Guided interactive information access for e-citizens

Governments, especially local ones, are using the web to provide a number of services that are mainly informative and aim at improving the quality of life of citizens and at promoting the local community “abroad”. These services include among others, job placement services, tourist information (hotels, restaurants, etc.), yellow pages to promote local industries and activities, and are supplied in addition to institutional services such as law, regulations and opportunities information bases. We argue that traditional methods commonly used by administrations to implement these services do not really work, and propose a new access paradigm based on conceptual manipulation. This paradigm is applied to a job placement example.