5. Omnifarious Container for eDocuments
(OCD)
1. Payload Layer (document file)
2. Metadata layer, divided into
1. Metadata of the OCD (such as
the sender and the receiver of the
container)
2. Metadata that represent the
document or payload, including
in the best case an extraction of
the value of information recorded
inside the document (e.g., the
birthdate for a birth certificate).
3. Authentication Layer

6. A set of common ontologies (OWL)
 Document ontology to represent relations between documents, document types (e.g.,
birth certificates) procedures and equivalences between 2 documents in the context of a
particular procedure

7. Creating equivalences between
documents
 Semantic mechanisms allow the system to infer
equivalences and in some cases request users only to
validate assumptions instead of manually creating
them all.

8. Creating equivalences between
documents

9. Automatic validation of a document
• Technical architecture of components used in Semantic Pilot
Lithuania – Portugal

10. Automatic validation of document and
application based on data
• Screenshot of Polish PSC with link to ‘validation document’
(gr. Επικύρωση εγγράφων)

11. Using semantic data sources
 The EBR registry, a set of Web services
 Supporting the service directive with open data
 Editing and writing carried out through the CKAN software in version 1

12. Modeling of legislation
 Investigated in the scope of the Travel Agent
case in Poland and Luxembourg with the
Carneades software.
 Modeled conditions for authorization procedure
to support civil servant in decision process.
 Cases encoded with the support of Fraunhofer institute

13. Case study – Travel agent
 Travel agent must hold a
business permit.
 Business permit is granted if:
• the person responsible for the
operation or management of
the business:
• meets the requirements in
terms of qualification and
professional integrity;
• can provide proof of
mandatory guarantees and
insurances;
• and the business has a fixed
physical establishment in
Luxembourg (no so-called
'letterbox companies').
Logic-like rules for travel agent service
delivery authorization in Luxembourg
Logic-like rules for travel agent service
delivery authorization in Luxembourg

14. Carneades
 Open source & free
argumentation system
 Web-based, collaborative
software tools for:
• summarizing arguments of a
debate in an argument graph
• visualizing, browsing and
navigating argument graphs
• evaluating arguments
• …
Carneades interface
Argumentation map for travel
agent business permit

15. Conclusion
 Connections with SEMIC/JoinUp
 Use of Business Core Vocabulary
 Experimentation of the Core Public Service Vocabulary
 Catalogue of European semantic assets (JoinUp), software
components (JoinUp)
 Towards a catalogue of public services?
 eSens (ICT-PSP Pilot A)
 Towards governance mechanisms for semantic datasets
 Coherent semantic layer across multiple eGov piloting domains
(eHealth, Business life cycle, eJustice, etc.)

16. M. Foulonneau, F. Marrinan, N. Karalius, O. Dziamski, T-F. Gordon, H.
Hartenstein, S. Rieger, K. Weigend, D. Mitzman, S. Turki, Y. Djaghloul, J-F.
Merche
SPOCS: A semantic interoperability layer to
support the implementation of the service
directive
ECEG 2013
13-14 June
Como, Italy
Thank you for your attention.