A Software Platform for Governmental Virtual Institutions

Virtual Worlds constitute a highly popular media for general purpose social interaction, as well as for purpose oriented task execution and we believe that the adoption of this media is suitable for Electronic Government applications. It can increase the capillarity of public services, facilitate the access to (and execution of) government services and provide citizens with a natural and immersive experience. In the present work we present a Government Virtual Institution Model (GVI) for the provision of public services, that satisfies relevant issues such as: adaptability to different citizens education level, adaptability to heterogeneous government systems, alignment with government services requirements related to security, privacy, reliability and scalability, and government interoperability requirements. The government services and the information flow across the Government Virtual Institution are formally described using JamSession language. Also, the model of the GVI is described using the JamSession language and uses an architecture based on e-Ping, to deal with the conections to the governamental systems, and Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) systems to interact with citizens.