A Methodological Approach for Defining One-Stop e-Government Service Offerings Dimitris Gouscos1, Maria Lambrou2, Gregoris Mentzas3, and Panagiotis Georgiadis4 1
eGovernment Laboratory, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
[email protected] 2 National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece
[email protected] 3 Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece
[email protected] 4 eGovernment Laboratory, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
[email protected]
Abstract. In the CB-BUSINESS project (IST-2001-33147, http://www.cbbusiness.com/), a number of administrative services from public agencies and professional chambers in different countries have been identified for provision through the CB-BUSINESS intermediation hub as one-stop service offerings for cross-border business transactions. This paper reports on the methodological guidelines that have been applied for categorizing available administrative services on certain typological characteristics (informational vs. transactional content, acquaintance vs. operational usefulness, local vs. hyper-local value), defining high-level types of one-stop service combinations and finally ranking combined service offerings according to their interest from an end-user as well as service integration perspective.
1 Introduction The CB-BUSINESS project (IST-2001-33147, http://www.cb-business.com/) aims at providing an “ intermediation hub” that will integrate a number of administrative services from providers such as public agencies and professional chambers in different countries as one-stop service offerings for cross-border business transactions. The CBBUSINESS intermediation hub will be able to accept user requests, identify egovernment cross-border processes that have to be enacted, trigger and coordinate relevant workflows of individual service providers (administrations and chambers of commerce and industry) and integrate the final results for delivery to end-users. A central part of its operational model is the intermediation of e-government services provided by the service providers (SPs) that collaborate with the hub. The set of individual services from which the CB-BUSINESS intermediation hub draws service content constitutes the so-called service base of the hub. Although, in special cases, a particular service of the service base can be intermediated as a stand-
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alone service, the general principle is that the CB-BUSINESS hub should intermediate one-stop combinations of such services that meet concrete end user needs. The service base of the CB-BUSINESS intermediation hub can be further prescribed by a number of service categories that serve to characterize available services in a two-fold perspective: a perspective of valuable combination, discussing how each service should be included in the CB-BUSINESS service model to add some value, and a perspective of feasible combination, discussing how each service could be included in the CB-BUSINESS service model based on its potential for combination with other services.
2 A Typology for Administrative Services
2.1 Informational and Transactional Services Primarily, the CB-BUSINESS service base is considered as comprising two distinct classes of services: 1. informational services, for providing generic or personalised information, e.g. identify companies operating in a given sector or country 2. transactional services, for handling and interchange of administrative documents, e.g. filing of administrative forms, delivery and cross-checking of administrative certificates, between end users and service providers. It should be noted that these two generic classes of services have their counterparts in well-known taxonomies for electronic services, such as the ICDT model [ref. to be inserted] as well as the European Union’s 4-level framework for benchmarking the advancement of e-government services [ref. to be inserted]. Table 1 presents some usual examples of informational and transactional services that are offered by service providers such as the Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCIs) that participate in the CB-BUSINESS project. Table 1. Examples of informational and transactional services
Service type directory services procedural guides regulatory documents registration issue a certificate
Example business registry setting up a company investment legislation register to the CCI as member issue a Certificate of Origin
Classification informational informational informational transactional transactional
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2.2 Acquaintance and Operational Services Another intuitive perspective for analysing cross-border administrative services is to refer to distinct phases of the complete cross-border service transaction lifecycle, distinguishing between: 1. “ acquaintance” services that an end-user needs before knowing anything about the country of interest or who the providers are; these are by definition informational services, according to the generic classification given above 2. “ operational” services that end users need when they know who the service providers are and want to proceed with a particular business activity (e.g. set-up a business) or transaction (e.g. inquire about something, apply for a certificate, submit a declaration etc.); in the typical case these are expected to be transactional services. 2.3 Services of Local and Hyper-local Value The locality of the value of a service is also important. Since CB-BUSINESS focuses on cross-border service scenarios, i.e. on service scenarios that are meaningful and useful for end users residing in a country other than the country of the service providers, it is useful to distinguish between: 1. “ local value” services meaningful and useful only for end users that are based in the same country with the service providers; e.g. a service to register in country X a business newly founded in this country is valuable (i) for national corporate users already in this country and (ii) for foreigner corporate users after they have moved and set up a business in the country 2. “ hyper-local value” services, which are meaningful and useful both for locallybased and for remotely-based end users; e.g. a service to find out business opportunities, a service to file a form or declaration with a foreign agency prior to import/export of some goods. In the context of the CB-BUSINESS project both types of services are made available, whereas the emphasis is put on the ones that have hyper-local value.
3
Two Approaches for Combining Administrative Services
Combined service offerings have been sought within the CB-BUSINESS project that represent a mix of individual informational and transactional services, the emphasis being on the transactional ones. Moreover, these service offerings include services that are meaningful and valuable for locally- and remotely-based end users alike (services of hyper-local value). The major objective of the project, which is to provide intermediation facilities in the application domain of e-government services, can be placed against the agenda for electronic intermediation systems in the e-business world that typically [refs. to be inserted] provide the following facilities: 1. aggregation of customer demand and seller service offers
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2. facilitation to the market and involved players by streamlining the information exchange and the coordination of the respective processes 3. matching complex specifications of demand and supply 4. provision of enhanced added-value facilities for the overall services transaction. The CB-BUSINESS concept brings electronic intermediation into the domain of egovernment services, with an objective to aggregate service offerings on the supply side, i.e. as one-stop services supplied for cross-border transactions. To this end, two approaches for combining individual services have been considered: the “ similarity approach” , that consists in combining similar services from different providers to offer the same service on a wider domain (i.e. take the “ union” of individual services) As an exemplar case for this approach, two Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCIs) in two different countries X and Y can be considered; the CCI of country X offers a service to search the business registry of country X and look for business partners per sector, and the CCI of country Y offers the same service over the business registry of country Y. Obviously, it is possible to offer the same service with combined results from the business registries of both countries X and Y. In general, if two different providers offer the same service in different application domains, then it is possible to produce a combined service with the same functionality as the individual services but over the broader domain. This policy is introduced as the similarity approach for combining services. the “ complementarity approach” , that consists in combining different services (from different providers) that implement different portions of an one-stop service (i.e. take the “ concatenation” of individual services) Consider a business that needs to apply to a CCI for getting a certificate C, and then submit this certificate to another CCI for getting a permit P. In this case, the first CCI offers a service that “ produces” certificate C, and then the second CCI offers a service that “ consumes” certificate C in order to “ produce” permit P. These two individual services are complementary, i.e. they can be combined into a composite service that directly “ produces” permit P. In general, when a service delivers some information, document etc that is directly input into another service, which then delivers some information or documents further input into a third service and so on, this chain of individual services can be combined into a single composite service that will constitute an one-stop service offering, whereas the equivalent chain of N individual services that it replaces would require N distinct “ stops” , i.e. physical or electronic contacts and sessions of endusers with the corresponding service counters. In this complementarity approach, the resulting combined service constitutes an aggregation of all individual services according to a workflow dictated by the regulatory framework and administrative practices.
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4 Identification of Combined Services for the CB-BUSINESS Project Case This section presents the approach that has been taken within the CB-BUSINESS project for applying the above generic guidelines in order to define some concrete combined services from the project’s service base. This approach has been much influenced by project-specific requirements, and especially by the need to define combined administrative services from providers in different countries that meet the needs of cross-border business transactions. We argue, nevertheless, that this projectspecific approach includes some heuristic rules of thumb for identifying valuable service combinations that can be applied to more general contexts. The “ ideal service” to be included in the CB-BUSINESS service model would be a combination of informational and transactional services that altogether can meet the administrative service needs of a cross-border business transaction. Such an ideal service, however, has to be constructed as a combination of individual services drawn from the CB-BUSINESS service base and such that they are offered by service providers not based in the same country (otherwise the combined service would not be cross-border), they are meaningful in the same business context (otherwise their combination would be meaningless), and one of them requires as input some structured information or some document(s) produced by the others (otherwise they cannot be truly combined). To prove the project concept, it has been necessary to identify a critical mass of such services. In order to enrich the service content of the CB-BUSINESS intermediation hub with additional services, however, it has been considered advisable to look for some additional sub-optimal combined services and rank then according to their potential interest for inclusion in the CB-BUSINESS showcase. This course of action has resulted in a heuristic – yet at the same time pragmatic – methodology for evaluating the interest of individual and combined services from an one-stop integration standpoint. 4.1 Acceptability of Individual Services Individual services are the single services provided by CB-BUSINESS service provider. With reference to the aforementioned categorizations, it can be noted that individual services of hyper-local value are more interesting than individual services of local value, whereas individual transactional services are more interesting than individual informational services. Therefore, the interest of an individual service for the CB-BUSINESS service model increases along the following list: 1. individual informational services of local value, e.g. a calendar of local business events 2. individual transactional services of local value, e.g. electronic submission of VAT forms
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3. individual informational services of hyper-local value, e.g. a search service over business registry information 4. individual transactional services of hyper-local value, e.g. a service to electronically apply and get a Certificate of Origin for some goods from the CCI of the country where these were imported from. 4.2 Acceptability of Combined Services The least interesting case for CB-BUSINESS with respect to service combinations would be to have no combinations at all, i.e. intermediate through CB-BUSINESS all individual services atomically. For instance, intermediate through CB-BUSINESS the services mentioned in examples (1)-(4) above, but each in a stand-alone fashion. In this case, the CB-BUSINESS hub would merely operate as a portal. The next interesting case for CB-BUSINESS would be to have combinations of informational services. These services should come from at least two different providers. Note that informational services can be combined by a similarity (the same service on different domains) or complementarity approach (different services that each produce some output used by the next one as input). Some rules of thumb can be applied to increase the interest of the service combinations: “ more services” rule : a combination of more services is more interesting “ more providers” rule : a combination of services from more providers is more interesting “ more countries” rule : a combination of services from providers from more countries is more interesting. Therefore, the objective in this category of services is to combine many services from many providers from many countries into a single combined informational service. This is a more interesting category of services than the previous one, since in this case the CB-BUSINESS hub does not operate as a simple portal but as an infomediary. This is not the most interesting case, however, since the project concept is intermediation of transactions, not intermediation of information. 4.3 Acceptability of Combined Transactional Services The most interesting case for CB-BUSINESS is to have combinations of informational and transactional services coming from at least two different providers. In such a combination, informational services would fulfil the role of “ acquaintance services” informing about the context, before actually transacting), whereas transactional services would fulfil the role of “ operational services” to actually transact. As an example, one can consider an informational service by a Spanish CCI informing about the legislation that applies to imported goods and a transactional service by a Romanian CCI to issue Certificates of Origin; these two can be combined into a transactional service that allows a Spanish importer to retrieve info about Certificates of Origin regulations (acquaintance step) and then continue and actually apply
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for a Certificate of Origin issued (operational step) for some product imported from Romania. It should be noted that the “ more services” , “ more providers” , “ more countries” rules also apply in this case, to increase the interest of combined transactional services. The essential point in this category of services, however, is how many transactional services exist in the combination and how tightly they interdepend (whether there are services with a formal prerequisite to have as input the output of another service or not). For instance, if we enrich the combined transactional service mentioned before with one more transactional services to issue Certificates of Origin by a Bulgarian CCI, the resulting service can also work for Bulgarian products, so it is a more useful and more interesting combined service. Therefore, as a special application of the “ more services” rule, the more transactional services take part in a combined transactional service, the better. As another extension of this example, we can consider a scenario where the Spanish CCI does not only inform about the Certificate of Origin regulations but also offers a transactional service of its own that accepts an application for a Certificate of Origin and forwards this to the CCI of origin together with a Certificate of Registration of the requesting enterprise, gets the certificate of origin and delivers it back to the end user. This way of operation results in a better level of service, since the end user's tasks and concerns are minimized. But, this way of operation is only possible if the involved transactional services collaborate in a tighter fashion, by actually exchanging documents. Therefore, two additional rules of thumb can be applied to increase the interest of combined transactional services: “ more transactional services” rule : a combination of more transactional services is more interesting “ more collaboration” rule : a combination of transactional services that exchange documents or information is more interesting than a combination of transactional services that do not. Applying this rule, we can distinguish three sub-categories of increasingly interesting combined transactional services: 1. combined uni-transactional services : these are combinations of one transactional and one or more informational services, from at least two different providers 2. combined multi-transactional services : these are combinations of two or more transactional services that do not collaborate and one or more informational services, from at least two different providers 3. combined collaborative transactional services : these are combinations of two or more transactional services that do collaborate and one or more informational services, from at least two different providers. The services of this latter sub-category, i.e. combined collaborative transactional services, show the best possible fit to the CB-BUSINESS project concept.
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4.4 Different Intermediation Styles The CB-BUSINESS intermediation hub has been conceived as a “ service-mediary” scheme, standing at a higher operational level than simple portals (which only present compilations of links to third-party services) or info-mediaries (which act as brokers between only informational services). These different intermediation styles (portal, info-mediary, service-mediary) can be associated with the combined service content that is actually mediated by means of the above categorizations. Table 2 recapitulates categories of mediated service content and characterizations of the corresponding intermediation systems, in ascending order of interest from a service integration perspective. Table 2. Categories of combined services that can be mediated and resulting operational styles for the intermediation systems
Category of services individual local-value informational services individual local-value transactional services individual hyperlocal-value informational services individual hyperlocal-value transactional services combined cross-border informational services (less services, less providers, less countries) combined cross-border informational services (more services, more providers, more countries) combined uni-transactional services combined multi-transactional services combined collaborative transactional services
Operational style portal
info-mediary
service-mediary true-service-mediary
4.5 The CB-BUSINESS Service Model Table 3 presents the individual services that have been selected for inclusion in the service model of the CB-BUSINESS intermediation hub. Work is currently (March 2003) under completion to finalize the combined service offerings that will be composed out of these individual services, in order to place the CB-BUSINESS intermediation hub at the level of service-mediary according to the above classification. Table 3. Individual services to be included in the CB-BUSINESS service model
Service Market, economy and regulatory info Info on fairs and exhibitions Info on companies, exporters and products Info on business opportunities, partner search Info on how set up a company Setting up a company Issuing Carnet ATA certificates
Type of service
informational services
transactional services
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Issuing Certificates of Origin
5
Conclusions
[to be completed] …
Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions to work reported in this paper of CB-BUSINESS technical providers, namely Planet Ernst & Young S.A. (Maria Legal, Costas Baraboutis), University of Athens (Dimitris Lioulias, Nikos Perdikopanis, Panagiotis Tzitziras, Dionissis Vassilopoulos, Giannis Verginadis), SchlumbergerSema S.A. (Natalia Bezanilla, Enrique Garcí a Delgado, Sara Diez Mínguez, Aurelio Vahi) and ComnetMedia S.A. (Monika Jungemann-Dorner, Claudia Schlosser, Ulrich Maurmann) as well as CB-BUSINESS service providers, namely Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chambre de Commerce et d’ Industrie de Paris, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania Bucharest, General Secretariat for Information Systems of the Greek Ministry of Economy and Finance and Instituto Tecnologico de Canarias.
References 1. … [to be completed]
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