Analysis of an inventory of information systems in the public administration

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of building an inventory of information systems for the public administration, with reference to an ongoing project in Italy. We describe the investigation techniques defined for collecting information and the techniques developed for a systematic analysis of the large set of conceptual schemas resulting from the investigation. These schemas describe the data used by the public administration work processes. In particular, we describe the conceptual schema of the inventory, which is the basis for discussing the methodology of investigation, the choice of units of investigation, the data collection and merging, and the access to information. Then, we present the schema analysis techniques developed to analyse semi-automatically the large set of conceptual schemas resulting from the investigation. In particular, we illustrate indexing techniques for identifying representative descriptors of schemas and similarity techniques to compare schemas for their classification into families. Finally, the tool developed to support the storage, analysis and classification of schemas is described and experimentation results are discussed.