An ontological method to identify simplification and harmonization opportunities in legislation and government user interfaces

As part of its administrative duty, a government agency must translate written legislation to encode it in government information systems (GovIS) that operationalize the legislation. The research problem is that the complexity of the legislation and the GovIS could be masking misalignment. A misaligned GovIS could result in incorrect decisions for service consumers who may miss out on payments or services when they need them. This paper demonstrates a method to detect potential misalignment encoded in GovIS and to identify candidates for simplification and harmonization in the legislation to make it easier for auditors, government agencies, and service consumers to detect potential misalignment. The Design Science Research (DSR) methodology is applied to evaluate the GovUI-Onto method in three settings. The as-written legislative definition of an individual ‘Australian resident’ is compared to its translation in Government User Interfaces (GovUI), such as government service claim forms in the Welfare, Taxation, and Immigration settings. The research finds that GovUI-Onto is an effective method to detect encoded misalignment and identify opportunities for simpler and harmonized legislation.