SOFTWARE AGENTS FOR PROJECT IDENTIFICATION - the case of CDF Projects

1. SOFTWARE AGENTS FOR PROJECT IDENTIFICATION-the case of CDF Projects Josephine Mwangi P56/8486/2004 Supervisor Dr. Wanjiku Ng’ang’a

2. Definitions and Scope • Projects have clearly:-specified objectives, defined time periods, defined budget • Proper managed identifiable phases - Initiation/identification, Planning, Execution and Close-out. • Research Work based on Identification Phase • Constituency Development Fund (CDF) Projects • Consideration on Relevance, Feasibility and Sustainability MSC progress Report

3. Problem Statement • CDF funds have given Kenyans opportunity to experience the value of government money and citizens directly take part in deciding on development matters for the area. • Solution therefore is needed in aid of projects identification. • Resolving of the various stakeholders’ diverse interests; benefits/conflicts appropriately and hence justify the criteria for CDF funds project Identification. MSC progress Report

4. Why Identification in CDF Projects • According to Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) baseline survey (February and April 2006) • survey covered 35 constituencies in eight (8) pilot districts (Bondo, Bungoma, Nakuru, Machakos, Kirinyaga, Wajir, Mombasa and Nairobi). Survey findings on CDF funds Impact MSC progress Report

5. CDF Participation MSC progress Report

6. Accountability, Performance /Justification • 15% - agree that the decisions are well sufficiently justified • integrity of decision-making- Large Dissatisfaction - 46% -decisions are not sufficiently justified. • Awareness regarding whether decisions taken are within mandate is relatively low • Most of the respondents - do not know. • High levels of distrust-More than double respondents disagrees than agree that the CDF funds operate within their mandate. MSC progress Report

7. Objectives of Study • Study challenges that exist with participatory identification of projects • Investigate what engineering methodologies can be used for developing applications that intelligently support project identification; in particular the software agents • Define how a participatory stake holder's interface can be modeled • Experiment with different semantic web standards in the architecture • Develop a semantically rich model MSC progress Report

8. Research Questions • Which technologies, protocols and systems are available and accurate for Project Identification? • Are semantic web standards a key component of the model? • How can we provide submission and access to different project definitions in a semantically rich information space? • How can we use intelligent agents to improve another pre-existing project identification framework? MSC progress Report

9. Literature Review • CDF Projects – According to GOK (2003); the Constituencies Development Fund Act follows the structures as illustrated in the next slide. • Engineering Methodologies (Promotes Interactions, cooperation, coordination to solve inter-dependencies) • Software Agents MSC progress Report

10. Operation structure of CDF Projects • Location Meetings • Community needs Identification and Projects to address • Constituency Development Committee (CDC) • One in each constituency and Convened and chaired by elected MP • Deliberate on project proposals from all the locations in the constituency and any other projects which the Committee considers beneficial to the constituency, • selects and prioritizes projects • Determine the quantum of installments to various projects in the constituency, taking into account the disbursement received and the requirements of different projects • Monitors implementation of projects CDC designate committee 8. Projects Committee implements projects • DISTRICT PROJECTS COMMITTEE • Coordinate the implementation of projects financed through the Fund. • Ensure that no duplication of projects occur particularly where it is prudent to combine efforts on projects in several constituencies in a district. • prepare and circulate to all CDF Committees in a district, a list of other Government allocations for various projects in the district • Constituencies Development Fund Board • (CDF Board) • timely and efficient disbursement of funds to every constituency • efficient management of the Fund; • to consider project proposals submitted from various constituencies in accordance with the Act, • approve for funding those projects proposals that are consistent with this Act and send funds to the respective constituency fund account of the approved projects; • Constituencies Fund Committee (CFC) • Determine the allocation and distribution to each constituency • Oversees legal, regulatory, policy framework related to Fund • consider and recommend to Parliament any matter requiring action by the National Assembly pursuant to the provisions of this Act; Minister includes project in Printed estimates Clerk of NA TO TABLE TO CFC MSC progress Report

11. Literature ReviewEngineering Methodologies Game theory and Heuristics • Game theory(According to Encyclopedia of Information Systems) • Strength on Methodology- Process Structuring • Cooperative and non cooperative • Cooperative – investigation on various players with respect to amount of power • Non- Cooperative – Investigation on ordering and timing of players’ choices. • Requirement- enumerate explicitly the players and their strategic options • Dominance on outcomes- Preference of diff. Stakeholders based not on outcomes (Russell and Norvig (1995)) • Heuristics- • Acknowledges cost of computation, search is non-exhaustive • often select outcomes (deals) that are sub-optimal • models need extensive evaluation, not always possible to predict behavior of system MSC progress Report

12. Literature Review Agents and their Justification Agents • Defn: • Clearly identifiable problem solving entities • situated in some environment and that is capable of flexible, autonomous action • Meet their design objectives • Representation of Multiple Perspectives and competing Interests • Each Agent represents a distinct stakeholders group in the project and is capable of exchanging messages and negotiating on behalf of the entities they represent MSC progress Report

13. Methodology-General Steps • Gathering of Project Proposals (from local Community) and their Presentation in the Semantic Web Format (RDF) • Proposal Semantic checks. • CDC Prioritizations and Ranking criteria • Act guidelines – Lists according to Priority • Representation of Requests and Preferences • Availability of Shared Ontology (Project Concepts, their properties and relationships) • Application of requester’s preferences/Criteria and a selection of the most suitable offering (s) which are then presented to the requester. • All above operations happen on a multi-agent Environment based on peer-to-peer Paradigm MSC progress Report

14. Roles and Communication Module • Identified Four roles: • Project Providers (Stakeholders- Local Community) • Project requesters (CDF Committee) • Broker (Matchmaker) • Directory Facilitators (Yellow Pages service) • JADE Agent Framework- Agents life cycle • basic services of allowing dynamic discovery of other agents. • Registration, task allocation and search of agents offering given services MSC progress Report

15. Project Offerings/Provisions • The provider agents communicate the offerings to the broker agent. • Must be organized in a way accessible both by agents and human users. • Semantic web techniques enriches current web through the use machine-processable information about the semantics of information content Semantic Web Tower MSC progress Report

16. RDF statement transformation through a java servlet <rdf:RDF xmlns="http://localhost:8080/projectsite/ont/project-ont.owl#" xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#" xmlns:project="http://localhost:8080/projectsite/ont/project-ont.owl#" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#"> <rdf:Description rdf:about="#1"> <project:hasName>Dam Construction</project:hasName> <project:hasImplementationCost>12000000</project:hasImplementationCost> <project:hasOPcost>100000</project:hasOPcost> <project:hasTargetGroups>10000</project:hasTargetGroups> <project:hasCategory>Poverty_Reduction</project:hasCategory> </rdf:Description> <rdf:Description rdf:about="#2"> <project:hasName>Cattle Dip Construction</project:hasName> <project:hasImplementationCost>12000000</project:hasImplementationCost> <project:hasOPcost>100000</project:hasOPcost> <project:hasTargetGroups>10000</project:hasTargetGroups> <project:hasCategory>Poverty_Reduction</project:hasCategory> </rdf:Description> </rdf:RDF> XML REPRESENTATIONS <?xml version="1.0" ?> <projects> <project id="1"> <name>Dam Construction</name> <ImplementationCost>12000000</ImplementationCost> <SustenanceCost>100000</SustenanceCost> <TargetGroup>10000</TargetGroup> <ProjectArea>Poverty_Reduction</ProjectArea> </project> <project id="2"> <name>Cattle Dip Construction</name> <ImplementationCost>12000000</ImplementationCost> <SustenanceCost>100000</SustenanceCost> <TargetGroup>10000</TargetGroup> <ProjectArea>Poverty_Reduction</ProjectArea> </project> <project id="3"> <name>ClassRoom Roofing</name> <ImplementationCost>12000000</ImplementationCost> <SustenanceCost>100000</SustenanceCost> <TargetGroup>10000</TargetGroup> <ProjectArea>Education</ProjectArea> </project> </projects> Project Offerings Contd. MSC progress Report

17. RDF offerings into logical facts RDFS statements into Logical facts and rules Transformation allows the information to be processed by the rules provided by the requesters’ requirements and preferences. RDFS Ontology <rdfs:subClassOf> <owl:Restriction> <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasCategory"/> <owl:cardinality>1</owl:cardinality> </owl:Restriction> </rdfs:subClassOf> <owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasCategory"> <rdfs:label>The Choosen Project Category</rdfs:label> <rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Category"/> </owl:ObjectProperty> <owl:Class rdf:ID="Category"> <rdfs:label>Category of the Project</rdfs:label> <owl:oneOf rdf:parseType="Collection"> <project:Category rdf:about="#health"/> <project:Category rdf:about="#education"/> <project:Category rdf:about="#Poverty_reduction"/> <project:Category rdf:about="#human_rights"/> <project:Category rdf:about="#None"/> </owl:oneOf> </owl:Class> Project Offers Transformations MSC progress Report

18. Project Preferences • The Criteria/Preferences of CDF Projects is already defined by the CDF Act 2003. • Hard (Strict) or Soft (Dispensable) and Defeaters • Project Area • Implementation Cost • Self-Sustaining • Target Group • Geographical Coverage • Location (Particular Ward) • Previous Implementation • Presence of Similar Government Initiative MSC progress Report

19. Classification of Preferences • Hard Rules (Not Acceptable) • Implementation cost > Half total allocation(7,000,000) • Not Self-Sustaining • Target Group < 500 • Geographical Location < 2000 sq.KM • Previous Year Beneficiaries && Different Project • Soft Rules (Defeasible / Negotiable) • Project Area (Poverty_Reduction, Education, Health and Human Rights • The committee rates the importance of Poverty reduction more than both Cost and Target size • Defeaters • Presence of other Initiatives && Not Harmonized MSC progress Report

20. Presentation of Preferences • logic close to human reasoning • supports belief revision • facts may be known only because of lack of evidence of the contrary • Non-monotonic reasoning- Defeasible logics • Has argumentation semantics • Rules with exceptions(General rules and specific rules • Rules are classified as Strict (Hard) and Defeasible (soft) • Preferences communicated to the broker agent by the requester agent • This communication initiates a brokering activity MSC progress Report

21. Sample Preferences (defeasiblerule r1 (cdf:Project (cdf:name ?x)) => (acceptable (Project ?x) ) ) (defeasiblerule r2 (declare (superior r1)) (cdf:Project (cdf:name ?x) (cdf:im-cost ?y & : (> ?y 12000000) ) ) => (not (acceptable (Project ?x) ) ) ) (defeasiblerule r3 (declare (superior r1) ) (cdf:Project (cdf:name ?x) (cdf:target-size ?y & : (< ?y 500) ) ) => (not (acceptable (Project ?x) ) ) ) MSC progress Report

22. Modules -RDF Repository and Inference Engine • Control Module • Models control-flow of the brokering activity • Acts as a glue to the other modules and coordinates the other components (scripts in Java) • The Agent Framework is built in Java and hence Java a perfect choice • RDF Repository • Local and Persistent storage of the Rules and Data • Reasoning module -DR-DEVICE • Capable of reasoning about RDF metadata over multiple Web sources using defeasible logic rules. • It employs forward-chaining technique • as strategy of the agent is expressed through rules, the most appropriate rule must fire according to the input data. MSC progress Report

23. Proposed Solution Architecture MSC progress Report

24. Accomplished • Project offerings Interface design and implementation • Web forms for data capture • Stored in XML files, Java Servlets for conversion to RDF (Agents) and XSLT (Stakeholders view) Formats • Project Preferences • extracted from the CDF act (2003) • expressed in DR-DEVICE engine format • Models of the Agents to be used MSC progress Report

25. Project Status – Pending, Challenges, Time Frame Pending • Control Module (gluing all modules, get the agents to remotely call the Inference Engine) • User Manual Documentation • Report (Part of Implementation, Testing and Conclusion ) Challenges • Lack of Data for Testing (Test cases Fabricated) • Testing Platform Time Frame • 2 months MSC progress Report

26. References • http://www.kippra.org/DGSP-Booklet.doc • Survey of game theory, Encyclopedia of Information Systems • S. Russell and P. Norvig (1995) “Artificial intelligence: a modern approach” Prentice Hall. • N.R. Jennings, P. Faratin, A.R. Lomuscio, S. Parsons, C. Sierra, and M. Wooldridge. Automated negotiation: Prospects, methods and challenges. Journal of Group Decision and Negotiation, 10(2), March 2001. MSC progress Report