After Prague…May!

Hi! after one month and a half some things have happened…I am going to summarize a bit…writing the “Highlights”!

Reading (pi = persona interest)

Reviewing

Writing

Coding and Tools

  • I have started to design a taxonomy collecting main KPI from the CSMIC initiative and other existing works to create the Cloudindex. Some initial outcomes can be checked here (it is very similar to my work at the Webindex, however the computation process must be added and the URIs are not yet accesible):
  • …I plan to report this on-going work to the CSMIC initiative!
  • I was also testing the IMPALA tool of Cloudera for real time queries.
  • I would like also to emphasize the excellent work of the Media Lab Team at the University of Athens creating the “PublicSpending.net” portal. My contribution has been small but I hope to contribute more in the future.

Teaching

  • During my stay in Spain in the Easter holidays (first week of may) I was invited by Jose Emilio Labra to give some seminars in the Semantic Web Course in the context of the Master of the Web Engineering. I am very grateful for this opportunity and I hope I can repeat. I was presenting part of my PhD and my current research SEERC. I think students were more or less happy with the contents! (My last lecturer had been in January I was a little bit not-trained).
  • Finally I have also collaborated in reviewing and partially supervising a final degree project on sentiment analysis. It has been a great experience!

Other things

In Spain I could meet my family and friends, visit places such as Tazones, go out and, mainly, drink and escanciarSidra Asturiana” and eat in places such as Tierra Astur or Los Lagos…and more things that you should ask me! 🙂

CFP Special issue on New trends on E-Procurement applying Semantic Technologies

Regarding the special issue in which I am a guest editor, please find the details in the next link.

Overview

E-Procurement refers to the use of electronic communications and transaction processing by government institutions and other public sector organizations when buying supplies and services or tendering public works. However, there is much more at stake than the mere changeover from paper based systems to ones using electronic communications for public procurement procedures. It should have the potential to yield important improvements in the efficiency of individual purchases, the overall administration of public procurement and the functioning of the markets for government contracts. The technology in this area may make it possible to automate the processes involved in the E-Procurement context besides features for supplier management and complex auctions should be included in by means of applying new technologies and methods in order to fulfill the requirements of this new realm of electronic businesses.

The new generation of E-Procurement is now on-demand or a software-as-a-service. There are seven main types of E-Procurement: 1) Web-based ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)  creating and approving purchasing requisitions, placing purchase orders and receiving goods and services by using a software system based on Internet technology; 2)e-MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul), the same as web-based ERP except that the goods and services ordered are non-product related MRO supplies; 3) e-sourcing, identifying new suppliers for a specific category of purchasing requirements using Internet technology; 4)e-tendering, sending requests for information and prices to suppliers and receiving the responses of suppliers using Internet technology; 5) e-reverse auctioning, using Internet technology to buy goods and services from a number of known or unknown suppliers; 6)e-informing, gathering and distributing purchasing information both from and to internal and external parties using Internet technology; 7) e-market sites, expands on Web-based ERP to open up value chains. Buying communities can access preferred suppliers’ products and services, add to shopping carts, create requisition, seek approval, receipt purchase orders and process electronic invoices with integration to suppliers’ supply chains and buyers’ financial systems.

The features and requirements of an E-Procurement system match the advantages and features of software component and knowledge-based architectures. In this sense, Information technology support for the next generation of E-Procurement systems is critical since this information technology needs to be: (1) Reusable, and (2) Rapidly changeable. Furthermore, it can be seen that the underlying software architecture of a supply chain solution also needs to be: (1) Agile, (2) Flexible, (3) Deployable over a multi-enterprise scope, (4) Multi-function support when used as a suite, (5) Handle complexity, (6) Enable collaboration, (7) Enable coordination and (8) Greener to provide new green supply chain environments. Under this context, Semantic Technologies have emerged as an option to develop digital assistants and agents with the ability to search products and services on the Web that correspond best to the specific needs of a certain user. Semantic Web enables machines to interpret data published in a machine-interpretable form on the Web. The emerging Semantic Technologies have the potential to deeply influence the further development of the Internet Economy and support the different stages of e-Procurement processes such as eNotification, eAccess, eSubmission, eEvaluation/eAwarding, eOrdering, eInvoicing and ePayment.

In the Semantic context, Linked Data is one of the main technological cornerstones of Semantic Technologies for the improvement of E-Procurement. Linked Data describes a method of publishing structured data so that it can be interlinked and become more useful. Currently research works are arising from a semantic perspective in order to solve and improve the interoperability, privacy, trust,  quality, provenance, integration, transparency, lifecycle, etc. issues of this context. That is due the emerging Semantic technologies are open new development and business models in E-Procurement reusing the available information to deploy new innovative services of matchmaking, recommendation or tracking activities and trying to automate the processes involved in the E-Procurement sector. In that sense, existing solutions are taking advantage of these semantic approaches to deliver innovative and cost-effective information services. They are designed to add value to public sector information generated within the framework of public contracts published in EU Member States as well as the information generated by EU Institutions own activity.

The aim of this special issue is to collect innovative and high-quality research and industrial contributions regarding E-Procurement processes that can fulfill the needs of this new realm. This special issue aims at exploring the recent advances in the application of Semantic Technologies in the E-Procurement sector soliciting original scientific contributions in the form of theoretical, experimental and real research and case studies.

Submission Guidelines

Papers submitted must have not been published previously or under consideration for publication, though they may represent significant extensions of prior work. All submissions will be peer-reviewed following a double-blind review process. The objective is to apply very high standards of acceptance while ensuring fair, timely and efficient review cycles. The acceptance process will focus on those papers that address innovative contributions for adopting and implementing new techniques on E-Procurement applying semantic Web-based technologies.

Important dates and Timeline

  • 1st of May 2013,  full papers due (depending on the EES)
  • 15th of May 2013,  Chief editors desk review results
  • 1st of July, 2013, ending the first round of reviews
  • 15th of September 2013, revised papers due
  • 1st of November 2013, ending the second round of reviews
  • 1st of December 2013, final papers due

WebIndex Launch

Today it is the official launch of the Web Index. Last months I have collaborated, through my activities in WESO Research Group, with the Web Foundation to promote its statistical data following the Linked Data principles. I think we have published an appropriate version of this data and I hope to continue this fruitful collaboration with my new colleagues in next months.

You can find more information about the Web Index as Linked Data in http://data.webfoundation.org/.

If you have any comment, suggestion, etc. please feel free to contact me at any time,

Best,

Old-Fasioned Common Procurement Vocabulary 2008 and 2003

The Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) establishes a single classification system for public procurement aimed at standardising the references used by contracting authorities and entities to describe the subject of procurement contracts.

The CPV consists of a main vocabulary for defining the subject of a contract, and a supplementary vocabulary for adding further qualitative information. The main vocabulary is based on a tree structure comprising codes of up to 9 digits (an 8 digit code plus a check digit) associated with a wording that describes the type of supplies, works or services forming the subject of the contract.

The main vocabulary is based on a tree structure comprising codes of up to nine digits associated with a wording that describes the supplies, works or services forming the subject of the contract.

  • The first two digits identify the divisions (XX000000-Y);
  • The first three digits identify the groups (XXX00000-Y);
  • The first four digits identify the classes (XXXX0000-Y);
  • The first five digits identify the categories (XXXXX000-Y);

Each of the last three digits gives a greater degree of precision within each category. A ninth digit serves to verify the previous digits.

The supplementary vocabulary may be used to expand the description of the subject of a contract. The items are made up of an alphanumeric code with a corresponding wording allowing further details to be added regarding the specific nature or destination of the goods to be purchased.

The alphanumeric code is made up of:

  • a first level comprising a letter corresponding to a section;
  • a second level comprising four digits, the first three of which denote a subdivision and the last one being for verification purposes
The dataset created is comprised of CPV 2008 and CPV 2003 codes and the mappings between them. All this information is publicly available via the WESO SPARQL endpoint (5 star linked data) and a Pubby frontend. The structure of the data and definitions is the next one:

http://purl.org/weso/cpv/2008/03111100 

http://purl.org/weso/cpv/definitions/codeIn2003

http://purl.org/weso/cpv/2003/01113100

The definitions have been made using the vocabularies:

The whole dataset uses links to other datasets (28,839):

  • GoodRelations  and Product Ontology products and descriptions

In order to create all this data we have used different tools:

Collaborators:

Acknowledgements:
This work is part of MOLDEAS system developed by the WESO Research Group in the partnership project 10ders Information Services project partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade with code TSI-020100-2010-919 and the European Regional Development Fund (EFDR) according to the National Plan of Scientific Research, Development and Technological Innovation 2008-2011, leaded by Gateway Strategic Consultancy Services and developed in cooperation with Exis-TI.

TO DO List

  • Check broken links
  • Review the design of URIs
  • Create Named graphs to group different divisions/groups/classes/categories
  • Link to other datasets
  • Reconciliate all products and services with the DBPedia resources
  • Develop a GUI based on Exhibit, SNORQL, etc.
  • Send this dataset and statistics to the Linked Data Cloud
  • Update public procurement notices with the new URIs

Work Experience