=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-492/paper-2
|storemode=property
|title=X-Gov: Crossmedia for Government Services
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-492/DEGAS2009-proceedings-pp1-8.pdf
|volume=Vol-492
}}
==X-Gov: Crossmedia for Government Services==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-492/DEGAS2009-proceedings-pp1-8.pdf
DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden
X-Gov: crossmedia for government services
Flavio Miyamaru and Lucia Filgueiras
Escola Politécnica
Universidade de São Paulo
São Paulo, Brasil
+55.11.3091.5200
{flavio.miyamaru, lucia.filgueiras}@poli.usp.br
ABSTRACT This paper is organized as follows.
This paper discusses the application of the crossmedia
In section 2, we discuss current implementations of e-
concept to government services. We present some
government in multiple media. In Section 3, this paper
advantages of this approach, as well as the challenges to
presents a brief conceptual approach to crossmedia and x-
using this new interaction paradigm. A framework is
gov. Section 4 is devoted to the discussion of the
proposed to provide a technological foundation that assists
challenges and opportunities of this interaction concept. In
the development of crossmedia governmental applications
Section 5, we show an architecture that has been designed
and maintains the consistency expected in government
to meet the proposed challenges. Finally, section 6
services.
discusses the proofs-of-concepts which have been
Keywords developed to assess the architecture feasibility.
Crossmedia, government, media transition, framework.
2. E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES AND MULTIPLE MEDIA
1. INTRODUCTION E-government (or shortly, e-gov) has been defined as “the
Trends in the use of media in developing countries signal use by government agencies of information technologies
that the adoption of information and communication (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile
technology is changing the paradigm of communication computing) that have the ability to transform relations with
between government and citizens. In Brazil, services in citizens, businesses, and other arms of government” [16].
which person-to-person communication was the only way There are many benefits to e-gov: transparency, efficiency
to accomplish a government service have been gradually and citizen empowerment, besides reducing delivery and
swapped into electronic services that allow citizens solve management costs compared to maintaining people as
their problems at home or at workplace, saving time and public officers. We add accessibility and social inclusion,
money, both for themselves and for the public especially important in developing nations like Brazil.
administration.
Allan et al. [1] have surveyed research and professional
Internet services have led this process in our country as literature about e-gov, covering G2C (Government-to-
well as in many other places in the world. However, this Citizen), G2B (Government-to-Business) and G2G
approach has several drawbacks. The biggest one is that (Government-to-Government) interaction. We notice that
internet does not reach as many people as TV and cell the expression “e-gov” is commonly used to define the
phones do. Despite the growth in the number of internet interaction using the internet media to access services, web
users in Brazil, internet is still less representative in portals and others applications mainly provided by internet.
citizen’s life as television and cell phones. This fact can be
In this paper, we use the more comprehensive e-gov
interpreted as indicative that electronic government in
concept. We understand that besides the internet, other
Brazil cannot be based primarily on the internet but instead,
communication and information technologies like digital
must explore other communication media. Also, people can
television and mobile computing have proved efficient in
easily use cell phones and TV sets, much better than they
delivering government services.
use computers and browsers.
Devices like PDAs, laptops, cell phones and tablet PCs
Of course, this situation is expected to change in time. The
have brought the mobility concept to government services.
digital native generation is already experiencing citizenship
M-government (or shortly, m-gov), as defined by Trimi and
and the compulsory relationship to government. This
Sheng [17] is the strategy and its implementation for
generation has grown up using several technologies for
providing information and services to government
communication, learning and entertainment.
employees, citizens, businesses, and other organizations
Here, we advocate the usage of crossmedia as an approach through mobile devices. Today, several m-gov cases are
to e-government. We claim that this is a good option for available in different countries, like Canada Mobile
both the digital excluded population and digital natives. We Government 1 and Singapore e-Citizen 2.
present challenges and opportunities of this approach as
well as the architecture we have designed as a solution. 1
http://www.canada.gc.ca/mobile/wireless-eng.html
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DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden
Another alternative for government service delivery is t- complements. Content may have to be adapted to the
gov, that is, the delivery of e-gov on television. The medium;
importance of t-gov is due to the influence of TV in - the transitions, that are the means by which users are
citizens´ life. TV is a communication media installed at directed from one medium to the other in order to follow
almost a hundred per cent of homes of developed and the narrative path. Transitions are composed by a call-to-
emerging countries. As TV goes digital, it becomes more action (which is equivalent to the label in link) and an
and more interactive. Unexpectedly, the t-gov is still associated technological mechanism that performs the
restricted to a few cases. The United Kingdom is one of the exchange (which is equivalent to the HTTP fetching a new
few places around the world that have experienced page).
initiatives like DigiTV3 that offers interactive content for
citizen about jobs, transportation news and local Hayes [11] identifies four different styles (or generations)
information. of crossmedia delivery. Crossmedia 1.0 is equivalent to the
COPE concept (create once, publish everywhere): the same
Internet-based e-gov, m-gov and t-gov are solutions that content is adapted to several media. Crossmedia 2.0
have been conceived and implemented to broaden citizens´ introduces “extra” content, that is, complementary content
access to services. They are usually developed as that adds to the mainstream narrative and that can be
independent solutions for an isolated medium-user deployed in other media than the main one. Crossmedia 3.0
interaction. introduces the concept of bridges, which are specially
In the next section, we show that integrating these designed transitions that calls the user to act and change to
alternatives in the crossmedia paradigm can be a better different platforms. Crossmedia 4.0 combines the three
approach for enhancing G2C interactivity. previous levels and allows the user to create his/her own
3. CROSSMEDIA AND X-GOV content and bridges, in a collaborative environment.
Crossmedia systems are applications that deliver content by There are several applications of the crossmedia concept in
orchestrating multiple media, in such a way that the user marketing, entertainment and education [4] in all levels
interaction is directed to different communication channels, defined above. Games and advertisement explore the
fully exploring the potential of each one. amusement embedded in the media exchange to create an
According to Boumans [4], crossmedia has emerged on atmosphere of investigation; news industry use the
early nineties, when the television program Big Brother diversity of formats to convey a richer experience for those
appeared in Holland, bringing a shockwave on broadcast interested in a deeper knowledge about something. Also,
industry. The crossmedia feature was the delivery of the publishing content in diverse media can be a means of
content in a combination of analogue television, interactive capturing users of different profiles and habits.
cable TV, Internet and mobile telephony, supported by Based on the crossmedia concept, x-gov is defined as the
magazines and newspapers. delivery of public services across multiple media, in which
On the referred report, Boumans listed five characteristics G2C communication is supported by several media
of crossmedia. They are: (1) Crossmedia should involve alternatives, each one directing the citizen to the next step
more than one medium; (2) Crossmedia aims at an in the interaction process and to the more suitable media for
integrated production; (3) Content is delivered on multiple that step.
devices: PCs, mobiles, TV, iTV; (4) More than one While the e-, m- and t-gov services support the one-user-
medium is needed to support one message/story/goal; (5) one-medium paradigm, a crossmedia service reaches
The common message/story/goal is spread on the different citizens through multiple media, providing a richer
platforms and the supporting interaction can take place on experience through the variety of content formats and
these different platforms. Besides Boumans, other authors relationships. In this research, we restrict applications to
such as Dena [7,8], Barkhuus et al. [3], de Haas [6] and G2C, even though we acknowledge the potential for cross-
Antikaainen et al. [2] also support the former crossmedia media in G2B and G2G applications.
definition.
Regarding the three elements of crossmedia applications:
The crossmedia concept is founded on three important
- media: governments already use several communication
elements: channels to send their messages to citizens: the internet, in
-a set of media, each one contributing with its own desktop or mobile versions; telephone, SMS, fax, banners,
particularities in terms of preferred formats, languages, outdoors, newspapers, magazines, TV and many others. All
target public and interactiveness; of them can be used to deliver part of a government service.
- the content, that is associated to the message that will be - content in government services is usually informative,
delivered; the content is the main narrative and all its such as announcements on government decisions, facts and
accomplishments as well as numbers that demonstrate a
2 country situation. Content can be transactional, that is,
http://www.ecitizen.gov.sg/mobile/index.html
3
exchanged between citizens and government.
http://www.digitv.gov.uk
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DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden
- transitions are almost inexistent in present applications, Finally, x-gov has a distinctive characteristic from other
except for call-to-actions that imply manual crossmedia applications. Although a deep planning study is
accomplishment of the change (for instance, an outdoor needed to decide what content should be on which medium,
announces the telephone number of a service) unlike communication industry, government content has
4. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF THE persistence and do not need to be renewed frequently. This
X-GOV APPROACH makes costs of crossmedia production more palatable for
governments than for private companies.
X-gov applications are different from other crossmedia
applications in some aspects, which implies in special Despite the many advantages, there are points of concern
requirements. In this section, we explore some too. We present them in three groups. The first group
opportunities and challenges of x-gov applications. contains challenges that refer to crossmedia technologies,
which are still incipient. The second group collects
When compared to e-gov, x-gov presents many advantages. challenges respective to the government domain issues. The
The first one is the potential to reach citizens. In a third group discusses challenges respective to x-gov users.
developing country like Brazil, the Internet approach has
4.1 Crossmedia technology challenges
the disadvantage of depending on computers which are not
Content management. Two crossmedia content elements
possessed by the population, despite of the increasing
can keep three different relationships: corroborative, if
efforts by governments and the civil society to provide
both elements represent one single message, that may be
computer in schools and other public locations. Providing
different in format but the same in meaning. In this case,
for delivering content in alternative media can be more
they can be distributed in different media; each one will
interesting than independently offering services in one
confirm the message delivered by the other. Content
single media, because of increased coverage. Also, users
elements can be complementary, when both are needed to
can reach government anywhere, anytime.
deliver the full message. Finally, two elements can be
A second benefit is the possibility of moving electronic concomitant of they are needed at the same time to deliver
interaction beyond the point where it gets interrupted today: the meaning. Crossmedia content management is an
electronic transactions give place to person-to-person important issue, because content elements can easily
interaction when the main medium is unable to handle the become redundant and contradictory, if spread over
message– for instance, a paper document is needed or a multiple platforms, destroying the message that would be
payment must be made and the citizen´s bank is not conveyed.
integrated to the government network. In both cases, cross-
The patchwork effect. An unplanned development of
media could help citizens providing an alternative means of
government applications using crossmedia will lead to
communication, including the fax, for instance.
several interaction models, as each different application
Third is benefiting a diversity of users: people with some may develop its own. For instance, one service may allow
kinds of disabilities could communicate with government payment using the cell phone, and another one will require
using the most suitable channel, according to personal a faxed receipt to complete the payment task. Inconsistent
preferences or skills. In this case, content can be deployed interaction models will be seen by citizens as confusing
in different formats in alternative media – while interacting patchwork, from which they will not be able to develop a
with a computer, the deaf user can have additional mental model.
explanations in sign language in his or her TV set; blind
Seamless transitions. A crossmedia service must integrate
users who are not skilled with screen readers and keyboards
media and offers transition possibilities to make a media or
may prefer accessing a service by telephone instead of
device handover. X-gov applications require simple and
using a computer.
efficient media transitions. While transitions are not a big
Fourth, modern life presses on cross-media language: we issue in games and entertainment applications, in e-gov
send an e-mail at the same time we talk on the phone and applications one can expect a difference in user motivation
check news; we download internet music while watching and mood, easy to understand if one compares a citizen that
the show on TV. Why shouldn’t we file an electronic form is asked to change media, for instance to pay a tax or
with a cell phone, following instructions and options communicate a problem, to someone else having fun while
presented on the television? responding to an advertisement. Some of the call-to-
Fifth, the x-gov approach may help promoting the actions, that send the citizen from one media to the other,
government services. A former field study [9] has revealed will require a special handling, because the user will be
that the population is unaware of electronic government expected to continue the dialogue. However, crossmedia-
services. The crossmedia approach is very effective in specific technology is still not available.
promoting the services and in developing the necessary 4.2 Government challenges
meta-communication that is required to create the self- Cost-effectiveness. Services are delivered at a certain cost.
service culture, without which all investment in e-gov Internet-based government is anchored in a cost
becomes useless. distribution that considers that if the user does not possess
the computer, he or she will have access from digital
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DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden
inclusion centers, schools or work. Adding communication developer” [12]. It is the result of a domain abstraction that
channels to this scenario means to add new players to this can be reused in several applications. The framework
equation. dictates the application architecture and predefines design
Conversion rates. Crossmedia antagonists argue that parameters so that the application designer or developer can
crossmedia applications are not effective in terms of concentrate on the specifics of his application. A
conversion rates because it is not possible to follow users in framework provides a standard for components to handle
their movements. In internet applications, the server that errors, to invoke operations on each other, and to exchange
provides the application can manage conversion rates. data [12]. Flexibility is provided by hotspots, which are
framework elements that can be customized for specific
Expertise. A crossmedia project needs a multidisciplinary requirements.
team that develops systems for multiple platforms. Given
the need of expertise in those different platforms, it may be The X-Gov Framework has many architectural decisions
hard for the government analyst to keep up-to-date that support the crossmedia and electronic government
knowledge about every different technology and device domain. It intends to offer managers and developers a tool
that can be used for interaction. Government teams usually for overcoming some of the challenges described in the
have little time to learn new concepts and applications; previous section, making easier the description and
innovation is often compromised by the need to deliver implementation of x-gov services.
reliable applications in the shortest time, at the lowest cost. In this section, we first present a quick view of the
Interoperability Government services usually connect architecture and how it is used. In sequence, we present the
different public departments and levels. Frequently, each architectural decisions, in the light of the challenges we
instance of government has its own technological platform. want to address.
In order to deliver crossmedia services, an interoperability 5.1 A quick view of X-Gov architecture
standard must be defined. Brazilian government has a
The X-Gov application can be described as an orchestration
federal initiative to standardize the operation between
of components performed by a server that is capable of
online services [5], which will have to be extended to
handling a crossmedia session. The Service Manager is this
multiple media environment.
server, which distributes the narrative by media
4.3 User-related challenges components, according to the prescribed service sequence,
User identification Some government services require and performs the transitions from one medium to the other.
citizen identification. The identification can be a general The Service Manager has also the capability of dealing
attribute for example the location, time, age, gender, etc, or with crossmedia content and interfacing with legacy
personal attribute as name, identification number, etc. government systems. Figure 1 depicts in a quick view the
Identification is needed for several purposes. In crossmedia skeleton of an X-Gov application.
environments, identification may require information about
preferred media (in order to increase service accessibility,
for instance) but also the identification of user’s interactive
resource location – telephone number, for instance – so that
transitions can happen and information is pushed on the
citizen (for instance, sending a SMS message).
Cost distribution Usually, in cross-media applications,
costs are usually shifted from the sender to the receiver.
This should not be the case of a public service. If the user
needs a fax to send his piece of documentation, fax service
should be available for all citizens. A business model must
be defined so that using a crossmedia application is
economically feasible for the population.
These points of concern have been addressed by the
proposal of a framework for crossmedia applications, in
which reusable components can be aggregated to deliver a
family of x-gov applications. Next section presents this
Figure 1- Overview of an X-Gov application
solution.
5. THE X-GOV FRAMEWORK As in any framework, reusability is consequence of a
The x-gov framework is a technological infrastructure that domain analysis. For X-Gov, we have analyzed both the
aggregates reusable components for cross media interaction crossmedia domain and the G2C services domain. Our
to support government services. analysis of the crossmedia domain has been focused on
A framework can be defined as “a skeleton of an understanding what makes crossmedia different from other
application that can be customized by an application multimedia applications and these are the crossmedia
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DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden
transitions. We have investigated practical examples of 5.2 A quick view on the use of the framework
crossmedia applications to obtain characteristics of
The crossmedia application development process has some
transitions and their technological infrastructure.
distinctive activities that must be included in the usual
The set of crossmedia transitions has been implemented in software development process.
a corresponding set of components, which can be
customized for the X-Gov application. This architecture In order to make easier the task of building X-Gov
implements crossmedia in Hayes’ level 3, by providing applications, the X-Gov framework offers building tools.
planned bridges, which are the crossmedia transitions. The application skeleton is produced from the description
Level 4, in which citizens can contribute in providing of the government service using a two-step application
content and new bridges, is planned as an evolution of this builder and can be later customized by the developer, as
work. Figure 3 shows.
On the other hand, the analysis of e-gov domain has been
focused in looking for common elements that could express
the G2C communication. We have represented the result as
a set of 18 task patterns. They express information retrieval
tasks, citizen-government relationship tasks,
documentation-related tasks and transaction tasks. X-Gov
task patterns are listed in Figure 2 and have been described
in a previous work [14].
Figure 3- Building an X-Gov application
The crossmedia application development starts with the
government process modeling, using the description tools.
This first step is supported by the X-Planner tool. Its user is
the Government Service Analyst, a person who knows the
government service and is able to describe it as a business
process. The Government Service Analyst may not be able
to write code; however, she can specify which activities
Figure 2- X-Gov task patterns
will have to be performed by the citizen, which activities
Task patterns are realized by user interface task will have to be executed by the government legacy systems
components, developed for different media: mobile, web and in between, which are the activities executed by the
and iTV. Because each medium has interaction restrictions crossmedia application. She uses the X-Planner graphical
and qualities that must be considered, the implementation tool to sequence task components and crossmedia
of a task pattern is different for each platform. transitions, as well as custom activities, using a modified
Business Process Model Notation. Given the interactive
Each task requires specific information to be accomplished. profile of each conversational step, a crossmedia planning
The task pattern “Pay fee/tax” requires, for example, algorithm [10] will suggest the best medium for the step.
information on the specific tax, the contributor The X-Planner tool produces, as a result, a service
identification, tax value and due dates. This information description in a domain-specific language, CroMeL.
must be served by the government service legacy system,
which is interfaced with the crossmedia layer by a set of The application builder tool, X-Builder, assembles the
web services. The bottom layer is representative of skeleton application by interpreting the CroMeL script and
government existing service implementation, or setting appropriate configuration of the Service Manager
technological infrastructure that is able to execute the server. X-Builder instantiates service components from the
service requirements. framework’s repository of media and transition
components.
Other crossmedia content that may be needed by task
components, such as audio descriptions, movies and text The resulting application can be modified by the
are stored locally within the application and handled by the Government Application Developer, who is able to
crossmedia content manager. program the framework hotspots. This means writing any
complementary code needed to customize the resulting
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DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden
application: setting technical parameters as servers and make changes between devices an easy movement, because
database locations, writing specific rules and defining citizens’ motivation to the use of crossmedia in government
interface design style so that the crossmedia application is services is not the same as those who are enjoying a
compatible with the government agency visual identity, crossmedia game or advertisement.
such as colors, background, logo and font styles. Transitions can be performed manually, when the user
The application configures itself as a crossmedia inserts the address of the service in the next medium (for
interaction layer to the government services. It is instance, the user reads in a magazine that he may find
responsibility of the government legacy systems to execute more information about the e-gov service in a certain
the transactions. Thus, next step is the infrastructure website; he opens his browser and keys in the URL). This
configuration. The government legacy systems are kind of transitions does not need to be supported by the
connected to the framework by the development of a set of framework.
web services that will provide and request necessary In some cases, the citizen can use some technological aid to
information to the crossmedia layer. The SOA approach switch from one medium to the other. One example is the
gives flexibility to connect the crossmedia service to any automatic phone call that could be started by a click at web
technologic platform. page or TV interactive application. This mechanism is
5.3 Facing challenges named click to dial or click to call [15]. Another interesting
transition mechanism are 2D barcodes as QRCode or
Section 4 has presented some challenges for x-gov DataMatrix.[13] These barcodes can encode long text, URL
applications. In this section, we discuss how the X-Gov addresses, and phone numbers. A camera, which can be
Framework can help address these challenges. coupled to the mobile phone, capture these barcodes, which
Content management are decoded and automatic redirect the device to the
encoded URL. Existing solutions such as those mentioned
Because of complex relationships that may occur between above offer more comfortable transitions for the user;
crossmedia between content elements, it is interesting that however, from the technological point of view, those
crossmedia content is represented as components. The X- transitions require platform integration. Because
Gov framework considers that a content element may have prospection and integration of many transitions can be a
alternative format and aliases and that it may be related to hard work for the developer, the X-Gov framework
other content elements by the corroboration, incorporates available solutions as components.
complementation and concomitance relationships.
Some transitions between media do not count yet with
Thus, when the Government Analyst associate content to a technological solutions. We are presently working on
task component, X-Builder places the content and its implementing new components for transitions from voice
metadata in the Crossmedia Content Repository and portals to web and from iTV to cell phones.
orchestrates a service to retrieve it when needed. When the
X-Gov service is executed, the suitable component element Conversion rates
is retrieved by Content Manager and presented in the most The X-Gov framework has addressed the question of
suitable format. conversion rates in the X-Session manager. This element of
The patchwork effect the architecture is responsible for handling the user session,
regardless of the media in use. Thus, it makes possible to
The X-Gov framework is based on components which have track citizens’ transitions from one medium to the other, as
been derived from task patterns. Each task pattern embeds
well as any other session parameters.
its interaction model, in terms of its signs and features. We
expect that the level of reuse provided by task patterns and Government expertise
components seduce government analysts to keep
The X-Gov framework must require the minimum
customization in the parameter level, preserving the
programming effort possible; must be easy to learn and
interaction model. This would reduce the patchwork effect
operate. It has been conceived to reduce the effort in
in a family of applications. In maintenance, inconsistency is
crossmedia application development process. The use of a
avoided because updating the component result in updating
graphical tool in X-Planner and the opportunity of
all derived services.
describing components orchestration using a DSL are
The framework is flexible to allow changes in components; examples of effort reduction in the service description level
consequently, the interaction model can be adapted if of application development.
needed. Reusable components accelerate the writing of code. In
Seamless transitions particular, reusability and maintainability is reinforced by
the configuration parameters. The Component Manager is
De Hass has expressed the concern about the need of responsible for dynamically providing parameters for each
seamless device switching [6]. Yet there is no solution to component instantiation, either for tasks or transitions. For
automatic handover. The framework provides resources to example, suppose a task component that implements the
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DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden
citizen’s need to follow up a certain issue, given a tracking Besides the need of identifying the citizen in authentication
number (this is the TrackAProcess task pattern). Suppose procedures, user identity recognition is needed because
the tracking number is composed by six numeric digits. automatic transitions must push data on user’s devices.
This is stored as a configuration parameter. Modifications User identification is provided by the X-Session manager in
of business rules could change the tracking number format the X-Gov framework. The X-id is the user identification in
to one alphabetic character and seven digits. This this system and is an extension of the v-card concept. X-id
customization will imply only in changing the component incorporates governmental personal identification such as
input parameters instead of source code. social security numbers or, in Brazil, the CPF or RG
Interoperability identification. X-id holds information about how to reach a
given citizen: his mobile telephone number, iTV set
The X-Gov framework is a service-oriented architecture. identification, e-mail and surface address besides personal
Service oriented architecture (SOA) represents a model for preferences such as favorite format or media.
distributed computing. Its advantage is the loose coupling
between elements. SOA was selected also because it has Cost effectiveness and cost distribution
been the choice of many governments to interoperability. In The framework can reduce the development cost but does
particular, web service technology is viewed as an not address operation and delivery costs. In our work, we
appropriate solution to the needs of interoperability in an still have not defined a cost model. New players in a
environment of heterogeneous platforms, in which reading crossmedia service are the telephone operators and iTV
and writing messages in XML format to allow flexibility distributors. Because these players are looking for
for the exchange of messages between different prospective markets, crossmedia government services may
subsystems. bring up their interests.
e-GIF (e-Government Interoperability Framework) is one
of the major references of interoperability standards for e-
gov. The British government framework, already in its 6. PROOFS-OF-CONCEPT
sixth edition, can be used for exchange and management of The X-Gov framework has been developed by an iterative
data and metadata [18]. Brazilian government’s process based on proofs-of-concept (POC). Each POC has
interoperability standard, e-Ping [5] also suggests web been preceded by a SWOT analysis in which we identified
service technology. the relevant research questions to be addressed in that
cycle. So far, three POCs have been developed.
The X-Gov Framework has been implemented in a service
oriented approach in two layers. The communication POC #1 intended to clear the concept of crossmedia and to
between the x-gov application and the legacy government improve the team’s expertise in technologies involved in
services and databases is standardized by a set of web developing applications for mobile computing and iDTV.
services which are responsible for data exchange. WSDL We departed from the crossmedia planning algorithm in
interfaces provided in the framework description reduces [10] and planned a service for enrollment of children in
the effort of interfacing existing systems to the crossmedia schools. After a paper prototype, a first version of the
interaction layer. service was developed for web, mobile and iTV. As a result
of POC #1, development platforms were defined and the
The second case is the internal communication, within planning algorithm was refined.
media components. Because each medium has its own
technological platform, web services are suitable for POC #2 was intended to explore the concept of task
flexible integration. This decision intended to increase patterns and crossmedia transitions. The same service of
flexibility in case of adding new components to the children enrollment was thus refactored, this time using
framework. RESTful web services have been chosen components which implemented the task patterns for each
instead of SOAP web services because the data medium and transition components.
transmission can use lightweight message formats, e.g., the
POC #3 intended to identify the best architecture to
JavaScript Object Notation which reduces the processing
orchestrate several components and at the same time, to
overload.
allow for coupling the framework with legacy government
User identification systems. The target service for POC #3 was a hospital
Watson’s and his colleagues’ uniqueness concept in facility for image exams, involving the citizen’s
ubiquitous marketing [19] can be applied to the cross- appointment and result delivery. This POC implemented
media government services. This refers to the media and the SOA approach to the architecture. Another important
devices used by unique person. The mobile phone is the achievement has been the definition of Service Manager,
best example because users rarely share them: each person like X-Session and Component Manager, that allowed
has his own device and number that provide uniqueness. seamless transitions of the user from one media to another.
Learned preferences and location are also features that can Finally, the DSL CroMeL and the graphical modeling tool
add to this uniqueness concept. have been added to the X-Planner application toolkit.
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POC #4 is under specification to date and is addressing the 6. De Haas, M. Crossmedia communication in the
content manager and legacy government systems interface. dynamic knowledge society. IST Networking Session
N28 report, 2005.
CONCLUSION
This paper has presented x-gov, the concept of crossmedia 7. Dena, C. Current state of Cross Media Storytelling.
in government services, extending the concept of e-gov European Information Systems Technologies event;
framework for x-gov applications. We advocate that 2004.
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This work has been funded by FAPESP and Microsoft 13. Kato, H.; Tan, K.T., "Pervasive 2D Barcodes for
Research under grants no 07.54488-3 and 2008/50414-8. Camera Phone Applications," Pervasive Computing,
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