Retrieving Knowledge in E-government: The Prospects of Ontology for Regulatory Domain Record Keeping Systems

If e-Government systems are to achieve the anticipated goals of storing, manipulating, diffusing, and preserving knowledge, then these systems must incorporate mechanisms for domain-specific information. One often overlooked asset for this activity is the knowledge embedded within and between records and legacy record keeping systems; however, lacking government-wide documentation management systems and subject specific resource description, timely retrieval of relevant records is impossible. This paper explores the benefit of ontologies for improved retrieval of subject domain knowledge. Historical records and recording keeping systems were reviewed for this purpose. Structural and semantic information was derived, from which requirements for an ontology in the subject domain of export control regulation were identified. Class, subclass, instance, and relationships were identified and modelled via an Entity Relationship Diagram. Through this exercise, it is clear that e-Government systems hold great potential for circumventing past information management deficiencies, and ontologies may have a role in the transition from information systems to knowledge systems.