GISdevelopment.net --> Application --> Miscellaneous
The Sustainability of GIS Services in The Framework of E-Government
Dr. M. Mostafa Radwan
International Institution for Geo-information Sciences and Earth Observation, ITC
Hengelostraat 99
7533BX Enschede, THE NETHERLANDS
Tel. +31 53 4874351
Fax + 31 53 4874 575
Email: radwan@itc.nl
Web site: www.itc.nl.
Summary
Improving the conditions for sustainable GIS services and large economic potential of geo-information is of major concern in many countries. The current GIS services, however, are provided by 'scattered' organizations that are difficult to access simultaneously to provide coherent set of services. Several initiatives are taking place everywhere to enhance the use of GIS, consequently strengthening the geo-information market, by enabling advanced tools for the delivery of data and geo-services to all stakeholders and decision makers. Such initiatives will be taken in the framework of e-government and the massive efforts to build citizen-centered services to enhance the quality of life.
The spatial data infrastructure (SDI) has for long been developed as a network for spatial data discovery and access. As a result spatial data, in distributed and heterogeneous databases, are readily accessible and sharable. Spatial data abundance notwithstanding, a rapidly growing segment of the geo-information market comprises non-expert GIS users who seldom seek raw data but rather demand value-added information products and services of varying complexity. Increasingly, traditional spatial data infrastructures fail to fully meet the needs of emerging markets. Further, increased competition, demand for lean enterprises, evolving e-commerce activities and rapid gravitation towards Internet GIS, all compound to motivate the concept of a novel service-centered infrastructure that enables delivery of geo-information and GIS services of varying complexity. This concept derives credence from growing evidence that it is beyond the capacity of any single organization to meet the demands of emerging markets for GIS services with stringent quality requirements. The partnership of public and private institutions that are working in the GIS market is emerging now a day as a new business model, ‘PPP’, to meet GIS market needs. The establishment of a geographic service infrastructure (GSI) falls in such context.
The GSI operates as a virtual enterprise comprising dynamic collaborations of many public and private institutions partnering on the basis of core competencies and shared business objectives. It enables enterprises, that are otherwise autonomous entities, to share and pool together spatial resources, business processes and knowledge towards meeting user needs, and as a result presents a sound basis for e-commerce transactions in geographical information markets.
In this paper we propose a ‘generic model’ for a specialized GIS Services Portal (eGIS) in the framework of the E-Government and spatial data infrastructure initiatives, to build a platform for an effective geographic service infrastructure. The goal of the eGIS Portal is to provide a single place where agencies can post metadata that describe their resources (spatial data and GIS functionalities) and where clients can go to discover such resources and request services through brokerage service. The provided services can be simple (a functionality provided by a single source) or complex (chaining of GIS functionalities from several sources). The eGIS Portal includes the necessary Web technologies, which are needed to request, deliver, coordinate, chain and control the execution of identified, tailored, services.
1. The virtual enterprise; a new business model for collaborative work in the GIS market
Today’s dynamic business environment forces industrial and service sectors to work beyond their boundaries and to operate in a more tightly coupled mode, forming integrated ‘virtual’ enterprises, to seize business opportunities. A Virtual Enterprise (VE) is a (temporal) network of independent organizations (legally autonomous, public as well as private institutions) that joins functions with a particular objective, [3], [4], [6]. A VE is structured and managed in such a way that third parties see it as an identifiable and complete organization (one enterprise). The participating organizations can join or split over time according to their business interests, as shown in figure (1). The principles of the VE are: better customer satisfaction, reduced time-to-market and adaptation to changes in the surrounding environment.
These principles are applied mainly with the aim of having a share in a wider global market. This approach provides an organization with enough flexibility to handle an uncertain changing environment. These enterprises are called “virtual” because of their temporal nature, seizing certain, often short-lived, business. The products and services provided by VEs are dependent on innovation and are strongly customer-based.
The implementation of these new ideas of virtual communities, collaborative work, etc. and integrating processes and information from different organizations, for the delivery of products or services on the basis of common business understanding is an inevitable future characteristic of the GIS market worldwide. By taking this approach, more tightly integration and communication is achieved through a common mission, strategy and use of ICT and Web technologies, with mechanisms to establish clear responsibilities improving the production relation-ships and thus improving success for the organizations.
2. The impact on spatial data infrastructure; the changing role from data to service delivery
The spatial data infrastructure (SDI) provides access to geographical data by networking geo-information databases ruled by sharing mechanisms, defining technological as well as organizational aspects for the exchange of data. The role of SDI is currently changing, from it being a simple data discovery and retrieval facility to become an integrated system suitable for the provision of customized information and geo-services. The term geo-services is used to denote the chaining of several GIS functionalities, that are provided by different GIS systems in a distributed environment, to provide more complex product, i.e. more than simple data sets, tailored according to user needs. Normally developers address the issue of designing complex services by stringing together groups of functions in an ad-hoc manner. This approach may satisfy a particular need but doing this separately for different services hampers reusability. Moreover, lack, of descriptions of the solutions obtained makes it hard to aggregate solutions to execute complex tasks.
From the ‘virtual enterprise’ perspective, a GDI is viewed as a mechanism that facilitates collaborative work, where it is possible to link autonomous, distributed, geo-information centers (data providers, value added service enablers, service providers and control units) to achieve business goals.
The operational model of such an enterprise is based on the concept of unbundling of the functionalities of current stand-alone systems in the traditional Geo-organizations, including mapping agencies, to make them available as independently developed, yet interoperable autonomous services. These functionalities include processes from different data sources, processes to create databases and manage their access, processes for map visualization, GIS functionality for spatial data analysis, etc. An infrastructure, with institutional and technical arrangements will be required to support the networking and chaining of these functionalities and services to create customized solutions and to achieve common business goals. Integration is not limited to data exchange capabilities, but also concerns the rest of the enterprise by connecting all necessary functions and heterogeneous functional entities. Further details are given later in this paper to show how to build such an infrastructure in the framework of E-Government initiative, based on a case study conducted in Egypt, [7], [8].
3. The role of spatial data and gis services in the e-government initiatives
3.1 The E-Government Initiatives
The term E-Government is generally agreed to derive from electronic government. E- Government introduces applications to support various dimensions and ramifications of government and has the following general service areas:
The Cadastre register and topographic base maps are amongst the Base Registers that are essential for the information infrastructure of the society, such as population, building, and enterprises corporation registers. Many identifiers of base register objects are generated from real estate identifier. The spatial description of real estates provides the opportunity to integrate real estates and objects inside them with other GISs.
Most of documentation for basic topographic features as well as for land administration in many countries, however, is still in paper form which makes it difficult to search and access to the required information in these documents. Modern GIS and ICT technologies offer the opportunity to computerized records (base maps, registers, plans, deeds, index map) as well as the integration of new medias (maps, pictures, balances). Further, the Internet and Web technologies found its way in the cadastre business and several initiatives took place in many countries to improve the delivery of cadastre services over the Internet, as reviewed in [10], such as:
4. On-line GIS services portal, eGIS portal
4.1 The eGIS Architecture
The goal of the proposed eGIS Portal, as shown later in Figure (4), is to provide a single place where agencies in the cadastre business can post metadata that describe their resources (data and services) and where they clients can go to discover and request services from these resources through brokerage service. The Portal is a means for agencies (private and public) to share existing resources through web services. The Portal also includes the necessary services, which are needed to coordinate, chain and control the execution of identified services. Several technologies are needed to perform these tasks such as Web services providing GIS functionalities, workflow management services, service brokers, etc., as shown in figure (2).
Service brokers maintain registries containing relevant service metadata to aid the discovery of required services. Workflow management services control and coordinate the execution of service chains, both intra- and inter-enterprise, negotiate and enforce adherence to quality of service specifications (service level agreements) while shielding the client from the complexities of the chaining process. The service broker and WFMS are thus central components of the proposed eGIS Portal. Other essential tools to extract and harmonize data sets as well as to invoke a service from the participating agencies, are embedded in the under laying layer of protocols for networking distributed databases and service nodes and achieving interoperability amongst them. The current form for the spatial data infrastructure architecture can realize such layer.
The functionalities required realizing such portal, as shown in figures (1) and (2), are:
Figure 2 eGIS architecture overview
4.2 State-of-Art for Web Services
Web services are a new breed of Web application. They are self-contained, self-describing, modular applications that can be published, located, and invoked across the Web. Web services perform functions, which can be anything from simple requests or complicated business processes. In other words, web services are interoperable building blocks for constructing applications. Further, responds to requests can be immediate (synchronous web service) or delayed depending on complexity of processes (asynchronous web services). Web services and consumers of Web services are typically businesses, making Web services predominantly business-to-business (B-to-B) transactions. An enterprise can be the provider of Web services and also the consumer of other Web services.
The Web Services Description Language (WSDL), an XML language, is used to define Web services (as a set of operations, messages and binding protocols) and describe how to access them in a specific format. More details can be found in [2], [5].
4.3 Chaining Service
The proposed eGIS architecture, figure (2) supports Business Process Management (BPM) technologies to facilitate adaptive enterprise functionality. The Workflow Chaining Service (WFCS) executes workflow processes and correlates and coordinates synchronous interactions into collaborative and transactional business flows. It is an infrastructure service for modeling, connecting, deploying and managing and executing business processes. The Workflow Manager:
As described in ISO 19119, there are many possible approaches to composing chains of processing services into aggregate or compound service components. General patterns can be used to describe these approaches based on, for example, the visibility of the services to the user (or client application) as well as the difference in how control of the services is managed. Using these criteria, Figure (3) shows several patterns.
Figure (3). Service Chaining Cases (from ISO 19119, OGC Topic 12)
These chaining patterns include:
5.1 Cadastre Services in Egypt; Background
The current cadastre services in Egypt are provided by 'scattered' organizations, the Egyptian Survey Authority ESA, the Registration Estate Department REPD and the Real estate Tax department RETD, which is difficult to access simultaneously to provide coherent set of services. Further, the initiatives took place in these organizations to introduce digital technologies were made in ‘isolation’, consequently, the related data sets in these organizations cannot be easily integrated and shared due to lack of harmonization between them. Further, no effective tools exist for on-line access of cadastre services. As a result, the respond to requests for information and services is slow; consequently user’s dissatisfaction and the economic growth in the geo-information market is below expectation.
The present government is enforcing several measures to strengthen the real estate market aiming to speedup efforts to complete the national land registers, enable advanced services to all stakeholders and consequently encourage international investors.
In this context, this paper proposes an On-line Cadastre Portal, eCAD Portal, in the framework of the Egyptian E-Government and NSDI initiatives. The primary use of the On-line Cadastre Portal is for discovery, access and chaining of cadastre and land registry services held at government agency offices within Egypt. Such tool will enable advanced services to all stakeholders in the real estate market.
A case study was conducted in the framework of the cooperation program between ITC (the Netherlands) and ESA, as reviewed in [8], to develop a prototype for eCAD to address both institutional and technical issues, which are relevant to achieve these business goals.
5.2 The Case Study Business Perspective
In this case study, many institutional arrangements have been addressed in order to structure and mange a virtual enterprise, the’ Virtual Land Agency’, networking all public and private institutions who are involved in the real estate market in such a way that third parties see it as an identifiable and complete organization (one enterprise), as shown in figure (4). The provision of on-line services to all stakeholders in the real estate market will be the key task of such enterprise. Such services can be simple one (i.e. provided by one of the organizations involved in the cadastre business) or complex one (i.e. require the chaining of several functionalities in these organizations). The provision of spatial data and GIS and cadastre functionalities, are included. The objectives are: better customer satisfaction, reduced time-to-market and adaptation to changes in the surrounding environment. By taking this approach, more tightly integration and communication is achieved through a common vision on the economic potentials of cadastre data and resolving business conflicts, measures to achieve interoperability of data, services and ICT resources, the necessary arrangements to establish clear responsibilities for each of the participating institutions, and the creation a ‘healthy working relationships.
These arrangements were considered in this case study in the framework of the required public private partnership PPP in the real estate industry in Egypt. Further details are reviewed in [7].
5.3 The Case Study Technical Perspective
This case study addressed the requirements and components to implement a customized portal for on-line delivery of cadastre services, in the framework of the E-Government and the Spatial Data Infrastructure NSDI initiatives, as shown figure (4). The proposed architecture of such portal, on the other hand, will materialize the key functionalities that are necessary for the successful implementation of the ‘Virtual land Agency’.
Figure (4): Key Functionalities in the On-Line Cadastre Portal
This broker, as shown in Figure [5], is composed of several functionalities such as:
Several examples were tested, based on Web and workflow management technologies at ITC, as reviewed in [6], [7]. At the moment, the management of ESA is considering options for real implementation of such services.
6. Concluding Remarks
Geo-information production services can be offered in a market place, using the Web and Internet as the network environment that can reach more customers at lower prices and taking advantage of the efforts and advances on existing SDI concept which will be improved to a Geo-information Service Infrastructure (GSI), that as its name suggest, can offer data plus services for all the geomantic players, including direct contact with customers and their requirements, all together in a virtual environment, composed of a collection of independent enterprises offering their core competences and joining together in a dynamic way to offer and produce complex products.
By using the concept of the virtual enterprise, the GSI has been outlined. Such an enterprise can extend its share in the ever-growing information mark by providing access to a variety of GIS services and to be a tool to support the generation of ’complex’ products/services. Such view will enhance the existing geo-spatial data infrastructure concept. The geo-information ‘service’ infrastructure opens new business opportunities for service delivery, facilitating service search and execution, and increasing the interest of organizations to participate in geo-information infrastructure initiatives. It also provide huge entry opportunities for ’small niche players to enter the market with specific offering. However, these opportunities are limited by the availability of data/service repositories and catalogues in the market. In the context of the Egyptian government measures to improve the performance of the Real Estate market, the proposed Online Cadastre Portal, in the framework of the E-Government and NSDI initiatives, enables advanced services for the delivery of on-line spatial data and GIS and cadastre functionalities to all stakeholders. The Portal includes the necessary services, which are needed to share resources through Web services, access and download data, chain various functionalities in several agencies to compose a service, coordinate and control the execution of identified, tailored, services. Several technologies are needed to perform these tasks such as Web services providing GIS functionalities, workflow management services, service brokers, etc.
The proposed architecture, allows wide range of applications for GIS users to access and invoke geo-processes supplied by multiple-vendors, to secure data download and allow ‘immediate’ manipulation of spatial data. The proposed architecture for the portal also provide the capability to industrial and service sectors to work beyond their boundaries and operate in a more tightly coupled mode, forming integrated ‘virtual’ enterprises, to seize business opportunity in the real estate market.
7. References
The Sustainability of GIS Services in The Framework of E-Government
Dr. M. Mostafa Radwan
International Institution for Geo-information Sciences and Earth Observation, ITC
Hengelostraat 99
7533BX Enschede, THE NETHERLANDS
Tel. +31 53 4874351
Fax + 31 53 4874 575
Email: radwan@itc.nl
Web site: www.itc.nl.
Summary
Improving the conditions for sustainable GIS services and large economic potential of geo-information is of major concern in many countries. The current GIS services, however, are provided by 'scattered' organizations that are difficult to access simultaneously to provide coherent set of services. Several initiatives are taking place everywhere to enhance the use of GIS, consequently strengthening the geo-information market, by enabling advanced tools for the delivery of data and geo-services to all stakeholders and decision makers. Such initiatives will be taken in the framework of e-government and the massive efforts to build citizen-centered services to enhance the quality of life.
The spatial data infrastructure (SDI) has for long been developed as a network for spatial data discovery and access. As a result spatial data, in distributed and heterogeneous databases, are readily accessible and sharable. Spatial data abundance notwithstanding, a rapidly growing segment of the geo-information market comprises non-expert GIS users who seldom seek raw data but rather demand value-added information products and services of varying complexity. Increasingly, traditional spatial data infrastructures fail to fully meet the needs of emerging markets. Further, increased competition, demand for lean enterprises, evolving e-commerce activities and rapid gravitation towards Internet GIS, all compound to motivate the concept of a novel service-centered infrastructure that enables delivery of geo-information and GIS services of varying complexity. This concept derives credence from growing evidence that it is beyond the capacity of any single organization to meet the demands of emerging markets for GIS services with stringent quality requirements. The partnership of public and private institutions that are working in the GIS market is emerging now a day as a new business model, ‘PPP’, to meet GIS market needs. The establishment of a geographic service infrastructure (GSI) falls in such context.
The GSI operates as a virtual enterprise comprising dynamic collaborations of many public and private institutions partnering on the basis of core competencies and shared business objectives. It enables enterprises, that are otherwise autonomous entities, to share and pool together spatial resources, business processes and knowledge towards meeting user needs, and as a result presents a sound basis for e-commerce transactions in geographical information markets.
In this paper we propose a ‘generic model’ for a specialized GIS Services Portal (eGIS) in the framework of the E-Government and spatial data infrastructure initiatives, to build a platform for an effective geographic service infrastructure. The goal of the eGIS Portal is to provide a single place where agencies can post metadata that describe their resources (spatial data and GIS functionalities) and where clients can go to discover such resources and request services through brokerage service. The provided services can be simple (a functionality provided by a single source) or complex (chaining of GIS functionalities from several sources). The eGIS Portal includes the necessary Web technologies, which are needed to request, deliver, coordinate, chain and control the execution of identified, tailored, services.
1. The virtual enterprise; a new business model for collaborative work in the GIS market
Today’s dynamic business environment forces industrial and service sectors to work beyond their boundaries and to operate in a more tightly coupled mode, forming integrated ‘virtual’ enterprises, to seize business opportunities. A Virtual Enterprise (VE) is a (temporal) network of independent organizations (legally autonomous, public as well as private institutions) that joins functions with a particular objective, [3], [4], [6]. A VE is structured and managed in such a way that third parties see it as an identifiable and complete organization (one enterprise). The participating organizations can join or split over time according to their business interests, as shown in figure (1). The principles of the VE are: better customer satisfaction, reduced time-to-market and adaptation to changes in the surrounding environment.
These principles are applied mainly with the aim of having a share in a wider global market. This approach provides an organization with enough flexibility to handle an uncertain changing environment. These enterprises are called “virtual” because of their temporal nature, seizing certain, often short-lived, business. The products and services provided by VEs are dependent on innovation and are strongly customer-based.
The implementation of these new ideas of virtual communities, collaborative work, etc. and integrating processes and information from different organizations, for the delivery of products or services on the basis of common business understanding is an inevitable future characteristic of the GIS market worldwide. By taking this approach, more tightly integration and communication is achieved through a common mission, strategy and use of ICT and Web technologies, with mechanisms to establish clear responsibilities improving the production relation-ships and thus improving success for the organizations.
2. The impact on spatial data infrastructure; the changing role from data to service delivery
The spatial data infrastructure (SDI) provides access to geographical data by networking geo-information databases ruled by sharing mechanisms, defining technological as well as organizational aspects for the exchange of data. The role of SDI is currently changing, from it being a simple data discovery and retrieval facility to become an integrated system suitable for the provision of customized information and geo-services. The term geo-services is used to denote the chaining of several GIS functionalities, that are provided by different GIS systems in a distributed environment, to provide more complex product, i.e. more than simple data sets, tailored according to user needs. Normally developers address the issue of designing complex services by stringing together groups of functions in an ad-hoc manner. This approach may satisfy a particular need but doing this separately for different services hampers reusability. Moreover, lack, of descriptions of the solutions obtained makes it hard to aggregate solutions to execute complex tasks.
From the ‘virtual enterprise’ perspective, a GDI is viewed as a mechanism that facilitates collaborative work, where it is possible to link autonomous, distributed, geo-information centers (data providers, value added service enablers, service providers and control units) to achieve business goals.
The operational model of such an enterprise is based on the concept of unbundling of the functionalities of current stand-alone systems in the traditional Geo-organizations, including mapping agencies, to make them available as independently developed, yet interoperable autonomous services. These functionalities include processes from different data sources, processes to create databases and manage their access, processes for map visualization, GIS functionality for spatial data analysis, etc. An infrastructure, with institutional and technical arrangements will be required to support the networking and chaining of these functionalities and services to create customized solutions and to achieve common business goals. Integration is not limited to data exchange capabilities, but also concerns the rest of the enterprise by connecting all necessary functions and heterogeneous functional entities. Further details are given later in this paper to show how to build such an infrastructure in the framework of E-Government initiative, based on a case study conducted in Egypt, [7], [8].
3. The role of spatial data and gis services in the e-government initiatives
3.1 The E-Government Initiatives
The term E-Government is generally agreed to derive from electronic government. E- Government introduces applications to support various dimensions and ramifications of government and has the following general service areas:
- The delivery of public services, where there is an online, Internet based, or electronic aspect to the delivery of the services
- The conduct of government business where the activities of those involved in the process of government itself (such as legislators and the legislative process) where some electronic or online aspect is under consideration. E-Government provides many opportunities to improve the quality of services to the citizen (G2C), to business (G2B, B2B) as well as to government institutions (G2G), as detailed in [9] and many Web- pages about e-government initiatives in many countries.
- The 1st Stage: Public and private institutions publishing information about themselves (the emerge of Web pages)
- The 2nd Stage: Two-way communication, allowing citizen to provide new information about themselves
- The 3rd Stage: Multi-purpose citizen portal, providing quantifiable services; the delivery of geo-information and geo-services can be included
- The 4th Stage: Portal personalization; portal that integrates complete range of services and based on needs and functions, not on department or agency. The portal will perform the task of ‘brokering’ to locate, request and chain services from various service nodes, according to the specifications set by service requestors. The proposed on-line cadastre portal eCAD in this paper falls in such category.
The Cadastre register and topographic base maps are amongst the Base Registers that are essential for the information infrastructure of the society, such as population, building, and enterprises corporation registers. Many identifiers of base register objects are generated from real estate identifier. The spatial description of real estates provides the opportunity to integrate real estates and objects inside them with other GISs.
Most of documentation for basic topographic features as well as for land administration in many countries, however, is still in paper form which makes it difficult to search and access to the required information in these documents. Modern GIS and ICT technologies offer the opportunity to computerized records (base maps, registers, plans, deeds, index map) as well as the integration of new medias (maps, pictures, balances). Further, the Internet and Web technologies found its way in the cadastre business and several initiatives took place in many countries to improve the delivery of cadastre services over the Internet, as reviewed in [10], such as:
- Land Register On-line for the delivery of data and cadastre service on the Internet.
- Provide National Land Information Service Electronically.
- Electronic conveyance via electronic official seal and signature implemented to replace the paper documents and bridging the process of registration and conveyance.
4. On-line GIS services portal, eGIS portal
4.1 The eGIS Architecture
The goal of the proposed eGIS Portal, as shown later in Figure (4), is to provide a single place where agencies in the cadastre business can post metadata that describe their resources (data and services) and where they clients can go to discover and request services from these resources through brokerage service. The Portal is a means for agencies (private and public) to share existing resources through web services. The Portal also includes the necessary services, which are needed to coordinate, chain and control the execution of identified services. Several technologies are needed to perform these tasks such as Web services providing GIS functionalities, workflow management services, service brokers, etc., as shown in figure (2).
Service brokers maintain registries containing relevant service metadata to aid the discovery of required services. Workflow management services control and coordinate the execution of service chains, both intra- and inter-enterprise, negotiate and enforce adherence to quality of service specifications (service level agreements) while shielding the client from the complexities of the chaining process. The service broker and WFMS are thus central components of the proposed eGIS Portal. Other essential tools to extract and harmonize data sets as well as to invoke a service from the participating agencies, are embedded in the under laying layer of protocols for networking distributed databases and service nodes and achieving interoperability amongst them. The current form for the spatial data infrastructure architecture can realize such layer.
The functionalities required realizing such portal, as shown in figures (1) and (2), are:
- Data brokering functionality to analyze requests and locate spatial data and cadastre data and services, and delivery of services.
- Services to create and search data and service registers.
- Chaining functionality to chain services from various organizations.
- Web services to access wide range of GIS functionalities.
- An integrated framework for data and service interoperability.
- Spatial data infrastructure functionalities to support access to spatial data and geo-services.
Figure 2 eGIS architecture overview
4.2 State-of-Art for Web Services
Web services are a new breed of Web application. They are self-contained, self-describing, modular applications that can be published, located, and invoked across the Web. Web services perform functions, which can be anything from simple requests or complicated business processes. In other words, web services are interoperable building blocks for constructing applications. Further, responds to requests can be immediate (synchronous web service) or delayed depending on complexity of processes (asynchronous web services). Web services and consumers of Web services are typically businesses, making Web services predominantly business-to-business (B-to-B) transactions. An enterprise can be the provider of Web services and also the consumer of other Web services.
The Web Services Description Language (WSDL), an XML language, is used to define Web services (as a set of operations, messages and binding protocols) and describe how to access them in a specific format. More details can be found in [2], [5].
4.3 Chaining Service
The proposed eGIS architecture, figure (2) supports Business Process Management (BPM) technologies to facilitate adaptive enterprise functionality. The Workflow Chaining Service (WFCS) executes workflow processes and correlates and coordinates synchronous interactions into collaborative and transactional business flows. It is an infrastructure service for modeling, connecting, deploying and managing and executing business processes. The Workflow Manager:
- Allows composite web services to be defined
- Integrates asynchronous services
- Coordinates multi-step business processes
- Publishes business processes as Web Services
- Invokes automated processing flows
As described in ISO 19119, there are many possible approaches to composing chains of processing services into aggregate or compound service components. General patterns can be used to describe these approaches based on, for example, the visibility of the services to the user (or client application) as well as the difference in how control of the services is managed. Using these criteria, Figure (3) shows several patterns.
Figure (3). Service Chaining Cases (from ISO 19119, OGC Topic 12)
These chaining patterns include:
- User defined (transparent) chaining: the client application manages the workflow and control of the chain is exclusively with the user of the client application
- Workflow-managed (translucent) chaining: in which the client application invokes a Workflow Management service that controls the chain and the user is aware of the individual services; a workflow service controls the chain execution, perhaps with oversight by the human user of the client application
- Aggregate service (opaque): in which the client application invokes a service that carries out the chain, with the user having no awareness of the individual services; the aggregate service exclusively performs the control function with no visibility by the client application.
5.1 Cadastre Services in Egypt; Background
The current cadastre services in Egypt are provided by 'scattered' organizations, the Egyptian Survey Authority ESA, the Registration Estate Department REPD and the Real estate Tax department RETD, which is difficult to access simultaneously to provide coherent set of services. Further, the initiatives took place in these organizations to introduce digital technologies were made in ‘isolation’, consequently, the related data sets in these organizations cannot be easily integrated and shared due to lack of harmonization between them. Further, no effective tools exist for on-line access of cadastre services. As a result, the respond to requests for information and services is slow; consequently user’s dissatisfaction and the economic growth in the geo-information market is below expectation.
The present government is enforcing several measures to strengthen the real estate market aiming to speedup efforts to complete the national land registers, enable advanced services to all stakeholders and consequently encourage international investors.
In this context, this paper proposes an On-line Cadastre Portal, eCAD Portal, in the framework of the Egyptian E-Government and NSDI initiatives. The primary use of the On-line Cadastre Portal is for discovery, access and chaining of cadastre and land registry services held at government agency offices within Egypt. Such tool will enable advanced services to all stakeholders in the real estate market.
A case study was conducted in the framework of the cooperation program between ITC (the Netherlands) and ESA, as reviewed in [8], to develop a prototype for eCAD to address both institutional and technical issues, which are relevant to achieve these business goals.
5.2 The Case Study Business Perspective
In this case study, many institutional arrangements have been addressed in order to structure and mange a virtual enterprise, the’ Virtual Land Agency’, networking all public and private institutions who are involved in the real estate market in such a way that third parties see it as an identifiable and complete organization (one enterprise), as shown in figure (4). The provision of on-line services to all stakeholders in the real estate market will be the key task of such enterprise. Such services can be simple one (i.e. provided by one of the organizations involved in the cadastre business) or complex one (i.e. require the chaining of several functionalities in these organizations). The provision of spatial data and GIS and cadastre functionalities, are included. The objectives are: better customer satisfaction, reduced time-to-market and adaptation to changes in the surrounding environment. By taking this approach, more tightly integration and communication is achieved through a common vision on the economic potentials of cadastre data and resolving business conflicts, measures to achieve interoperability of data, services and ICT resources, the necessary arrangements to establish clear responsibilities for each of the participating institutions, and the creation a ‘healthy working relationships.
These arrangements were considered in this case study in the framework of the required public private partnership PPP in the real estate industry in Egypt. Further details are reviewed in [7].
5.3 The Case Study Technical Perspective
This case study addressed the requirements and components to implement a customized portal for on-line delivery of cadastre services, in the framework of the E-Government and the Spatial Data Infrastructure NSDI initiatives, as shown figure (4). The proposed architecture of such portal, on the other hand, will materialize the key functionalities that are necessary for the successful implementation of the ‘Virtual land Agency’.
Figure (4): Key Functionalities in the On-Line Cadastre Portal
- The operational model of such an enterprise is based on the concept of unbundling of the functionalities of current stand-alone systems in these organizations to make them available as independently developed, yet interoperable autonomous services that many of them can run (or at least invoked) as Web services. Such functionalities can be:
- The Egyptian Survey Authority (ESA) performs field survey operations, map making and GIS operations, the management and provision of spatial data for topographic features and cadastre parcels, the storage of mutation forms for all parcels, the provision of information about of ownership and the type of land use, the provision of information about mortgages on land, etc.
- The Registration Estate Department (REPND) performs operations for the legalization of ownership and transactions, the management and provision of ownership information and legal documents, the generation statistics on the dynamics of the real estate market, the provision of information about mortgages on land, etc.
- The real Estate Taxation Department (RETD) performs operations for the field collection of information about ‘taxable’ real estate objects, management and provision of information about property tax and taxpayers, develop models for the valuation and taxation of properties in the various regions in the country, generate statistics about revenues from real estate tax, etc.
- The State Owned Land Agency (SOLA) performs operations for the collection of information about the status of the state-owned land, resolve ownership disputes, develop land use scenarios, set models for the evaluation and valuation of land, set pricing policies, etc.
- Banks provides ‘real estate mortgaging’ services.
- Several institutions from the private sector are playing a role in the real estate market, according to their competent and expertise, such survey and mapping companies (map making and GIS operations), IT companies (establishment systems for information management, databases, computers, networks), companies experience in management and control (planning and management of operations, quality control), real estate brokers and layers (provide information about marketing and valuation of land parcels), banks and financial bodies (provide mortgages and credit services), etc.
This broker, as shown in Figure [5], is composed of several functionalities such as:
- User Interface: a browser (with a graphic interface) to provide access to different services; cadastre data and functionalities (simple or complex) in the registered agencies.
- Services to create Data and Service Catalogs, and metadata query.
- A pool of specially designed (tailored) cadastre services, chaining several functionalities that are available at registered data and service providers.
- The broker’s framework, within which an organized collection of open standard specifications can be implemented to create spatial data and vendor neutral "plug and play" portal infrastructures. This allows links and the possibility to invoke governmental- and commercial-off-shelf services, which provides a pool of Web services to perform GIS operations such as access maps, features, display and overlay maps, integrate data sets, visualize maps, terrain analysis, secure data download and allow ‘immediate’ manipulation of spatial data sets, etc.
Figure (5): The e-GIS Broker Architecture - Workflow Management capabilities with:
- Search Engine: searches for business processes in the Workflow Service Catalogue
- Workflow Service Catalog: support various enterprises to advertise their data and services
- Workflow Definition Tools: creates definitions of the various processes
- Workflow Rule Engine: executes the workflow and chain services across the boundaries of the various enterprises
- Administration and Control Tool: keeps track of workflow progress
Several examples were tested, based on Web and workflow management technologies at ITC, as reviewed in [6], [7]. At the moment, the management of ESA is considering options for real implementation of such services.
6. Concluding Remarks
Geo-information production services can be offered in a market place, using the Web and Internet as the network environment that can reach more customers at lower prices and taking advantage of the efforts and advances on existing SDI concept which will be improved to a Geo-information Service Infrastructure (GSI), that as its name suggest, can offer data plus services for all the geomantic players, including direct contact with customers and their requirements, all together in a virtual environment, composed of a collection of independent enterprises offering their core competences and joining together in a dynamic way to offer and produce complex products.
By using the concept of the virtual enterprise, the GSI has been outlined. Such an enterprise can extend its share in the ever-growing information mark by providing access to a variety of GIS services and to be a tool to support the generation of ’complex’ products/services. Such view will enhance the existing geo-spatial data infrastructure concept. The geo-information ‘service’ infrastructure opens new business opportunities for service delivery, facilitating service search and execution, and increasing the interest of organizations to participate in geo-information infrastructure initiatives. It also provide huge entry opportunities for ’small niche players to enter the market with specific offering. However, these opportunities are limited by the availability of data/service repositories and catalogues in the market. In the context of the Egyptian government measures to improve the performance of the Real Estate market, the proposed Online Cadastre Portal, in the framework of the E-Government and NSDI initiatives, enables advanced services for the delivery of on-line spatial data and GIS and cadastre functionalities to all stakeholders. The Portal includes the necessary services, which are needed to share resources through Web services, access and download data, chain various functionalities in several agencies to compose a service, coordinate and control the execution of identified, tailored, services. Several technologies are needed to perform these tasks such as Web services providing GIS functionalities, workflow management services, service brokers, etc.
The proposed architecture, allows wide range of applications for GIS users to access and invoke geo-processes supplied by multiple-vendors, to secure data download and allow ‘immediate’ manipulation of spatial data. The proposed architecture for the portal also provide the capability to industrial and service sectors to work beyond their boundaries and operate in a more tightly coupled mode, forming integrated ‘virtual’ enterprises, to seize business opportunity in the real estate market.
7. References
- T. Adams and S. Dworkin. WfMC Workflow Handbook, chapter Workflow Interoperability Between Businesses, pages 211–221. John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
- N. Alameh. Scalable and Extensible Infrastructures for Distributing Interoperable Geographic Information Services on the Internet. PhD thesis, Massachusetts In stitute of Technology (MIT), Massachussets, United States of America, 2001.
- L. Alvarez. Geoinformation virtual enterprises: design and process management. Master Thesis, International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation ITC, Enschede, The Netherlands, March 2003.
- J. Kanet, W. Faisst, and P. Mertens. Application of information technology to a virtual enterprise broker: The case of bill epstein. International Journal of Production Economics, 62:23–32, 1999.
- OpenGIS Web Services Architecture. Discussion paper, Version: 0.3, No. OGC 03-025, Open GIS Consortium Inc., January 2003. Editor: Joshua Lieberman
- M. Radwan, L. Alvarez, R Onchaga, and J Morales. ‘The changing role of the geo-data infrastructure; from a data delivery network to a virtual enterprise supporting complex services’, ISPRS Congress, Istanbul, July 2004
- M. Radwan, H. Nasr, C. Lemmen, S. Hassan, ‘The Egyptian Survey Authority Business Model to Strengthen Public Private Partnership in the Real Estate Industry’ , FIG Week, Cairo, April 2005
- M. Radwan, Y. Bishr, B. Emara, A. Saleh, R. Sabrah, . On-line Cadastre Portal Services in the Framework of E-Government to Supprt Real Estate Industry in Egypt, FIG Week, Cairo 2005
- OECD. The e-Government Imperative: Main Findings, OECD Policy Brief, 2003
- FIG Commission 7 Publications. ‘e-land administration’ workshop, Austria, 2004