The Same but Still Different: Forms in E-Government

Forms are essential artifacts of government service delivery to transmit information between the customer and the government. However, customers perceive forms as too complex. Since the complexity of a system is influenced by the diversity of its components, this paper’s main contribution is the identification of characteristics of forms and their components that drive the diversity of different forms. For this purpose, we evaluate a set of 69 forms of 27 German municipalities according to various criteria. The results reveal that different partitions of forms in subparts, varying sets of presented and requested data, different element types and varying captions for equal elements drive the complexity of current government forms. On the contrary, orders of elements are similar across the forms at hand

A public value based method to select services for a no-stop shop implementation

Nowadays, public organizations become proactive in their service delivery such that they approach their clients and not vice versa. In the most advanced case, the no-stop shop, clients do not have to do anything to receive a public service. Public organizations offer many services and several of them could potentially be delivered through a no-stop shop. Therefore, public organizations need assistance in the decision which services they realize in a no-stop shop first. To address this issue, we present a method for the prioritization of public services for the implementation in a no-stop shop. The rationale of our method is that public organizations should prefer those services that are expected to provide the highest public value. We followed a design-oriented research approach and combined seminal works on no-stop shop and public value. The method was evaluated through the application in a workshop at a municipality

Collaborative Business Process Management - A Literature-based Analysis of Methods for Supporting Model Understandability

Due to the growing amount of cooperative business scenarios, collaborative Business Process Management (cBPM) has emerged. The increased number of stakeholders with minor expertise in process modeling leads to a high relevance of model understandability in cBPM contexts. Despite extensive works in the research fields of cBPM and model understandability in BPM, there is no analysis and comprehensive overview of methods supporting process model understandability in cBPM scenarios. To address this research gap, this paper presents the results of a literature review. The paper identifies concepts for supporting model understandability in BPM, provides an overview of methods implementing these concepts, and discusses the methods’ applicability in cBPM. The four concepts process model transformation, process model visualization, process model description, and modeling support are introduced. Subsequently, 69 methods are classified and discussed in the context of cBPM. Results contribute to revealing existing academic voids and can guide practitioners in cBPM scenarios

Fast and Federal—Policies for Next-Generation Federalism in Germany

Federalism and e-government are important to many countries across the globe but come up with two contradicting characteristics that are especially existent in Germany. First, citizens and businesses want to receive e-government services easily but the identification of government entities that are responsible for service delivery in federal states is difficult. Second, e-government has to react to fast developments but decision-making is distributed and rather slow in federal states. To address the area of tension between federalism and e-government, we suggest seven polices that raise internal efficiency and external simplicity of federalism in Germany. We transfer existing policies of e-government literature and practice to our research problem in the course of discussions in a research group of five people. The policies are evaluated in semi-structured interviews with eleven leaders from the German government. The evaluation reveals the appropriateness of the policies to address the issues of federalism in e-government

Standardization of Forms in Governments – A Meta-Model for a Reference Form Modeling Language

Forms are central interfaces for information exchange between a government and its citizens. As a way to translate laws into practice, forms are an essential part facilitating this exchange. Unfortunately, forms often require substantial development effort to ensure they comply with legal requirements, with the result that citi- zens often describe them as highly complex. Standardiza- tion of forms through reference modeling would help to minimize governments’ effort by reusing elements and would reduce complexity for citizens by providing a uni- fied representation of information. The article contributes a meta-model for a modeling language that can be used in representing reference models for forms. It follows a design science research approach to elicit form structure and editorial process requirements and to iteratively design the meta-model. The paper demonstrates and evaluates the meta-model using focus groups and application in three case studies. It extends research on standardization to ref- erence modeling and government forms

A Boundary Spanning Perspective of Practical Impact: The Case of IS Practitioner Doctorates

IS research often seeks to deliver practical impact, in addition to the traditional requirement for theoretical contribution. While an admirable goal, it is nevertheless a challenging prospect, as key questions remain around how to best facilitate a relationship between IS academic and practitioner communities. To explore this question, our paper investigates boundary spanning by ‘practitioner doctorates’ - PhD students with professional experience who seek to span the fields of academia and practice during their research. Drawing on in-depth interviews with practitioner doctorates, our findings point towards several factors for practical impact such as researcher legitimacy, expectation management, and adapting to changes in industry requirements. In doing so, we contribute towards an understanding of engaged scholarship in IS and take steps towards addressing the dearth of research on doctoral studies in the IS field to date

Machbarkeitsstudie zu den IT-technischen Anforderungen einer weitergehenden Digitalisierung im Bereich Soziale Sicherheit

Ausgehend von der erfolgten Einführung des EESSI-Verfahrens ist es Aufgabe dieser Kurzstudie, weitere Digitalisierungspotentiale im Bereich der sozialen Sicherheit in Deutschland zu identifizieren. Dabei wurde eine mittel- bis langfristige Perspektive eingenommen, um Potentiale der Digitalisierung in Form von aktuellen und innovativen Konzepten und Technologien aufzuzeigen. Die Identifizierung dieser Potentiale erfolgte auf Basis von semi-strukturierten Interviews mit Experten aus der Praxis, die sowohl mit dem EESSI-Verfahren als auch generell mit den Themen der Digitalisierung im Bereich der Systeme der sozialen Sicherheit vertraut sind. Dabei konnten im Verlauf der Studie sowohl regionale, überregionale und bundesweite Organisationen konsultiert werden, um ein breites Bild der aktuellen Entwicklungen und Herausforderungen im Bereich der Digitalisierung abzuleiten. Neben dem EESSI-Verfahren wurde allgemein über die aktuellen Potentiale im Zuge der Digitalisierung diskutiert. Zur Adressierung der Herausforderungen wurden Digitalisierungspotentiale identifiziert, die aus einer Nutzenperspektive sowohl für die Bürgerinnen und Bürger als auch für die Anwender beim Sozialversicherungsträger betrachtet wurden. Zusätzlich wurde, sofern es möglich war, diskutiert, inwiefern die aufgezeigten Digitalisierungswege Betrug und Missbrauch in den Systemen der sozialen Sicherheit eindämmen oder ganz verhindern können. Die insgesamt acht aus den diskutierten Herausforderungen abgeleiteten Digitalisierungspotentiale wurden durch dedizierte Handlungsempfehlungen operationalisiert. Diese Digitalisierungspotentiale zeigen erste Wege auf, die im Rahmen einer zukünftig fortschreitenden Digitalisierung im Bereich der sozialen Sicherheit und der Sozialversicherungen bedacht werden sollten.Based on the recent introduction of EESSI, the task of this study is to identify further digitalization potential for the Systems of Social Security in Germany. In doing so, a medium to long-term perspective was adopted in order to highlight the potential of digitalization in the form of and on the basis of current and innovative concepts and technologies. The identification of the potential in different areas was based on semi-structured interviews with experts who are familiar with EESSI and general topics linked to the digitalization of the Social Security system in Germany. During this study, it was possible to consult regional and federal organizations in order to allow for the development of a broad picture of the current challenges concerning ongoing and future digitalization efforts. Next to EESSI, the conducted interviews discussed general challenges linked to digitalization processes. Based on these challenges, the digitalization potential was derived in different application areas. In doing so, multiple perspectives have been applied, to discuss not only potential benefits for the employees and the social security institutions, but also the benefits for citizens. If applicable, the derived potential was discussed in terms of its ability to prevent fraud and misuse within the systems of Social Security in Germany. In total, eight potential digitization approaches were derived and operationalized in the form of dedicated recommendations for action. They may show first paths that should be considered in the context of the future digitalization actions in the area of Social Security in Germany

SIMILARITY OF ACTIVITIES IN PROCESS MODELS: TOWARDS A METRIC FOR DOMAIN-SPECIFIC BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING LANGUAGES

In the course of business process management, processes can be represented by models in order to document, analyze and improve processes. Many analyses of business process models require the cal-culation of similarity values between activities of different process models. Process models can be cre-ated using domain-specific business process modeling languages. These languages provide predefined domain-specific sets of activities and their properties and allow the annotation of property values based on glossaries. Since this information describes activities in detail, it enables a precise calculation of similarities between process model activities. However, the literature does not provide a suitable simi-larity calculation for two activities in different process models created with the same domain-specific process modeling language. Consequently, relying on design science research the contribution of this paper is to propose such a similarity metric. The metric incorporates annotated property values of ac-tivities and considers the properties’ different relevance, takes into account the characteristics of quan-titative properties and analyzes the contexts of activities. The metric is conceptualized and demonstrated by an example. Future research requires its technical implementation and evaluation

SEMI-AUTOMATIC INDUCTIVE DERIVATION OF REFERENCE PROCESS MODELS THAT REPRESENT BEST PRACTICES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS

In the course of business process management, reference models are widely used for process improve-ment or as starting point for the creation of individual process models. Current scientific literature mainly offers deductive approaches to construct reference models. Although there are some approaches that inductively develop a reference model from a set of individual process models, these approaches focus on the derivation and representation of common practices. However, there is no inductive method to detect best practices and represent them in a reference model. This paper addresses this research gap by applying design science research to develop an approach for the semi-automatic and inductive derivation of reference process models that represent best practices in public administrations. The ap-proach creates a merged model to keep the structure of the source models and detect identical parts in the process models. It identifies best practices using query constructs and ranking criteria to group process model elements and evaluate these groups. The contribution of this paper is a conceptualization of the approach and a demonstration of its functionality with an example. The implementation and eval-uation is subject of future work

Taking Peer-to-Peer Sharing and Collaborative Consumption onto the Next Level - New Opportunities and Challenges for E-Government

Rapid advances in IT combined with increasing awareness for environmental side-effects of modern economies are causing a shift in the consumer behavior towards new forms of consumption. Private individuals increasingly become both providers and consumers of services. Web 2.0 enables peer-to-peer transactions between consumers creating a new consumption space with hundreds of mediator platforms. While the new legally questionable market is typically seen as a challenge by governments, the opportunities for governments to participate in peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing and collaborative consumption services (SCCS) for their citizens are hardly explored in academia. In contrast, first pioneer governments such as the cities of Seoul and San Francisco have already developed strategies to support the development of P2P SCCS for their citizens. In this work, we advocate for extending the function scope of e-government by including P2P SCCS into its portfolio. To support our reasoning and in order to systematically address the problem area emerging from the combination of e-government and P2P SCCS, we review and synthesize e-government models and relate them to the P2P SCCS phenomenon. Our results reveal what constitutes a research agenda for utilizing potentials of P2P SCCS in the context of e-government research and practice