Introduction
Important Dates
Submissions Due:  (Final) May 21, 2023
(NEW) Late-breaking Posters: June 7, 2023
Notifications Due:  June 15, 2023
Camera Ready:       June 30, 2023​​

International Workshop on Ontologies for Services  and Society (OSS2023)

Semantic Technologies provide a formal way to represent knowledge in ways that are interpretable by computers and a related technology stack to store, integrate and query information semantically. 

The 2nd Workshop on Ontologies for Services and Society (OSS2023) will be held in conjunction with the FOIS and Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO) 2023. The workshop will be held on July 17-20, 2023, in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.

The purpose of the OSS workshop is to foster communication and strengthen interdisciplinary work at the intersection of semantic technologies, society, and services. We invite researchers from the Knowledge Representation, Semantic Web, and Machine Learning communities to submit theoretical contributions, novel algorithms, artifacts, and tools related to the interaction of society and service provisioning. We welcome reports from sociologists and service practitioners across various society-focused domains (e.g. social workers, therapists, physicians, probation officers, urban planners, etc.) on their experiences using semantic-enabled technologies, best practices, and insights.

For additional information, please contact bartg@mie.utoronto.ca.


Previous workshops:
OSS2022 - Ontologies for Social Services (2022)
We welcome submissions from researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of semantic technologies and social services and social service practitioners developing ontological artifacts. 

  • Ontology extension for Societal Services (e.g. DOLCE, SUMO, FOAF, GoodRelations)
  • Knowledge Acquisition including ontology learning, natural language processing, and service plan extraction and optimization.
  • Knowledge Management
  • Semantic Data Integration
  • Knowledge-based Decision Support Systems, such as recommender systems and information retrieval. 
  • Service governance, including trust, cooperation, and competition.
  • Human Resource related ontologies.
  • System Assessment and Analysis, including policy evaluation, economic analysis,  impact models, Social Return on Investment (SROI)
  • Service client outcome assessment, including risk assessment and conflict resolution.
  • Industry Applications and Case-studies, including Linked Data Applications, Semantic Web, and Knowledge Graphs, lessons learned and best practices.
  • Governance of data models for societal data sets.
  • Social Change Theory, including ontology of practitioner paradigms, educational material, and practice, behavior theory, cognitive theory.
  • Models of stakeholder goals, needs, roles (e.g. belief-desires-intentions models, UNSDG Goals , service providers and funders, socioeconomic determinants)
  • Models of society and human services, including service provisioning, process modeling, economic and funding models, sustainability, and client agency.
  • Cross-disciplinary research in sociology and service provisioning and related areas, including public services, public health, government services, urban planning, and the judicial system.

Topic of Interest


  • 16:20 - 17:00 : Discussion: Problems and Challenges for Ontologies of Services and Society
    Moderators: Bart Gajderowicz, Daniela Rosu


    Abstract: There are many open questions about the development and application of ontologies in the realm of social services, governmental services, and their usage within society. Despite their wide acceptance and deployment, ontologies face unique challenges that arise from their inherent complexity, the dynamic nature of service industries, and societal changes. Also, while service-related ontologies hold significant potential to improve data management, decision-making, and service delivery, their adoption by organizations and service providers faces numerous technical and cultural difficulties. At the end of the discussion, we hope to identify possible solutions and best practices for ontology implementation in services that benefit society, emphasizing the need for multi-disciplinary collaboration, user-friendly tools, robust ethical guidelines, and proactive efforts to increase ontology literacy and usage.

    Specific challenges to explore include ontology engineering and design patterns; choice of upper ontologies, domain ontologies, and application ontologies; ontological representation of communities (citizens, populations, individuals, etc.); geospatial modelling of service coverage areas, service provisioning and planning; the complex nature of social service phenomena that resist easy categorization. Additional topics of discussion for implementing and working with ontologies include semantic interoperability, standardization, ontology integration, and the scalability of ontology-based systems. Finally, we hope to highlight the societal impacts of these ontologies, focusing on the ethical considerations of using ontological systems, privacy issues, data security, and the digital divide.

Session 2 :(Ontology-based Applications) (15:30-17:00)

Program

Thursday July 20, 2023 (13:30 to 17:00)

Zoom:  https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/81270390284 (check notification material for password)

Session 1: (Domain Ontologies) 13:30-15:00

Organization

Adrien Barton, Département de médecine of the Université de Sherbrooke
Andrew Fisher, Simon Fraser University
Maricela Claudia Bravo, Departamento de Sistemas, División de Ciencias Básicas e Ingeniería
Regina Motz, Universidad de la República
Roberta Ferrario, Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the CNR
Vjay Mago, Lakehead University
Paulina Schenk, University College London

Program Committee

Bart Gajderowicz, Centre for Social Services Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada
Daniela Rosu, Centre for Social Services Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada
Janna Hastings, University of Zurich, University of St. Gallen

Workshop Chairs

Submission Guidelines


Please make your submission using EasyChair https://easychair.org/conferences/submissions?a=30415720.

Diversity and inclusion statement. We kindly ask authors to adopt inclusive language in their papers and presentations
all participants to adopt a proper code of conduct (https://dbdni.github.io/pages/codeofconduct.html).



OSS 2023
Topics
Program
Organization
Submission