An Architectural Concept for Knowledge Integration in Inter-Administration Computing

Advances in Business-to-Business electronic commerce now offer opportunities for improved efficiency and profitability in the commercial sector. But similar opportunities are not yet commonplace for inter-administration situations. Differences in goals mean that packaged software solutions do not carry across well to administrative computing. However processes, shared where appropriate, are still the core element of inter-organizational knowledge, although in administration there is a greater emphasis on rules and legislation, and the payoffs to cooperating administrative units are not always clear. In this paper a layered architecture, derived from one previously proposed for virtual enterprises, is introduced. This architecture includes a high level service request layer, process guidance agents, context-aware work environments and the concept of "just enough" structuring.