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E-Governance Architecture

E-Governance Portal is built based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) may be defined as a group of services that communicate with each other through data-passing or two or more services coordinating some activity. SOA builds applications out of web / software services. Services comprise un-associated units of functionality that have no calls to each other embedded in them. They typically implement functionality most citizens would recognize as a service, such as filling out an online application for a driver’s license, viewing an online electronic form, or submitting a grievance or query. To meet an existing or new business requirement, services are linked and sequenced in a process known as orchestration.
Web services make these functional building blocks accessible over standard internet protocols independent of platforms and programming languages. These services can be new applications
or just wrapped around existing legacy systems to make them network-enabled. Usage of Extensible Markup Language (XML) aids various department portals in sharing structured data, especially via the internet, to encode documents, and to serialize data. The departments that are to be integrated with the E-Governance Portal need to interact with the portal and to each other for seamless delivery of information / services to citizens. The interactions between these departments are proposed to be done using industry’s widely accepted and adopted Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework. The interoperability is built by using Middleware on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and web services standards. Using SOA framework, the services at E-Governance Portal would be exposed using the web
services, and some can be consumed by various departments on demand basis. All the service  will be realized by the technology platform, which has the following architectural building blocks:
• Web server
• Application server
• Middleware
• Directory server
• SMTP server

Client Layer
Citizens, CSCs, and government are the stakeholders of the E-Governance Portal solution that forms the client layer. The client layer constitutes the web client, which is normally the web browser. The stakeholders can receive the information/deliverables by the services through channel delivery services. Desktop, IVRS, and CSC users directly access the E-Governance Portal through internet over HTTP/HTTPS protocol. Requests from mobile users will be processed using mobile switch, which, in turn, forwards requests to WAP gateway where WML will translate into HTML that will forward to E-Governance Portal web server.

Channel Delivery Layer
Channel delivery services contain the secured gateway services, which handle the number of transactions across the entire network. The various secured gateways that are used are XML gateway, SMS gateway, SMTP gateway, Web gateway, etc.

Presentation Layer
Presentation services handle the user management, personalization features. Based on the type of user logged in, the layer routes the request to the respective services of the business service layer of the E-Governance Portal solution.

·         Web
The Web Portal provides information for the stakeholders over internet using a web browser. There will be certain sections of the portal which will be accessible to all the users, which is referred to as the “public” part of the E-Governance Portal and certain sections which can beaccessed only by authorized users referred to as the “protected” part of the portal. The Egovernance Portal solution would support multi-lingual content, and pages will be displayed in the language selected by user.

·         Personalization
Personalization component provides stakeholders to customize their preferences for better user experience. Personalization covers the ability for a user to influence their experiences.

Security Layer
The secure proxy server intercepts stakeholders whenever they request to access the secured information. URL will be routed to this component where it will challenge (User Id and Password)
the user for authentication if user accesses the secured information.

Business Logic Layer
·         Business Services
The business services will provide required services for its stakeholders. These services will be provided by government and various applications and consumed by government departments using service communication components.

·         User Management
The user management function addresses how identities and users are created, maintained, or
revoked on termination.

·         Self-Service
Self-Service component will provide interface to citizens to manage their own profile information,
such as user registration, reset passwords, update contact information, and request for accessing
government services, if required, etc.

·         Content Management Services
Portal solution has a large number of content objects and documents. It manages the complete
lifecycle of all content objects. Content generators create information that is stored and managed
in electronic or manual record form.

·         Workflow Services
Workflow services capture input data, standard processes, and business rules for processing data for a pre-defined output. Workflow service addresses the application submission, status tracking, and verification of documents, and availability of service.

·         Search
The E-Governance Portal solution will have a search component to provide quick access to information, including documents, HTML pages, images, audio files, video files, etc.

·         Notifications
The E-Governance Portal will have the facility to send notifications – alerts to its registered users. Users should be able to subscribe for some of the services like SMS, News, etc. For updates in these services, subscribed users of Portal will get notifications by email.

Infrastructure Services Layer
The E-Governance Portal would contain the following list of utility services to maintain and manage the E-Governance Portal application.
• Application logging
• Exception handling
• Notifications

Data Layer

·         Database Server
E-Governance Portal application will use Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) for persistent store of structured data.

·         Document Repository
Static content of E-Governance Portal such as documents, PDF files, images, audio/video files,
etc., would be stored in document repository. These files should not be stored in database.

·         Directory Server
The directory server of E-Governance Portal contains profile information of stakeholders, roles,
application level ACLs (Access Control Lists), service level access control list, etc. This directory
server should be made accessible using LDAP.

Integration Layer

Service Communication Infrastructure
Middleware as a messaging acts as an intelligent hub and routes service requests from a service seeker (service access provider) to a service provider (typically a back end government department that puts up its service for electronic delivery) and in return sends the response back to the service seeker through the gateway.
The gateway achieves integration among diverse set of applications built on varying platforms based on open standards such as the W3C XML and SOAP specifications.

Management and Monitoring Layer
·         Application / Network / Infrastructure Management
Infrastructure components of E-Governance Portal will manage and monitor the health of the application, network, hardware, software, etc., to manage standard architectural requirements.

Following are list of components that should be monitored:
• CPU usage
• Hard disk usage
• Network bandwidth
• E-Mail server
• Print server
• File server

·         Integration to Various Departments
Integration strategy in e-governance is very critical as most of the departments might have built their own application and run in silo form. These departments need to be integrated to the Egovernance Portal to achieve better citizen service.

The E-Governance Portal works as a single source of information for all government content, and provides front end or start point for all the government services provided by the various government departments. The functionality of departmental applications and services provided by the departments is made accessible on E-Governance Portal as services using web services technologies. Web service based implementation of transactional government services will make them reusable, easy to integrate, interoperable and easily accessible.

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