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

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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

Chancellor President

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

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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

[email protected] [email protected]

semantic it service catalog in a german public organization

Technology