LinkedGov Government Social Network

and Software-Defined Workflow

Khanh Dao, Fuyao Zhang, Yu Cheng, and Yuexing Yin
Department of Software Engineering, San Jose State University
khanh.dao@sjsu.edu
fuyao.zhange@sjsu.edu
yu.cheng@sjsu.edu
yuexing.yin@sjsu.edu
st
Abstract - In the 21 century, with the rapid growth of social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn,
social networks have become an important part of our daily life. Social networks have established the
communication structures and social behaviors based on various factors, such as genders, ages, friendship,
common interests and career backgrounds. Governments have also discovered the potential to improve the public
and private communication, information sharing, and outreach. A government social network system is usually
known under the term Government 2.0 or e-Government. Today, the existing e-Government system faces many
challenges, such as untenable connectivity and permissions, manual and error-prone defined workflows.
Workflows, tasks and permissions are usually difficult to be tracked or monitored. Moreover, the software systems
are inflexible to adapt to change, and insecure in the way information is shared, which usually become the potential
targets for hackers. Accordingly, there is a need to improve and optimize the governments social network systems.
In this paper, we propose LinkedGov, the software-defined architecture, which is capable of creating and
maintaining multi-layered social network topology. The approach enables a feasible hierarchy of connectivity,
permissions and services; enhances security and flexibility in managing workflows amongst different governments
social groups and departments.

Index Terms e-Government, social network service, workflow management software, task management software.

I. INTRODUCTION governmental data and information. The

In the past decade, with the growth
of social media platform and online
community, social network has become
new tools for public sector to
communicate publicly and internally, in
order to improve the transparency,
participation, and collaboration. E-
Government has aggressively promoted
the new provision of government, where
workflow and process could be
integrated and executed securely and
seamlessly. There is also increasing
needs to for governments data with
better metrics in order to study the
modern society for future prediction and
development. According to the recent
report, as of 2015, 76% of Americans
have used the Internet to access
access information varies from weather
information, to accidents and criminal
data. This requires data should be more
accessible and up-to-date, which
requires a better communication and
interaction between departments and
members inside the government. This
also proves the huge need for more
modern solution that is able to respond
to citizens requirement for quality
public services, which are fast, reliable
and accessible. An important feature any
e-services is the interactivity: e-
Government system should provide
citizens tools to activate process of
service delivery anytime and participate
actively. There is a significant potential
for technology in this market, with many
different sections need to be covered.

1

Figure 1: Statistics of users who access
government services
LinkedGov aims to create a flexible
social platform for engaging and
managing the complicated hierarchy in
government and its current process. The
platform offers an online web and
mobile solution to configure and manage
governments internal relationship and
process, authorize explicit and implicit
permission on significant process,
communicate on issues between public
with government, and notify on changes
between process in real-time. The
project bridges the gap in
communication and security in e-
Government; provides the all-in-one
solution platform that enables
government to communicate internally
between different departments and
levels, and execute complex tasks or
processes more accurately and securely.
II. SOCIAL NETWORK
STRUCTURES AND PATTERNS
The following network structures are
analyzed:
1) Random distributed network (Meso-
level): This framework provides the
capability to generalize the
restrictive independence assumption
of micro-networks, small sub-graph
configurations model to decentralize
and distribute from the given
network. In random graph, edges are
placed at random; therefore, the
majority of nodes have
approximately the same degree in the
network.
2) Scale-free network (Meso-level):
Not all nodes in a network have the
same number or edges. Majority of
nodes have only a few links, but a
few nodes have a very large number
of links. This structure enables
scaling mechanism for the network,
which is absent from the classical
distributed network. Most networks
grow through the addition of new
nodes with link already presented in
the system. In most real network,
link to a node with large number of
connections -- known as
preferential attachment -- has
higher probability.
Figure 2: Random & Scale-free network
3) Hierarchical network (Macro-
level): This is a part of scale-free
model family, which uses iterative
algorithms to construct a network
model that combines the scale-free
topology with a high degree of
clustering, in order to bring
modularity inside a large and
complex network structure. For
example, Figure3 shows the iterative
construction leading to a hierarchical
network: from connected cluster of
five nodes (a), the iterative obtains a
network of N = 25 nodes (b) and N =
125 nodes network (c) through
2
 replicas process. This process can be
continued indefinitely. [3].
Figure 3: Iterative construction in Hierarchical
network [3]
In theory, complex network structure is
usually classified into four types: [22]
1) Random Network: These graphs are
constructed by randomly adding
links to a static set of nodes, and tend
to have short paths between nodes.
2) Power-law Network: In this
network, the probability that a node
has degree of k is proportional to k-y,
y is called power-law coefficient. In
fact, many real-world networks are
constructed based on this concept,
such as Internal topologies, the Web,
social networks, and power grids.
3) Scale-free Network: This is a class
of power-law networks, with high-
degree nodes connecting to other
high-degree nodes.
4) Small-world Network: This type of
network has small diameter and
exhibit high clustering. In this
structure, most nodes are not
neighbors of one another, but most
of nodes can be reached from every
other node by a small number of
hops or steps. The algorithm assumes
that the distance between two
random nodes is L, and grows
proportionally to the logarithm of the
number of nodes N in the network.
Small-world network could be used
as hybrid structure in transforming
social links. A study, which is
conducted in Complex Networks:
Small-World, Scale-Free and Beyond
(IEEE Circuits and Systems
Magazine, 2003), shows the example
of transforming highly cliquish
network, where nodes have many
degrees apart to a scattered random
network, where few nodes have same
connections, and pairs are few
degrees apart on average.
Clustering coefficient, which is a
measure of the degree to which nodes in
graph tend to cluster together, is an
important concept in node clustering.
Research studies the characteristics of
clusters in both small and large scale,
and classifies them into four different
types: General, Star, Aggregation and
Spread graph. Star graphs social network
services have smaller average cluster
coefficient than General graphs;
therefore, they have smaller degree of
cohesion. In an extreme star topology
network, one user can connect with all
other users, and all other users are
connected with only that one user.
Aggregation topology has higher
average cluster coefficient, and a shorter
average path; hence it has higher degree
of cohesion. This type of topology is fit
to maintain an intense relationship in
social network. Spread topology is
similar to General topology, but has
longer average path length.
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 communicate within the friend
network cyclopedically; only few
communications happen outside the
network.
3) Inclusive friend network type:
Members communicate within
friend network and many
General topology (C1) Star topology (C2) communicate outside network,
which result high coverage and low
aggregation ratio.
4) Independent friend network type:
This network has both low
aggregation and coverage ratio,
Spread topology (C4)
since members communicate
independently with the friend
Aggregation topology network in this pattern.
(C3)
Figure 4: Four types of social network topology

On average, the number of nodes and

links are used on each topology is shown
in the table below:

Figure 6: Social network communication

Figure 5: Average network indexes patterns [4]

Beside network topology, social network III. SOCIAL NETWORK

is also classified based on
communication patterns [6]. Research
studies different patterns to result the
ratio for aggregation (number of
comments for friends/number of all
comments) and coverage (number of
friends who post comments/number of
friends of blog user).
1) Partial friend network type: In this
communication pattern, members
communicate with limited group of
friends, which result high
aggregation ratio and low coverage.
2) Parity friend network type: This
network has high aggregation and
coverage ratios. Members
PRIVACY
There always exists a tradeoff
between functionality and user privacy,
since users need to reveal certain
information to make use of the desired
functionality in social network. Security
and privacy concerns in two areas: (1)
user-related and (2) provider-related.
A. User-related privacy
Privacy breached can be through a
deliberate act (snooping, hacking), or by
accident (mismanagements of privacy
settings). (a) Stranger can view private
information through misconfiguration
for restriction or design flaws from

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social platform service provider. (b)
Managing and separating social network
context can be blurry in social network
platform. As the consequence,
information is unable to be hidden from
a specific group. (c) Disclosure
boundary is one of the security concerns
in social network, since information is
made more public than intended. Data,
which means to be disclosed privately to
another user, is made available to a
larger audience.
B. Provider-related privacy
The privacy threat occurs through the
trust that user might put to the service
2)
provider in social network -- a
configuration system that has full access
to any user-related data, including
browsing behavior and message log. (a)
Data retention issues, which violate of
the temporal boundary: information,
which is supposed to be deleted, is still
available and accessible in social
3)
network systems. (b) Social platform
employee has full access to data and
might take advantage of this. (c) Data is
often anonymized, before being sold to
third party or generated for marketing
purposes, in order to protect user privacy
and identification. However, it is still a
threat, that user can be re-identified by
looking for unusual points within
friendship graph. Selling and marketing
4)
of data is also a conflict of the implicit
trust in social network, since information
is used for different purposes, than
intended by the users.
The following are five technology
patterns in privacy protecting:
5)
1) Anonymization: Usually performed
once before sales to third party, basic
anonymization involves removing
any identifiable information from the
data (Ex: obscuring the link between
user and data sold through
cryptography), while preserving
other structures of interest in the
data. Another technique in
anonymization is differential
privacy, which makes user
computationally indistinguishable
from most of the user in data set. The
drawback of this technique is that it
is hard to definitely prevent recovery
private information, since most of
the obscuring is done through
classical cryptography, and external
hints might be available for attackers
to exploit.
Decentralization: It can be applied
to different degree, in order to
prevent implicit trust being abused.
In an extreme form of
decentralization, all traffic will take
place through peer-to-peer networks.
In general, the more decentralized
the solution, the better the protection.
Privacy setting and management:
Social network platform should
make information disclosure and
privacy settings more gradual,
transparent and fine-grained, and
give user more controls over their
privacy settings. This solution is
cheap to implement, but requires
user awareness in order to reach the
full potential.
Encryption: Through cryptography,
one can protect data securely.
However, key management is a big
issue that should be paid attentions to
in this method. Cryptography also
involves expensive operations, which
might result scalability issues in the
large social network system.
Awareness, Law and Regulations:
The non-technical approach aims to
enhance user awareness of the
privacy issues, through established
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 laws and social conducts. However,
it lacks the power to enforce the
change in the system automatically,
and heavily depends on users own
behavior while interacting with the
system.
IV. WORKFLOW DESIGN
PATTERN
Workflow management is another
important feature in governments social
network. Workflow patterns are divided
into the following types:
1) Sequence pattern: Linear execution
of workflow steps, one action is
activated unconditionally after
another finishes executing.
2) Parallel split pattern (unconditional
routing): Execution is divided into
multiple parallel threads that can run
independently from each other.
3) Synchronization pattern
(unconditional routing):
Synchronize multiple parallel threads
into one single thread of execution.
In this pattern, workflow execution
continues once all synchronized
threads have finished executing.
4) Exclusive Choice pattern: Define
multiple possible paths for workflow
to be executed.
5) Simple merge pattern: Merge the
possible paths, which are defined by
preceding exclusive choice, assume
that only one path is taken and no
synchronization takes place.
6) Multi-Choice pattern: Define
multiple possible paths for workflow
to choose from. It is the
generalization of the parallel split
and exclusive choice pattern.
7) Synchronizing Merge pattern: Used
to synchronize multiple threads of
executions that are activated by a
preceding multi-choice.
8) Discriminator pattern: This pattern
is applied when the assumption made
for the simple merge pattern does not
hold. It deals with merge situations
where multiple incoming branches
run in parallel, by activating its
outgoing node after being activated
by the first incoming branch, then
waiting for all remaining branches to
complete before it resets itself.
9) Structural pattern: Deal with
arbitrary and implicit restriction of a
workflow.
10) Cancellation pattern: Used for a
workflow instance being cancelled.
The component-based workflow
architecture should encapsulate
workflow features in separate
components: system must be able to
adapt to change, and separate
functional core from extended
functionality and customer-specific
parts. Micro-workflow system consists of
monitoring, human-computer interface,
and three core components:
1) Process component: provides
abstraction and implements an
activity-based model.
2) Execution component: consists
of the implementation of the
functionality to execute workflow.
3) Synchronize component: define
dependencies within the workflow
domain.
Figure 7: Workflow engine architecture
6
 V. PROPOSED DESIGN How information is Random walks,
PRINCIPLE spreading? hits algorithm.
A. Social Network Interpretations
How to increase Bridge.
The study on different social network redundancy and
platforms and their common interconnectedness?
characteristics has been conducted with
the following questions:
How dynamic the Temporal
organization is? networks.
Questions Social network
approach
Figure 8: Social network interpretation

Who is the central Degree centrality B. Social network design principle

in the trust and
respect network? Social network has highly dense
connections inside, which means each
How do we rank Eigenvector node has many connections to many
our top performer centrality, page- other nodes. Harvard University has
individuals in the ranks. conducted a study based on different
organization? parameters of social network
characteristics, in order to build the
How do we put Closeness model, which display the essential
together a team in centrality features of social network and make it as
network? simple as possible [6]. The model
generates the rules to construct the
network: (1) first, the degree distribution
How to merge Homophily, should have a steep tail; (2) second, as
separated network? reciprocity,
mutuality, the size of the network is growing, the
transitivity. average of the path length also should be
growing but in a slow speed; and (3)
third, the model should also display the
What is the missing Structural holes high clustering, and show the
links between
supply and relationship between each vertices and
demand? dense internal connections. The
algorithm is divided into two processes:
(1) random attachment; and (2) implicit
How strong the Tie strength preferential attachment, which results
impact of the
advertisement from the following edges from the
effort? randomly chosen initial contacts. The
following steps are executed in sequence
to construct the network graph:
How segmented the Clustering
market is? coefficient, clique,
cohesive, 1) Create a root node for social
modularity. network.
2) Pick on the average random vertices
as initial contacts.

7
 3) Pick on the average neighbor of
each initial contact as secondary
contact.
4) Connect the new vertex to the initial
and secondary contacts.
5) Repeat steps 24 until the network
has grown to desired size.
When a new node is generated in the
network, it will connect its neighbor
nodes, which have the shortest path
length between each other. Following
the principles of the proposed algorithm,
the duplicate relations between each
node can be avoided [Figure 9]. A highly
dense connection network could also be
constructed based on this algorithm.
Figure 9: Growing process of social network
C. Detecting cluster
The construction of the social network
model include the following elements:
1) Nodes: Represent members and
department in government social
network.
2) Links: Describe relationship between
nodes, based on the relationship
type, services or functionalities are
dispatched and processed
accordingly.
3) Clusters: Describe the distinct
relationship group that every node
could be able to communicate to
each other internally.
Communication between clusters
should be through common link.
4) Graphs: Visual display of group of
nodes and their relationships in the
cluster.
It is important to understanding the
characteristics of different type of
network topologies in order to detect
overlapping nodes and link communities
in a complex social network, as well as
construct and design nodes with unique
identities. Many algorithms with
statistical, information-theoretic,
synchronization and dynamical
clustering approaches have been
developed for the purposes [11]. Two
types of community structures based on
sub-network connection: strong sense
community has larger internal
connections than external connections;
weak sense community has internal
connections equal or smaller than
external connections, but its internal
connections are larger than the
connections between the sub-network.
The co-existing of strong sense and
weak sense community is a common
structure of a complex social network
cluster. For example, in [Figure.10],
nodes divided into three clusters
(different colors indicate different
communities): strong sense community
(cyan nodes). (b) Overlapping member
property: node d is a second type of
overlapping node shared by cyan
community and green community. [10]
Figure 10: Social network cluster
Figure 11: Social network cluster model
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