PC SYSTEMS S.A. within the framework of the 'e-Business' program of the 3rd Community Support Framework signed a contract of Euro 994,000 with the General Secretariat for Research and Development.
More specifically, PC SYSTEMS' Research and Development department undertook the coordination and the implementation of the ELEGANT project (Electronic Government Advisor Agent), which will be completed in 16 months. Apart from PC SYSTEMS the other consortium participants are, the Technological Education Institute of Athens and the German-Hellenic Chamber of Industry and Commerce. Additionally the subcontractors participating are the AGILTECH S.A. company and German Group of companies PSI.
Mr. Fragiskos Mangafas, who is the project coordinator of the ELEGANT project, seeks the creation of a system that will be developed using Semantic Networks technology and its aim is the improvement of user guidance finding the requested information from various Electronic Government services.
Semantic Nets are constituted by symbolic ways of rational thought that represent information in a form of nodes that are connected, forming a knowledge database that can be easily processed and be inspected by experts. Therefore, the user doesn't even need to know the official terms to describe what is being searched for.
ELEGANT will include semantic descriptions for:
- Administrative issues
- Categories and their fields of use
- Preferences and attributes of separate users and teams of users
This will enable the system to compute and make recommendations on the fly, by showing alternatives and supplements to potential information access, by linking additional information, and sometimes simply by bringing in new ideas.
The technological goals are the following:
1) Analyze, design and develop a platform that will make use of the semantic net technology based on an open architecture and would allow for open and distributed component based systems architecture deployment.
2) Use of state-of-the-art technologies that will be based on international standards such as XML.
3) Perform tests on a real-life scenario (such as the Chamber of Industry and Commerce) and evaluation of results on a technology base
Moreover, the main business objectives of the project are to:
-Utilize state-of-the-art technologies to offer better customer service with regards to information available to the public from the Chamber
-Produce statistical and administrative reports that would prove the above
-Reduce the administrative and operational costs
-Diminish any financial losses due to poor customer service
-Better quality of service and increased customer satisfaction
-Increased competitive advantage
By participating at ELEGANT project, PC SYSTEMS continuous the successful course in the growth and implementation of innovative systems in the area of information technology and telecommunications, creating optimal infrastructures for the facilitation of information services via alternative channels of communication.