A general interoperability architecture for e-government based on agents and Web Services

As Information and Communication Technologies are constantly evolving, governments should embrace this evolution to provide more efficient and effective around-the-clock services. The need to deliver services that gather information from several Public Administration branches turns interoperability architectures an essential tool for e-government. However, this service provisioning is complex and brings a set of new concerns that are nonexistent in the traditional way of delivering public services, mainly security related. Security is one of the key points for determining the success or failure of an e-government application. In this paper we present a generic interoperability architecture for e-government based on Software Agents and Web Services where the main objective is to provide a secure way for delivering integrated services from the client's (citizens, businesses or Public Administration) perspective.