Semantic IT Service Catalog in a German Public Organization

Semantic IT Service Catalog
in a German Public Organization
Design, Development, and Implementation
SEMANTiCs 2015, Vienna
Vera G. Meister, Jonas Jetschni

SEMANTiCs 2015 · Vienna · 16.09.2015 Page
9/10/2015
2
Agenda
 Initial Situation
 Approach
 IT Project
 Success Criteria
 Obstacles
 Benefits
 Next Steps
 Demo
Meister, Jetschni · Semantic IT Catalog in a German Public Organization

9/10/2015
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Initial Situation
IT Operations and IT Management
 in our university
 homegrown
 heterogenious
 primarily focused on technical aspects
 rather reactive than proactive
 similar situation in a majority of public organizations
 lack of transparency and guidance for
 users
 IT staff
 executives

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IT Management Structure
NOG
Administration
Lab Services
DTE
Lab Services
DCS
Lab Services
DBM
Head Head
Library
Data Center
ChancellorPresident
CIMC
Center X
before 2014
now
Project Y
CIO Panel

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Service Orientation
As of now
• no service orientation
• no clear picture about IT services
• support at technical level is basically well organized, but under pressure
• user support follows the „Hey Joe“ principle
• necessity of broad technological know how at all organizational levels
• at the same time: redundant services to some extent
Decision of the CIO panel (January 2015)
• stepwise implementation of service orientation
• priority No 1: implementation of an IT service catalog
• provide at least a central information base

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Approach
1. Requirements Analysis
 Collection of use cases, requirements, and competence questions
2. Subject and Field Research
 IT service catalog implementations in German public organizations
 Structure and general requirements on IT service catalogs
3. Evaluation of Implementation Types
 Analytical Hierarchy Process based on core general requirements
4. Data Collection
 Media analysis, inquiry, and observation
5. Prototyping

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Use Cases and Requirements
want to have guidance on public IT services at university
 e. g. as prospect students, as potential project partners
of the university etc.
need information about a specific IT service
 e. g. about access conditions, service options, support
offerings, operational processes etc.
aim on central coordination and standardization of services
 e. g. for efficient appointment of scarce resources, for
optimal support for IT management processes etc.
need reliable data about costs and expenses of IT services
 e. g. for budget planning, for implementing an internal
transfer pricing system for shared IT services etc.

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Evaluation of Implementation Types
Doc Document-based IT service catalog
CMS IT service catalog based on a Content Mgt. System
Sem Semantic IT service catalog
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Sem
DMS
Doc
Relationenabbild
Prozesssupport
Informationsversorgung
Outline of Relations
Process Support
Information Supply
CMS

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IT Project
1. Selection of Tools, Standards, and Frameworks
 ontology editors, basic ontologies and vocabularies, code libraries
2. Ontology Engineering
 as fare as possible based on standards, streamlined structure
3. System Design
 simple prototyping with multiple options for extensions
4. Application Development
 based on web technologies: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP
5. Evaluation
 based on personal discussions, inquiry schedule, and observation (N=25)

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Ontology Editors
Systems Tested
 CMap Tools
 Knowledge Builder
 PoolParty
 rdfEditor
 Protégé
 WebProtégé
 OWLGrEd
 None of the tools meets all requirements
 Selection of a tool set: rdfEditor, Protégé, and WebProtégé
Requirements
1) Structured coding
2) Syntax checking
3) Support of standards
4) Ontology „mashup“
5) Easy reengineering
6) Structure and Graph visualization
7) Support of cooperative work

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itcat Schema Graph
Agent
Service
schema:agent
Document
Organi-
zation
Person
Role
Service
Category
Catalog
Category
Subject
Category
Life Cycle
Stage
itcat:inCategory
IT Asset
Priority
Entity
Criticality
Qualitative
Value
itcat:hasStage
itcat:usableWith foaf:page
itcat:hasPriority
itcat:hasCriticality
schema:member
schema:employee
• Planning
• Implementation
• Operation
• In Relief
• Off
• Communication
• Business Adm.
• Information
• Infrastructure
• Library
• Network
• Teaching Platf.
• Miscellaneous
• Business
• Infrastructure
• Operational
• Public
schema:isRelatedTo

Based on Open Standards
12
System Design and Development
Responsive GUI
Login | FAQ | Search | Main | Editor
Application Layer
PHP | REST HTTP
Basic Ontologies
schema | skos | itcat | …
Triple Store
Fuseki | Jena
SPARQL Endpoint
Document
Server
BP Models
Templates
Information
Semantic Server
• OWL Processing
• Inferencing
• Crawling / Parsing
D2R Server /
REST-API CMS
RDB Mapping
External
RDB
Google MDL
sparqllib.php
Meister, Jetschni · Semantic IT Catalog in a German Public Organization 9/10/2015

9/10/2015
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Evaluation Setting and Results
Evaluation setting
• Form with six non-polar questions about first impression, usability aspects,
and further wishes or requirements; period: August 2015
• 25 Evaluators:
Top Management 2
Head of Department/Center 5
Project Manager 2
Professors 5
Academic Staff 2
Administrative Staff 3
Students 6
• personal discussions, observation of system’s usage; ongoing interpretation
16
7
2
Wow!
Well …
Oh no?
Interesting …
Navigation is
totally
confusing!
That‘s exatly,
what we are
missing!

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Success Criteria and Obstacles
Success Criteria
• Joint expertise of the core developers (subject + semantic technology)
• Time for growing
• Top management’s buy in
• Enthusiasm and doggedness
• Flexible technical support by administrative staff
Obstacles
• Shortage of human resources
• Blockers in the CIO panel
• Weak tool support for ontology merging
• Weak standard vocabulary support

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Benefits
Appreciated by Evaluators
 Chancellor: Reports allow better control of the organization,
e. g. in terms of review of contracts with extern providers.
 Professor + Case worker: It may be very helpful during onboarding.
 Head of Lab Services: We could implement our ticket system for all users.
 Controler: We could check the involvement of staff into IT services and
allocate costs according to the cost-by-cause principle.
 Student: It‘s nice to have all services for students in one place.
Intended by CIO Panel
 More streamlined IT service supply,
 Data basis for IT-related financial and organizational decisions,
 Central information point and access point for service support.

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Next Steps
 Content development
 Functional enhancement
 Faceted search and filtering
 Visualization of relations between services
 Login and target-group-specific presentation
 Semantic server with more functionality and performance
 Ontology enhancement/upgrading
 Connection to other systems (monitoring, CMS, DMS)
 Implementation of REST API
 Further deployment in the federal state Brandenburg

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Demo: IT Service Catalog Prototype

Fachbereich Wirtschaft
Thank You for Listening
Vera G. Meister Jonas Jetschni
vera.meister@fh-brandenburg.de jonas.jetschni@fh-brandenburg.de

Semantic IT Service Catalog in a German Public Organization

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