For information technology professionals can develop systems that assist in governance and in meeting the obligations given by the legislation, they need to understand the conceptual basis involved in the complex areas of the problems experienced by local governments. The lack of standardized concepts complicates the process and elicitation of validation requirements for the development of new software systems.Given this reality, we present an ontology for bids and administrative contracts and propose a form of application of this ontology in the activities of Requirements Engineering. This will provide software engineers an alternative way to verify the elicited requirements seeking to ensure that the software meets the needs of public administration, as the obligations foreseen in law.
suggestions for improvements in search of a definition of requirements concise and consistent with the real needs and interests of the government and the population.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical framework and related work. Section 3 describes the materials and methods used to build the ontology and for the definition of the application process engineering requirements. The final considerations are presented in Section 4.
In this section, we present the issues discussed in the literature review. For its realization, we established the relationship between each subject studied and the purpose of this work. Thus, we present the definitions, concepts and state of the art on Electronic Government, Public Transparency, Ontology and Requirements Engineering and discussed related work.
Faced with the rapid growth of urban areas in recent times, many challenges have
emerged and many are yet to come, as the next two decades the cities of developing
countries concentrate 80% of the urban population of the planet
In addition to innovations in information technology, infrastructure and urban
mobility, a number of achievements in recent years in the world are related to
governance. The government seeks the creation of mechanisms aimed at strengthening
the communication links with the population and can thus improve public management
through the implementation of information and communication technologies to build a
participatory and collaborative government
The current challenges are facing the development of an effective policy data
opening and stimulating citizen so that it realizes that technological resources used in
their daily life can be used as political tools, making it an active member of a
participatory government
The challenges that come with population growth beyond the limits of being solved using only communication technologies, information and interaction. Require the creation of computational solutions that fall within smart cities. One of computational solutions used in several countries to strengthen the relationship between citizens and government is the availability of government data in open formats on the Internet. This enables the population to participate actively in public administration.
As provided for in the Federal Constitution
Despite the existence of specific legislation, some problems are worth mentioning when it comes to government transparency: how the information is presented to citizens, accessibility, heterogeneity of data format, temporality of publication, inappropriate content to the user's profile, among others. Because transparency portals may contain content from different government databases, there is the concern with understanding the information published, which need to be organized so that users understand its syntax and semantics. Much of the government data is difficult to interpret for lay users and professionals in the computer area that use them as a base for the development of information systems. The problems go beyond the publication of the information required by law. They refer to the integration of government services and citizens, covering methodologies, structuring and perceptions used to organize and present information in population interest in transparency portals.
To cater the principles of transparency, a semantic organization of data is
required. In order for this to become reality, international government agencies have
sought to define standards to mitigate data integration issues published
Analyzing the bibliographic databases and studies, realize the contribution of
ontologies in the understanding of concepts and organization of knowledge. Therefore,
we emphasize the need and importance of consolidating a formal model of ontology for
the fields to be shown on transparency portals
According to the W3C Consortium
One reason for the use of ontologies in computing is related to the sharing of
promise and common understanding of some domain of knowledge that can be
communicated between people and computers. Thus, ontologies have been developed to
facilitate the sharing and reuse of information
The Requirements Engineering is an important area of software engineering, defined as the stage for the delimitation of the software context. This step is the recognition and modeling of the problem domain and the definition of the fundamental requirements for the system to be developed. During this step, the requirements engineer work together to stakeholders (customers and end users), seeking to recognize, analyze, synthesize, model, specify and validate the requirements.
This work devotes special attention to the following activities of the engineering
requirements, based on
Requirements Elicitation: activity where software engineers work with customers and end users of the system to get information and understand the application domain, the services to be offered, system performance, restrictions and other important information; Requirements Validation: conference process where they are checked if the elicited requirements define the system as per the requirements presented by the client.
The results of the engineering requirements of the process is a robust key documentation requirements in all subsequent stages of the software development process. Therefore, use ontologies in the process of knowledge and understanding of the problem domain is a way to minimize excessive effort demanded in the elicitation activity. In this case, the ontology is used as a means of standardized presentation of clear and scope accosted, avoiding the erroneous setting requirements for lack of knowledge of the context.
There are several studies related to the modeling of ontologies in the governmental area,
and there are studies on the use of ontologies in Requirements Engineering. In the
governmental area, domain ontologies are used as a form of standardization and
presentation of a problem domain. In Requirement Engineering domain ontologies
establish a common understanding between the parties involved, allowing better
communication in the pursuit of elicitation and most complete analysis possible for the
requirements of the systems
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Given the above, the existence of a domain ontology to be used in the engineering of transparency portals requirements or other systems related to procurement and administrative contracts is a way to minimize human efforts. In addition, insert the reuse approach, allowing the ontology to be reused as a means of presentation and formalization of the context in various other software related projects modeled domain.
We divided the study in three phases, each with specific activities involving studies, research, ontology construction and definition of ontology application process engineering of government transparency portals requirements. The Following are each work phases.
The activities developed in the first phase of work sought to understand the complexity of the information used in the context of public management, directing the focus of study for the area of procurement and administrative contracts. The choice of this area considered the complexity of the concepts involved, the lack of structural standardization of information and the importance of these topics to society, considering that they are part of municipal financial management. We sought to identify the problems that can be solved or minimized by the use of ontology in requirements engineering process.
After the study and construction of the necessary knowledge about the problem domain, the process of verification and search of information to be modeled as concepts, properties and relationships in the ontology started. This activity considered the recommended transparency standards by the Brazilian government and the requirements presented in the current legislation in the country.
The activities d The second phase of work includes the definition of the methodology to
be used in the construction of ontology, the choice of language and editing tool, the
conceptual definition and relationship to be modeled in addition to the actual
construction and documentation of the domain ontology.
3.2.1 Methodology and Tools
Due to the existence of various forms of ontology construction, the first step of this
stage was the study of the most commonly used methodologies in order to identify the
most appropriate method to be used in this work. The following methodologies were
analyzed: Cyc, Uschold, TOVE, Methontology, NeOn, Methodology 101. Upon
completion of the analysis, it was decided to use the Ontology Development 101
methodology. The choice was based on its simplicity and the details presented for each
work step. As
Further, there was the choice of tool to be used. Second
The choice of implementation language complete the requirements needed to
start construction of the ontology. Among the languages recommended by W3C1
Ontology proposal will be applied as exemplification process of its use in the elicitation activities and validation requirements. The modeling and documentation will be used as a means of standardizing knowledge, providing professional computing area the understanding necessary to maintain clear communication with stakeholders.
Based on the concepts and the submitted information, software engineers will make the process for defining a new system requirements. They should relate each requirement to one or more concepts in the ontology, as the similarity between them. Through the process relationships, it will be possible to identify the concepts that are not covered by the requirements set, indicating that they may be incomplete, or even the need to define new requirements for the system. On the other hand, the existence of concepts that have many relationships can alert ambiguities. The ontology will allow requirements engineers make these assessments, because not always the application of elicitation techniques such as interviews, questionnaires, meetings are sufficient to capture all the conditions required for the development of a good information system.
Through the process of comparison made between the terms of ontology and the requirements already elicited in order to validate them, we seek to ensure that the portal of transparency meets the needs of citizens and obligatoriness under the laws. The process of using the ontology engineering requirements should submit suggestions for improvements to be made in the requirements. As an example, the existence of terms that are mandatory in the field and are not covered by the requirements set; the presence of ambiguous requirements, which can directly affect the quality of the information provided; the existence of confusing definitions and wrong relationships between requirements; and enables engineers to make other analysis using the structure modeled by the ontology. The comparison of terms proposed in the first instance, be performed manually using the graphical visualization of the ontology to relate the concepts and elicited requirements.
With the completion of the use of ontology engineering requirements, a report with the test results and the suggestions for improvement given the document of official requirements of the new system will be developed. The application processes the ontology elicitation and validation requirements are shown in Figure 2.
To confirm the expectations of the proposed process, a software development team must implement the modules of bids and administrative contracts a portal of municipal transparency. During this development, the team will report all experienced situations, and at the end of the process, must present a descriptive report with the observations made during the execution of each of the activities of engineering requirements. This report will present evidence to confirm the benefits observed during the ontology application process.
This work presents an ontology-based approach to the elicitation of requirements on transparency portals. With the use of the proposed approach is expected to confirm expectations that the ontology will solve many of the problems faced by professionals in the Requirements Engineering area. They will have the opportunity to meet the modeling domain, facilitating the activities of elicitation and validation requirements for the development of municipal transparency portals or other useful software for public management.
Ontology has presented a standardization and semantic organization of information of bids and administrative contracts, which will enable interoperability of transparency portals with other information systems and other government databases. The built ontology will be available in specific libraries, allowing other professionals to reuse, enhance or complement.
This project does not end with the approach proposed in this work, because our goal is that the ontology can add new concepts, as well as the development of new ontologies that include other areas related to public transparency. at: