Support and resistance of public officials towards current eGovernment initiatives - A case study on Ukraine and Germany

This article provides insights on how German and Ukrainian public sector employees perceive and position themselves towards current eGovernment initiatives. After presenting the academic literature on the roles of individual public servants in transformative change processes in public administration, the eGovernment approaches followed by Germany and Ukraine are explained. The results of a survey (n = 74) conducted among public servants in both countries provide information on their perceived contribution to and participation in the digitisation of government service delivery, as well as reasons and causes for motivation or frustration in this context. By analysing the survey responses and identifying potential impediments of successful eGovernment implementation, the authors provide recommendations for action for executives that drive digital transformation, such as organising tool-specific training and Single Points of Contact for employees after introducing new processes and software, adjusting educational programmes for new public servants, and establishing a feedback and knowledge-sharing culture when creating new e-services.Dieser Artikel gibt Einblicke, wie Beschäftigte des öffentlichen Sektors in der Ukraine und Deutschland aktuelle eGovernment-Initiativen wahrnehmen und sich zu ihnen positionieren. Nach einer Darstellung wissenschaftlicher Literatur zur Rolle von Beschäftigten in transformativen Veränderungsprozessen in der öffentlichen Verwaltung werden die von Deutschland und der Ukraine verfolgten eGovernment-Ansätze erläutert. Die Ergebnisse einer durchgeführten Befragung von (n = 74) Staatsbediensteten in beiden Ländern geben Aufschluss über deren wahrgenommene Partizipation sowie Gründe und Ursachen für Motivation oder Frustration im Kontext der Digitalisierung der staatlichen Leistungserbringung. Auf Basis einer Analyse der Rückmeldungen des Fragebogens und der Identifizierung geäußerter potenzieller Hindernisse für eine erfolgreiche eGovernment Implementierung geben die Autoren Handlungsempfehlungen für Führungskräfte, welche die digitale Transformation vorantreiben möchten, wie beispielsweise die Etablierung von tool-spezifischen Schulungen und einheitlichen Ansprechpartnern für Beschäftigte nach der Einführung neuer Prozesse und Software, die Anpassung von Ausbildungsprogrammen für neue Staatsbedienstete und die Etablierung einer Feedback- und Wissens-Kultur im Kontext der Entwicklung neuer digitaler Services

Experiences in Process Oriented Reorganization through Reference Modelling in Public Administrations - The Case Study REGIO@KOMM

During the last years the optimisation of business processes has gained more and more importance in the context of modernising public administrations. In line with the concept of electronic government (eGovernment) citizens demand not only an improved design of internet sites, but also the creation of real added value to administrational services. In dimensions of benefits (from the citizen’s point of view) and in dimensions of cost reduction (from the administrations’ point of view) the added value can be generated by providing fully transactional online citizen services. The establishment of such services should be supported by reorganising the underlying business processes in terms of process organisation and enabling ICT. Approximately 13,000 German municipalities mainly have to deal with the same spectrum of tasks. The administration processes that are necessary to fulfil those tasks share strong structural analogies. Within process oriented reorganisation projects, reference models can contribute to cost reduction in the phase of to-be modelling. Aim of this paper is to present experiences in applying reference modelling within the process oriented reorganisation project Regio@KomM in public administrations. The reorganisation of the process of issuing a general debit note authorisation exemplifies the practical applicability and the value potential of reference modelling in public administration

Framework for a business interoperability quotient measurement model

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova da Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial (MEGI)Over the last decade the context of Interoperability has been changing rapidly. It has been expanding from the largely technically focused area of Information Systems towards Business Processes and Business Semantics. However, there exists a need for more comprehensive ways to define business interoperability and enable its performance measurement as a first step towards improvement of interoperability conditions between collaborating entities. Through extensive literature reviews and analysis of European Research initiatives in this area, this dissertation presents the State of the Art in Business Interoperability. The objective of this dissertation is to develop a model that closely captures the factors that are responsible for Business Interoperability in the context of Collaborative Business Processes. This Business Interoperability Quotient Measurement Model (BIQMM), developed in this dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach to capture the key elements responsible for collaboration performance. Through the quantification of the relevance of each element to the particular collaboration scenario in question, this model enables a quantitative analysis of Business Interoperability, so that an overall interoperability score can be arrived at for enhanced performance measurements.Finally, the BIQMM is applied to a business case involving Innovayt and LM Glassfiber to demonstrate its applicability to different collaboration scenarios

ARCHITECTURE CONCEPTS FOR VALUE NETWORKS IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY

Value networks are one of the main forms of value creation today. Suppliers, manufacturers and customers form a dynamic collaboration structure. Networks and companies alike are always subject to external and internal influences which require changes in the way things are done. To make sure that the required changes take their intended effect, they have to be implemented on all levels of the enterprise architecture (EA). Research with respect to EA in value networks in the service industry (VNSI) is only in its beginnings. To understand the state of the art, we analyzed 88 papers with respect to the architecture layers in VNSI. Since we base on the fact that a successful introduction of change, e.g. new IT solutions, requires a holistic view on EA, we analyzed the papers according to their covering of the different levels of an EA. Our hypothesis is that most of the papers only cover very specific aspects without positioning their proposed solution in a holistic context. We propose a reference model based on a literature review as well as the results of the paper analysis. This reference model allows for a positioning of solutions in a holistic context and with that adds to a better basis for implementing change in VNSI

Component-based process modelling in health care

Structural changes and increasing market dynamics in the health care sector intensify the hospitals’ need for cost-savings and process optimization. A first step is the documentation of processes in order to clarify the actual needs. As in health care processes are rather complex and often different players with divergent demands are involved, a disciplined approach to effectively and efficiently model processes is required. For this purpose, in this contribution a component-based modelling approach is presented and applied

Enhancing the Benefits Management Model for Complex eHealth Efforts

This thesis suggests five ways to improve BM in complex eHealth efforts. First, the concept of BR was defined to clarify the existing conflation of the BR and BM concepts. Second, an extended and enhanced BMM was developed that incorporated the BM context, levels of complexity for both organizational and interorganizational initiatives, and the critical aspects of learning and governance. Third, three propositions concerning learning and governance in BM were suggested based on the new model, which can be used to inform future BM studies and guide empirical work. Fourth, the propositions were further translated into a six-question checklist to stimulate learning from the BM process itself. Finally, I provide suggestions for BM governance in interorganizational ICT efforts aiming to realize societal benefits.publishedVersio

Electronic information sharing in local government authorities: Factors influencing the decision-making process

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in International Journal of Information Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Local Government Authorities (LGAs) are mainly characterised as information-intensive organisations. To satisfy their information requirements, effective information sharing within and among LGAs is necessary. Nevertheless, the dilemma of Inter-Organisational Information Sharing (IOIS) has been regarded as an inevitable issue for the public sector. Despite a decade of active research and practice, the field lacks a comprehensive framework to examine the factors influencing Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) among LGAs. The research presented in this paper contributes towards resolving this problem by developing a conceptual framework of factors influencing EIS in Government-to-Government (G2G) collaboration. By presenting this model, we attempt to clarify that EIS in LGAs is affected by a combination of environmental, organisational, business process, and technological factors and that it should not be scrutinised merely from a technical perspective. To validate the conceptual rationale, multiple case study based research strategy was selected. From an analysis of the empirical data from two case organisations, this paper exemplifies the importance (i.e. prioritisation) of these factors in influencing EIS by utilising the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. The intent herein is to offer LGA decision-makers with a systematic decision-making process in realising the importance (i.e. from most important to least important) of EIS influential factors. This systematic process will also assist LGA decision-makers in better interpreting EIS and its underlying problems. The research reported herein should be of interest to both academics and practitioners who are involved in IOIS, in general, and collaborative e-Government, in particular

The use of TRAO to manage evolution risks in e-government

The need to develop and provide more efficient ways of providing Electronic Government Services to key stakeholders in government has brought about varying degrees of evolution in government. This evolution is seen in different ways like the merging of government departments, the merging of assets or its components with legacy assets etc. This has involved the incorporation of several practices that are geared towards the elimination of processes that are repetitive and manual while attempting to progressively encourage the interaction that exists between the different stakeholders. However, some of these practices have further complicated processes in government thus creating avenues for vulnerabilities which if exploited expose government and government assets to risks and threats. Focusing on ways to manage the issues accompanied with evolution can better prepare governments for manging the associated vulnerabilities, risks and threats. The basis of a conceptual framework is provided to establish the relationships that exist between the E-Government, asset and security domains. Thus, this thesis presents a design research project used in the management of evolution-related risks. The first part of the project focusses on the development of a generic ontology known as TRAO and a scenario ontology TRAOSc made up of different hypothetical scenarios. The resulting efficiency of the development of these ontologies have facilitated the development of an intelligent tool TRAOSearch that supports high-level semantically enriched queries. Results from the use of a case study prove that there are existing evolution-related issues which governments may not be fully prepared for. Furthermore, an ontological approach in the management of evolution-related risks showed that government stakeholders were interested in the use of intelligent processes that could improve government effectiveness while analysing the risks associated with doing this. Of more importance to this research was the ability to make inferences from the ontology on existing complex relationships that exist in the form of dependencies and interdependencies between Stakeholders and Assets. Thus, this thesis presents contributions in the aspect of advancing stakeholders understanding on the types of relationships that exist in government and the effect these relationships may have on service provisioning. Another novel contribution can be seen in the correction of the ambiguity associated with the terms Service, IT Service and E-Government. Furthermore, the feedback obtained from the use of an ontology-based tool during the evaluation phase of the project provides insights on whether governments must always be at par with technological evolution