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semantic layer that enables the cross‐border service delivery application process, it is necessary to set up a number of associated mechanisms, to create data on equivalences, to determine, based on those equivalences the opportunity of putting together an application, and to validate an application. The following sections present the pilots which were developed to implement these mechanisms.
4. Document equivalences with the MADOQS equivalence engine
In order to validate the transferred documents, it is necessary to determine which documents should be provided and which are equivalent, i. e., accepted as substitutes in the particular context of a procedure. The quality of the system depends to a large extent on the reliability of the semantic data source on document equivalences. The mechanism to record and maintain information on equivalences in the corresponding semantic data source is therefore critical.
In the current context, an equivalence can come from various sources, 1) the legal environment, 2) the hierarchical representation of document types( a Lithuanian passport document is a subtypeOf passport), and 3) the manual addition of the equivalence by administrative agents.
4.1 Collecting data from the legal environment
In case a legal framework exists that entails an equivalence between two types of documents( e. g., a French and an Irish driving licence), the equivalence can be inferred from the representation of the legal environment. This requires modelling the legislation related to a particular procedure and / or document. For instance, the directive 91 / 439 / EWG _ 910729 defines a European driving license. From this piece of legislation, it is possible to infer the symmetric equivalence of all licences issued by the authorities of the European Union countries. The modelling of legislation was investigated in the scope of the Travel Agent case with Poland, Luxembourg, and Germany with the Carneades software( Gordon et al., 2007). However, instead of modelling the validity conditions of a document equivalence, we modelled the conditions for the authorization procedure in order to support the civil servant in the decision process for the delivery of a business permit. The authorization procedures are managed by European and national legislations and often further regulated by delegated legislations and non‐statutory legal rules which had to be analysed in order to model the authorization procedures of the respective countries. The activities of travel agents in Luxembourg are considered as regulated commercial activities, subject to a specific business permit. The rules represent the qualifications and insurances required to operate as a professional travel agent. Rules for Travel agent services were encoded for both Luxembourg and Poland with the support of the Fraunhofer Institute. It was then processed by Carneades.
Figure 2 shows the reasoning map generated by Carneades on a particular instantiation of the Polish tour operator insurance requirements
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