1. 2nd
International e-Governance Conference
Baghdad, 2-3 December 2012
Breaking information silos: toward an Iraqi e-
Service ecosystem supporting the life-event
approach
Emilio Bugli Innocenti

2. The Life Event Approach
Services that are directly related to the solution of a particular problem
should be linked or integrated in such a way that the customers gain quick
and convenient access to all the services they need in one place, regardless
of the distribution of competences between different public agencies and
businesses
Such approach is called a life-event approach since it integrates services,
which are specifically designed around nodes that directly correspond to a
particular life-event (e.g. moving a house, starting a business, getting
married, etc.).

3. The Life Event Approach
Life-event portal implementation
all relevant agencies offering the same service in a common manner,
sharing data definitions and at best sharing data, but no technological
integration between the services being offered
services are collected together under a common theme or event. The
services are not inherently integrated, or even with a common look-and-
feel, but are grouped in ways that aid discovery and promote the
comprehensive completing of necessary services
services are delivered by a single provider as an agent of other
government agencies. Singular services are offered by the agent and the
integration is hidden from the ‘customer’
services are technologically integrated into a supply-chain application.
This requires the most sophisticated integration work and is not often
implemented

4. The Life Event Approach
A Case Study: Slovenia Life-event portal

5. The Life Event Approach
The Slovenia Life-event portal (www.e-uprava.gov.si)
Information has been classified according to life events, thus enabling
users to acquire the desired information more rapidly. Each insight into
specific life situations of citizens and businesses is associated with links
leading to Public Administration web pages of similar content
The portal provides access to the e-SJU system (Electronic Services of
Public Administration) which supports all the procedures with electronic
forms (generating eForms with a special generic tool, authentication with
all qualified digital certificates, partial pre-fill from Central Population
Register, logical controls, support for attachments, ePayments, electronic
signing, delivering to the responsible institution, electronic delivery). The
application can be used by all residents equipped with qualified digital
certificates valid in Slovenia.

6. The Life Event Approach
A Case Study: Dubai Life-event portal

7. The Life Event Approach
A Case Study: Dubai Life-event portal (www.dubai.ae)
Dubai e-GOVERNANCE has collaborated with government departments
and private sector organisations to create awareness about the latest
innovations in e-Governance and the efficiency of the e-Services being
offered by Dubai e-GOVERNANCE, where e-Services provided by more than
one government department are integrated into customer focused life
events.
A strong, unified base to address the needs of the public through more
than 2,000 electronic services provided by various government
departments in the emirate has been built. Information and services are
packaged based on various life stages of individuals, businesses and
visitors. This system allows portal users to have direct access to services
that they require without having to browse through several web pages

8. Life-Events and e-Service Integration
E-Service Taxonomy
•Process Services which represent actual workflows (macro flow), combining
other (basic and/or composed) services through service orchestration in a
long-running flow of activities (or services) which can be interrupted by
human intervention. Process services are therefor stateful meaning that they
can preserve certain state across multiple calls of the service;
•Composed Services are based on other services which are combined into a
new composed service. Conceptually composed services are stateless and
short-term running. They represent a micro flow comprising a short-running
flow of activities (which are services) as part of a business process;

9. Life-Events and e-Service Integration
E-Service Taxonomy
•Basic Services implement basic business functionality which it does not
make sense to split into multiple services. Basic services are also stateless and
can be subdivided into two types:
– Basic Data Services read or write data from or to one backend system.
These services typically each represent a fundamental business
operation of the back-end. Basic services encapsulate platform-
specific aspects and implementation details from the outside world,
so that the consumer can request a service without knowing how it is
implemented. These services should provide some minimal business
functionality
– Basic Logic Services represent fundamental business rules. These
services usually process some input data and return corresponding
results

10. Life-Events and e-Service Integration
E-Service Taxonomy

11. Life-Events and e-Service Integration
Fundamental Services
•A ‘Fundamental Service’ is a Basic public service (both Basic
Data and Basic Logic Services) that is autonomous and that is
provided by a single responsible role, and receives as input only
the output from Basic Data Services, documents or objects
produced by citizens, businesses or administrations.

12. Life-Events and e-Service Integration
Examples of e-Service Re-usability
Environmental Permit
•A combination of different permits (building and demolition permits, usage permits,
waste permits and water permits each of them issued by municipalities in isolation) is
needed to be compliant with the environmental law
•The implementation of the Environmental Permit law in municipalities demonstrates
how establishing services as building blocks has helped municipalities to solve the
problems related to the implementation of this law.

13. Life-Events and e-Service Integration
Examples of e-Service Re-usability
Environmental Permit

14. Life-Events and e-Service Integration
Example of e-Service Re-usability
Environmental Permit
•The ‘intake of request’ service ensures that all the required information is
collected from the permit requestor
•The ‘orchestration & follow’ up keeps track of the sequence (performance of
the cases in parallel or sequence), the time limit and the consistency between
the regulations of the overall permit
•This orchestration services are the ‘glue’ between the domain specific
services, such as the building, water, waste and usage permits, all of which
are provided by different departments

15. Life-Events and e-Service Integration
Examples of e-Service Re-usability
The Permit Front Office

16. SOA enables Cloud Computing

17. SOA enables Cloud Computing
 Cloud Computing is a deployment architecture, not an architectural
approach for how to architect an enterprise/public administration.
 SOA is an architectural approach that creates services that can be shared
and reused. It converts current vertical applications into a number of
components called services that can be reused across multiple
applications, thus providing savings and improved agility to make changes
faster and more cost effectively

18. SOA enables Cloud Computing
 Moving successfully into cloud computing requires an architecture that
will support the new cloud capabilities. Many business leaders and
analysts agree that moving to cloud requires having a solid, service
oriented architecture to provide the infrastructure needed for successful
cloud implementation
 SOA can provide the backbone to allow both user front-end applications
and enterprise back-end servers to easily access cloud services. With SOA
already in place, taking advantage of cloud computing will be easier,
faster and more secure.

19. Making SOA and Cloud Computing happen
The adoption/customisation/implementation of an Enterprise
Service Bus

20. Making SOA and Cloud Computing happen
The ESB-based Integration Architecture

21. Making SOA and Cloud Computing happen
Case Study: Belgium
•The Belgian Federal ICT Service (FEDICT) has established the Federal Service
Bus (FSB) through which services from different domains, related to different
back-ends, are provided openly and are reused by different actors
•FEDICT acts as a service integrator, which means that the FSB acts as a
platform on which services are provided and integrated so that they can be
openly accessed by parties that are interested in re-using them.
•The Belgian example of the FSB provides a real-life example of how services
can be reused and combined based on SOA principles. Currently a total of 53
existing services are made publicly available on the FSB, including for
example applications for eBirth (electronic registration of the birth of a child
by hospital personnel), the Crossroad Bank for Social Security (CBSS) and the
Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE), the latter of which is currently being
deployed within this architecture, and the eDepot.

22. Making SOA and Cloud Computing happen
Recommendations
•In addition to technical issues, consider legal, contractual, organisational,
privacy, security constraints.
•Concerning the Cloud Computing privacy/security there are a number of
recommendations available from the EU [8] and the US [9].
•Avoid being locked-in by vendors, cloud infrastructure should be selected to
allow switching from one vendor to another through the adoption of the
following standards:
– Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI)
– Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
•On the organisational side, the standardisation of interfaces and cloud
computing can have a dramatic effect on ICT job losses as witnessed by the
massive adoption of such technology by the multinational oil company ENI.