Project: Software Agents for Cooperative Environment
Administration
Programme: Programme of Scientific Support to the Diffusion of Telecommunications
Funded by: the Belgian Office for Scientific, Technical
and Cultural Affairs
Duration: 01/12/95 - 30/11/97
Partners: Consortium
Prototypical scenarios include the reporting of environmental information from the regional to the federal level and onwards to international institutions (e.g., the European Environmental Agency, EUROSTAT, United Nations), the inter-regional coordination of transport of dangerous materials, and the procedures for assessing and managing pollution risks across borders (cf. INTEREG I and II). The primary group of end-users targeted by this proposal are the various federal and regional Belgian administrations concerned with environmental matters. In addition external users will have easy access to the administration system, for instance to find out about regulations, to start an administrative procedure, or to enquire about the progress on their case.
Various environmental information networks are being built (e.g., the 'Vlaamse Milieudatabank' or the European Information and Observation Network). These networks focus on the information aspect by providing an information service to administrations and policy makers. In contrast, this project focuses on the administration aspect. Environmental administration requires the timely collaboration of parties working in different places and on different levels -- regional, national, European -- and aspects of an environmental issue. They often have conflicting views and interests. The process is often rigid and opaque -- especially to the citizen -- while knowledge and information is not always optimally used and reused. The project will demonstrate how telematics technology can alleviate these problems, and facilitate and guide specific administrative procedures.
The technical objectives of the project are:
(1) to develop an 'information kiosk' for goal-directed access through customisable
client software (the 'information clients') to the information
maintained by a single administration , and
(2) to develop 'administration agents', a class of network-based
software agents.
An administration agent can be thought of as an operational documentation of an administrative procedure (its 'script'). It is created with case-specific information and then 'travels' between the information kiosks of different administrations to trigger (not necessarily to execute) the various administrative steps, ensuring their order and timing, and collecting relevant information. Anytime it can be inspected to monitor the progress on the particular case that it handles.
The demonstration and validation objectives of the project require
(3) to study and document prototypical administration scenarios, selected
according to well-defined criteria and in negotiation with end-users
and
(4) to demonstrate the technology for supporting these scenarios
in their real-world context.
Objective (1) and (2) will be realized in the first phase of the project and demonstrated on a real scenario from (3). Validation in additional scenarios, technical refinement, and operational installation are the objectives of the second phase, where a full operational evaluation is done. Finally the project produces recommendations, a cost-benefit analysis and effort estimations towards ensuring the post-project use and development of these results on a growing scale. As more and more administrations, institutes, industrial and individual users acquire access to nation-wide networks, the results can support a growing number of administrative activities. The administration agents will be specifically instrumental for the rapid operationalization of inter-regional agreements, and they provide a natural approach toward greater transparency of administrative activities.
For more information about this project read the proposed project description.