XML – Based Integration Framework for E-government

Abstract

Information integration has been recognized as a critical factor for building large scale business applications. The e-governments must use adaption methods to face the changes in their process. To obtain a great and efficient automation of enterprises business processes in e-governments, an integration engine is required for integrating and harmonizing its services and processes. This integration supports the decision making, enhances interoperability, minimizes the business process lifecycle, facilitates the procedures, increases the productivity, improves public services delivery to its citizens and communities, as well as maximizes the profits. XML is playing an important role in Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) because nowadays most of software programs have the ability of storing, manipulating and retrieving data in XML format and converting it into different formats; which also gives XML an unbounded range of potential users. In this paper, a new XML-based integrated framework is built using N-tier architecture and N-layer design approach, and based on the integration patterns to overcome the integration problems in different governmental sectors, and provide access to several e-services such as online search, data retrieval and integration services through one-stop-shop . Also, we describe how XML facilitates the integration of data among the systems in different government sectors. A case study is used to simulate the proposed integration in the Integrated Tariff Engine of the Egyptian Customs Authority. The presented model is designed to be high performance, scalable, as well as it can be directed to different governmental sectors.