A model-driven approach for government services specification

There is a lot of research and practical activities in e-government area at the moment. However, it still lacks methods for formal specification of e-government services. Such methods might significantly help in e-government services development due to simplification of discussions and validation of specifications: domain experts could perceive and check specifications easier than texts or ready software. It should be also possible to generate target code and tests for e-government services, to automatically verify specifications and get other benefits of model-driven development. But it is uneasy to use model-driven techniques directly for the reason of the domain area specifics. The most important one is a necessity of unified specification style of the different services of the area (the same terms, document names, etc.). In this paper, we adapt the model-driven approach to development of e-government services specifications. Following the method, ontology of the domain should be developed. Basing on this ontology, the models of particular services of the domain should be also created: behavior model (BPMN), document model (feature diagrams) and information model (constraints, pieces of information etc.). We also describe how we used the method in Russian-Finish project “Improving Social Services” that is dedicated to development of formal specifications and Web-system for government services for Finns in Russia and Russians in Finland.