eGovernAbiity-AccessSupport: Model based framework for building accessible e-administration sevices
Public administrations are rapidly advancing towards the provision of basic and extended services for the citizen through the Web (EU eGovernment Report 2014). In addition to the decrement of costs, this effort will support all peoples civil right to have access to all public services (including people with disabilities and elderly people). For this reason the EU started diverse initiatives to Meeting new societal needs by using emerging technologies in the public sector in order to foster efficient, open citizen-centric public services. Efforts have been made for enhancing the usability and accessibility of public administrations websites but several studies revealed that this is not sufficient to support acceptable eGovernment applications. Other factors such as content/information quality and security are also required. Our overall objective is to produce a model-based software architecture for methodologically developing personalized inclusive public eServices that allow any user to interact with them in a satisfactory way, no matter the device used. This requires integrating appropriate user profiling and adaptation techniques into the model to tailor eServices to users characteristics, available technology, and services functionality. Hence, this project has a multidisciplinary nature and will be addressed through collaboration between researchers and experts in information technology and professionals of the eGovernment, combining diverse scientific backgrounds: Modelling eGovernment services Data mining to search for user patterns to feed user models Human-computer interaction for user tailored interfaces, including universal accessibility and multidevice access Natural language processing for accessible user interfaces Model based software architectures for the methodological development of eGovernment applications. It is structured into two subprojects: Subproject 1, leaded by the EHU, will exploit real user interaction data from the eServices provided by Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa (PCG) to extract common usage patterns, anomalous usage of services, and accessibility barriers. Models of eServices will be built with the inclusion in the workgroup of experts on eGovernment (from the Quality Institute Netherlander Municipalities, the Service for Modernization of the PCG, and IZFE, a developer of applications for eAdministration). Starting from these models, user adaptive Web access will be provided by means of presentation, content and navigation adaptations. Subproject 2, leaded by UC3M, will create a software architecture for model-based development of eGovernment applications that includes support for accessibility and multidevice use (assisted by experts from the University of Lisbon). The definition of a model-based software architecture will be done in collaboration with the LoUISE research team from UCLM, which is currently developing a framework that can be extended to fit our needs. The results of the complete project will include models of: users of eGovernment applications; e-Services; and web adaptations required to ensure universal and multidevice accessibility. All of them will be integrated by the model-based architecture that will allow the creation of tools to develop fully accessible high quality eGovernment applications. In this way the project will contribute to increase citizens participation, to produce savings for governments and businesses, and to reduce administrative burden.