Building a Local Administration Services Portal for Citizens and Businesses: Service Composition, Architecture and Back-Office Interoperability Issues presented in EGOV 2007

1. National Technical University of Athens
eGovernment Research Unit
Building a Local Administration Services Portal
for Citizens and Businesses: Service
Composition, Architecture and Back-Office
Interoperability Issues
Sotirios Koussouris, Yannis Charalabidis, George Gionis,
Tasos Tsitsanis and John Psarras
Sotirios Koussouris
eGOV 2007 Conference
Regensburg, Germany

2. Agenda
s Introduction
s Building eGovernment Portals – Methodology
s Designing eGovernment Portals
• Selecting Services to be offered
• Services and Data Modelling
• Architecture Definition
• Interoperability
s Conclusions

3. Introduction
Availability and benefits of e-Government systems in EU

4. e-Government availability of basic public
services – Registration Cluster
Central eServices
Municipal eServices
According to the Capgemini report of the 6th Measurement (June 2006),
fully available online municipal services are significant lower than fully
available online central services.

5. Benefits of Municipal e-Government
Systems
s Alternative service channels such as Internet, Mobile phone access
and also voice access with the use of Interactive Voice Response
(IVR) systems.
s Optimization of the service levels as the on-site presence becomes
unnecessary.
s Exclusive services for facilitating different groups such as disabled
persons, the elderly, the youth, etc.
s Workflow optimization and automation in the highest possible degree
by standardizing processes and documents
s Effective cooperation between different in-house departments of a
Municipality and interoperability with other public organizations

6. Building eGovernment
Portals
Initial Analysis of the Methodology for Designing and Implementing
eGovernment Portals

7. Methodology for the development of
Municipal e-Government systems

8. Designing eGovernment
Portals
Service Definition, Analysis and Evaluation, Data Modelling, Definition of
the overall Architecture

9. Service Analysis and Categorization
s Creation of a Service Description General Information
Worksheet encapsulating: Service Code
Service Title
Service Type
• General information for the service Providing Organization
Service Recipient
Service Initiator
• Information regarding the service Service Implementation
Required Application YES
implementation NO
Supporting Documents F or the authentication of the
Service Initiator
• Information for the service importance F or the collection of the
necessary for the service
completion data
s Population of the Worksheet in 200 P ayment Receipts
Protocol
Municipal Services
YES NO
Transaction Supporting Communication
Service Step Information with other
System organizations
s Based on the services workflow, 9 1.
2.
3.
Service Categories have been created: Intermediate Documents
4.
License, Certificate, Declaration, Deliverables – Final
Documents
Assessment, Payment, Return, Report,
Comments
Service Importance
Objection, Request Frequency
Time for Service
Completion
Required Effort LOW MID HIGH
s 1 Service Pattern for each Category

10. Service Evaluation and Selection
s Definition of Criteria for sorting and evaluating the services in order to
select the high priority services:
• Frequency of use
• Required Effort
• Service Importance (based on EU directions)
• Input Independence
• Support by Information Systems
• Independence of Execution Frame
• Reliance on other Services
• Demand for onsite presence
s Application of the multi-criteria methodology, ELECTRE TRI, to the
Municipal Services with:
• Inputs Parameters: each Criterion’s Weight and each Municipal Service’s score for each
criterion
• Output Parameter: the list of core services with high priority
s Decision on the targeted sophistication level for the high priority core
services

11. Services and Process Modelling
s Services and Process Modelling follows the BPMN notation, as prescribed by the
Greek eGIF.
s BPMN BPDs (Business Process Diagrams) have been created for each Service
with the help of BPMN-aware Enterprise Modelling Tools
s The scope of the BPMN Collaboration BPDs has been extended to include:
• Roles – the entities that take part in the service execution
• Workflow of the internal processes that are followed within the Municipality
• Document flow for the initiation, the execution and the completion of the service
• Communication points with other organizations
• Information systems that support at a specific point the service implementation
• Business and legal rules that affect the process execution

12. Services & Process Modelling – An Example

13. Data Modelling - Methodology
1. Study of process models in order to recognize the involved
documents
2. Record of all the necessary documents fields
3. Elaboration on the documents in order to recognize the most
frequently used structures
4. Creation of core components for the most frequently used
structures, according to the Core Components Technical
Specification (CCTS) methodology
5. Creation of standard XML Schemas for the input, intermediate
and output documents
6. Creation of generic pan-European documents by merging the
different standard documents of the various national levels

14. Data Modelling - Methodology

15. System Architecture

16. Levels of e-Government Sophistication
- Interoperability
Interoperability is
required for offering
services of the 3rd and
4th level.
Those levels require the
portal’s co-operation
with the BackOffice
Systems.
Interoperability
patterns to be used for
interconnection with
Central Government
Portals

17. Interoperability Layer - The Idea
behind
Step 1: Recognize the required input and
output parameters for BackOffice
eGovernment
Portal Systems
Step 2: Modelling of the transferred data
(XML)
Web Services
Step 3: Recognize who evokes the web
service and Definition of Workflow
1. Send Input
1. Send Input
2. Receive
Step 4: Protocol and Communication
Output
channels development. Web Services,
OS Calls Wrappers by defining the communication
Back
ways with the back-office systems (.Net
outputs
inputs
Office Calls, RPC Calls, Intermediate Tables,
System
Direct DB Calls) and the portal (XML
Schemas, Service Calls)
Step 5: Deployment of security and
authentication mechanisms

18. Conclusions
Conclusions and further research directions

19. Purpose of the proposed Methodology
s Facilitate the design, development, deployment,
impact assessment and redesign of e-Government
systems for Municipalities.
s Obtain a spherical view of the services to be
deployed for citizens or businesses on a municipal
level.
s Prioritize the services based on their impact on
citizens, businesses and the municipality
s Recognize and standardize the data exchanged within
a municipality
s Construct a Generic Reference Architecture for Public
Administration Portals

20. Results so far
s Piloted in a Greek urban Municipality (Ag. Paraskevi, bearing 50,000
citizens and 3,000 businesses) with very positive initial results, both
from the employees and the citizens. First Real Life Application is the
Municipality of Ano Liossia (already in progress)
Reusable patterns and methods springing from this holistic approach are:
s The real problem definition, based on the formal description of almost 200
services to citizens and businesses, using process and data modeling tools,
assisting in the creation of Pan-European e-Government Services (PEGS) at local
and municipal level.
s Prioritisation of the services, based on the impact they have for the citizens and
businesses.
s Construction of a Generic a Reference Architecture for Public Administration
Portals including parameterisable systems (CMS, CRM, WFMS, Security
Infrastructures) and be-spoke components.
s Utilisation of the CCTS methodology for defining the needed XML documents.
s Service-driven components for the interoperable operation of the portal with
back office systems
s Field preparation (Process & Data Modelling) for the upcoming Greek eGIF

21. Future work
s Application of the Methodology to Larger
Municipalities/Districts/Prefectures with greater
requirements and needs, better infrastructure in
information systems and more legacy systems in the
back-office
s Extension of scope of the Methodology in order to be fully
compliant to the new emerging Greek eGIF as soon as it
delivers its first results

22. National Technical University of Athens
eGovernment Research Unit
http://egov.epu.ntua.gr
Building a Local Administration Services Portal
for Citizens and Businesses: Service
Composition, Architecture and Back-Office
Interoperability Issues
Sotirios Koussouris, Yannis Charalabidis, George Gionis,
Tasos Tsitsanis and John Psarras
Sotirios Koussouris
eGOV 2007 Conference
Regensburg, Germany