Successfully communicating an organisation's goals and rules in such a manner that their impact on IT support can be analysed and discussed, presents a major challenge. The most significant problem is relating the changes desired in a semantically consistent and understandable manner and then reflecting the potential impact of those changes on the organisational structure and the business processes carried out within that organisation. This research investigates a simulation-based communication tool that employs a semantically driven natural-language component to capture an organisation's needs. These needs are translated into a simulation, through the use of semantic web services, of a business process that represent the evolution of the organization's IT infrastructure and policies. Through an iterative communication loop between the business executive, IT architect and staff, the aim of the simulation is to accurately represent and specify the IT changes necessary to support the organisation's needs. An initial scenario-based evaluation of this idea that we have undertaken indicates a desire among executives for such a simulation tool. This paper introduces the problem, architecture and case study, followed by a discussion on an evaluation that is in progress at the National College of Ireland with results expected by the end of March.
Successfully communicating an organisation’s goals and rules in such a manner that their potential impact on IT support can be analysed and discussed, presents a major challenge. The most significant problem is in relating the desired changes in a semantically consistent and understandable manner and then reflecting the potential impact of those changes on the organisational structure and the business processes carried out within that organisation.
The aim of this research is to investigate to what extent a simulation tool, based on semantic web services, aids communication in developing a shared representation of IT support changes. This shared representation can aid the necessary collaborative decision making in support of the organisation’s goals. An initial scenario-based evaluation indicates a desire among executives’ in higher education for such a tool. This paper presents an approach that aids communication of the organisations needs between different stakeholders such as the business executive, IT architect and staff by allowing each to communicate in a format that they are familiar with using controlled natural language. In addition the paper describes the architecture of the Simulation-based Communication Tool (SCT) that implements the approach to aid communication. Finally there is a section on how this tool will be evaluated among executives, IT architects and staff in higher education at the National College of Ireland.
The Simulation-based Communication Tool (SCT) employs a semantically driven natural-language component to capture an organisation’s needs through a collaborative communication loop between the business executive, IT architect and staff. The benefit of this approach is that the executive and staff can communicate in a format that they are familiar with through natural language that is semantically controlled by the vocabulary they use within the organisation. Using semantic web services these needs are automatically translated into a simulation of a business process that represents the evolution of the organisation’s policies and IT infrastructure. The IT infrastructure changes are in a format that is understandable to an IT architect. This helps to reduce the mismatch in communication between executives and IT architects. The following paragraphs describe the architecture and case study.
The Knowledge Engineer creates an ontological domain model based on concepts and
relationships that relate to the organisational goals, rules, structure, business processes
and corresponding data. The ontology is documented using a tool such as Protégé [
The SCT component is responsible for starting up the system and co-ordinates
information from the semantically controlled natural language interface.
The Grammar Composition component creates a lexicon from the ontological domain
model where individuals are mapped to proper nouns, properties are mapped to verbs
and classes are mapped to nouns. The SCT component presents the business executive
with the semantically controlled natural language interface. The interface will allow
the business executive enter natural language statements using the format “noun –
verb – noun.”. The controlled natural language is restricted based on concepts from
the ontological domain model, to allow reliable semantic analysis of the language.
The business executive creates or modifies the rules for organisational change through
the predictive editor, which is part of ACEWiki [
Validation of the rules are carried out to ensure that the rules are unique and the data in the rule represents valid statements in the ontological domain model. The tool then stores the rules in the ontological domain model.
Simulation plays an important and inexpensive role in portraying the envisaged
impact of certain decisions and changes on an organisation or process.
Chandrasekaran et al. in [
The following scenario illustrates how this system would be used in practice. A knowledge engineer creates an ontology of a higher educational organisation where concepts such as CourseDirector, Lecturer, Module, Classroom and Computers, are represented as ontology classes in Protégé using the CamelBack notation. Individuals that are part of the ontology classes are also created such as JohnSmyth,
Properties that link two individuals together are created such as teaches with a domain Lecturer and range Module. Examples of other properties are contains with a domain Classroom and a range Computers, require with a domain Module and a range Computer. The knowledge engineer can create Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) rules such as “Classroom(?x)∧contains(?x, Computers) ∧Modules(?y) ∧require(?y, Computers) → schedule(?y, ? x)”.
An executive, such as a head of school, specifies the organisational needs in english through the controlled natural language interface. An example of such a need is “JohnSmyth teaches DistributedApplicationDevleopment.”. The tool, performs checks on the statement to ensure that it is a subset of ACE, transforms the rule into RDF and adds the rule to the ontological domain model.
The ontology2ws translator creates web services for the ontology classes
properties are mapped to operations in the web service of their respective domain ontology class. For example JohnSmyth is an individual in the ontology class CourseDirector. This results in a web service for CourseDirector with an operation teaches. An Academic may access the CourseDirector web service and enter the name “JohnSmyth”. The web service retrieves operation and parameter data from the database such as, “teaches DistributedApplicationDevelopment. A facilities manager can see what is in each room via the Classroom web service. An IT architect can integrate the deployed web service architecture that supports the organisational change with their current systems. As an example all colleges have a scheduling system that may not necessarily support collaboration. The IT Architect could integrate the CourseDirector web service with the scheduling system to allow an academic choose their preferred times or classrooms for teaching a module.
An empirical study at the National College of Ireland will evaluate the communication in developing a shared representation of organisational changes that are needed and can aid the necessary collaborative decision making in support of the organisation’s goals between the business executive, and staff through the Semanticbased communication tool. The measures for communication are frequency and quality, where the frequency of communication is the number of messages and responses that take place between business executive and staff. The quality of communication will be measured through a self-report communication log that classifies the communication as (a) Messages that suggest solutions (b) Messages that identify constraints (c) Messages that identify organisational issues (d) Messages that represent collaborative decisions. Effectiveness of operational communication relates to the executive and staffs perception that communication is (a) worse, (b) no different, (c) improved. The operational measure for shared representation relates to the business executive and staffs perception that the simulation based on the web service architecture supports organisational change (a) faithfully, (b) less-thanfaithful. Examination of the validity of the tool involves a group consisting of the head of school and the IT manager. Their objective is to rate the solutions based on the measures above.
The study will determine if the tool aids communication in developing a shared representation of IT support changes that are needed and can aid the necessary collaborative decision making in support of the organisation’s goals.