A research study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science, School of Engineering and Technology

Research Studies Project Report (M. Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2022

Interoperability in e-government is important to improve the public service by making the different systems for exchanging, integrating, and using the information in a meaningful manner. The purpose of developing the e-government system is to serve the government and citizens. However, e-government systems along with heterogeneous databases have created difficulties in integration or interoperability. These heterogeneous databases in the e-government do lead to the redundancy of data, data inconsistency, and the difficulty to integrate data and processing data within and outside the departments. The representation of the heterogeneous system with common standards is considered a valuable resolution for interoperability. In this research, the Technology Framework for Bhutan{u2019}s E-government is proposed to support semantic interoperability using an ontology-based approach. To evaluate the proposed Technology Framework for Bhutan{u2019}s E-government Interoperability, a case of developing Domain Ontology for Bhutan{u2019}s Administrative Division (AD) is discussed. To overcome the challenges of Bhutan{u2019}s AD, the conceptual prototype was followed for developing and maintaining the domain ontology called 2Bhutan{u2019}s Administrative Division (BTNAD) Ontology3 with unified knowledge of the concept. Further, digitalizing the requirements to integrate the data in ontology schema was applied. Then, the domain ontology was implemented and validated using the Protégé and verified the answers to competency questions applying the SPARQL query. The BTNAD Ontology includes the idea of a Single Source of Truth, reusing the data, and enhancement of collaboration and interoperability within and across the agencies. Moreover, the use of ontology and design of linking the administrative division of the country at the conceptual level aims to introduce an open data concept in the country for data sharing and access. Finally, the research discusses some recommendations from the proposed framework and interoperability challenges.