Reference modelling for E-Government services

The realisation of E-Government Services in Switzerland makes only little progress. Reasons are - on the one hand - the federal constitution of the Swiss Confederation. On the other hand, public administrations are concerned about the high initial effort and the corresponding financial investments. As a partner in the EU-funded project OntoGov the Swiss Federal Chancellery now takes over an active role in the configuration of E-Government services. With the OntoGov system reference process models are provided at various abstraction layers. Public administrations can adapt these reference models to their specific needs and make them available for the citizens. Decisions for designing and adapting reference processes are explicitly modelled using ontologies, making the decision process traceable. Thus, subsequent changes in the reference models can be transferred to all the depending models.