Intelligent User-Centric Access to Public Information

introduction The quantity and diversity of information available from public government sources is now quite large. Most people associate governmental information exclusively with prescriptive information such as laws and regulations. However, governments , especially local ones, are using the Web to provide a number of services that are mainly informative and aim at improving the quality of life of citizens and at promoting the local community , for example job placement services, tourist information, and so forth. Finally, government e-services available to citizens represent one of the most frequent and critical points of contact between public administrations and citizens. In addition to common services such as ID cards and permits, e-services represent the only practical way of providing incentives and support to specific classes of citizens. The key problem is that information must be findable (Morville, 2002). Easy and effective user-centric access to complex information is therefore one of the most critical functionalities of e-government. Without timely and accurate information, the participation of citizens in the government is likely to be an illusion: in short, no democracy without knowledge. Traditional access paradigms are not suited to most search tasks, which are exploratory and imprecise in essence. The user needs to explore the information base, find relationships among concepts and thin out alternatives in a guided way. New access paradigms supporting exploration are needed. Since the goal is end-user interactive access, a holistic approach, in which modeling, interface and interaction issues are considered together, must be used and will be discussed in this chapter.