On Public Service Provision Informative Phase: A dialogue-based Model and Platform

© Information Systems Laboratory- 2012

http://islab.uom.gr

University of Macedonia

Presenter:

Efthimios Tambouris

[email protected]

On Public Service Provision Informative Phase: A dialogue-based Model and Platform Efthimios Tambouris, Vasiliki Outsetari, Konstantinos Tarabanis University of Macedonia and CERTH/ITI, Thessaloniki, Greece

© Information Systems Laboratory - 2012

Contents

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Motivation and Aim

Relevant Work

Notation and Indicators

Platform

Main Usage Scenario

Conclusions and Future Work


Motivation

Traditionally, PSP eGov systems are concerned with automating the

back-office processes, i.e. those performed after the citizen submits a

request e.g. for issuing a new passport

However, our experience suggests citizens are often puzzled as to:

– whether they are eligible to execute a service,

– the necessary input (e.g. administrative documents) for the service to be executed,

– the costs related to the execution of the service etc.

Our research suggests many services often have many different

instances (or versions) based on a range of parameters, e.g. age,

marital status, financial status, etc.

It is therefore essential for PSP eGov systems to consider also the

information citizens should receive before actually invoking a public

service

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Informative stage of PSP

Public service provision (PSP) includes two stages:

– Informative stage

– Execution stage

The informative stage includes these actions that a service receiver need to undertake to obtain all essential information in order to be capable of executing a specific service.

This information can specify

– whether or not a citizen is eligible to execute a service,

– the specific instance (or version) of a service that a citizen should execute,

– the necessary input (e.g. administrative documents) for the service to be executed,

– the costs related to the execution of the service etc

Rural Inclusion:

e-Government

Lowering

Administrative

Burdens for

Rural Business.

Funded by

Competitiveness

and Innovation

Framework

Progrmme –

ICT Policy

Support

Programme

(ICT PSP)

4


Personalised information provision

Rural Inclusion:

e-Government

Lowering

Administrative

Burdens for

Rural Business.

Funded by

Competitiveness

and Innovation

Framework

Progrmme –

ICT Policy

Support

Programme

(ICT PSP)

5

Citizen

I need a passport. What application should I submit?

You should submit an E1 application

What if I already have a passport

that has expired?

Then you should submit an E2 application

What if I already have a passport and I want

to replace it?


What If my passport has been stolen?


What else should I submit?

A copy of your ID card

What if I am under the age of 12?

Then you should submit a certificate from your

municipality

What is the cost? 76,40 Euro

What if I am under the age of 14?

65,60 Euro

What if I don’t have the right to leave my country

but I need to do so

60,80 Euro


Personalised information provision

Rural Inclusion:

e-Government

Lowering

Administrative

Burdens for

Rural Business.

Funded by

Competitiveness

and Innovation

Framework

Progrmme –

ICT Policy

Support

Programme

(ICT PSP)

6

Citizen

What if I need to immediately travel abroad because one of my relatives passed away in a foreign country?

What if I am on vacation in a foreign

country and my passport expires?

What if I permanently live in a foreign country?

What if I haven’t fulfilled my military

obligations and I have to travel abroad?

What if I haven’t fulfilled my military obligations and I permanently live in a

foreign country?

What if I can’t go to the police

station because of a serious illness


Sophistication of online services Personalisation: the 5th level of online services sophistication

Personalisation applies to information services as well as

transaction services

Rural Inclusion:

e-Government

Lowering

Administrative

Burdens for

Rural Business.

Funded by

Competitiveness

and Innovation

Framework

Progrmme –

ICT Policy

Support

Programme

(ICT PSP)

7


Aim

Our aim is to facilitate providing personalised information

about complex public services through an online dialogue.

For doing so:

– we model the informative stage as a process which describes a

dialogue between PA and citizens/businesses.

– we implement a platform prototype for modeling PSP IP and for

automatically creating the relevant web pages

Rural Inclusion:

e-Government

Lowering

Administrative

Burdens for

Rural Business.

Funded by

Competitiveness

and Innovation

Framework

Progrmme –

ICT Policy

Support

Programme

(ICT PSP)

8


Contents

9/ 21

Motivation and Aim

Relevant Work


Platform

Main Usage Scenario



Approaches: Websites Providing Info

10/ 16

Websites providing

unstructured info

Websites providing

structured info


Approaches: Dialogue-based platforms

11/ 16


Architecture of dialogue-based platforms

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Expert

End-user

«subsystem»Service Representation

Tool

«subsystem»Dialogues Presentation

Website

1. Expert describes service

2. Service model transferred

4. Citizen executes dialogue

3. Dialogue launched


Contents

13/ 21

Motivation and Aim

Relevant Work


Platform

Main Usage Scenario



Notation (simple and close to BPMN)

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Element and Description Symbol Start:

Portrays the beginning of the diagram.

Question:

Is used to represent a question posed to citizens/businesses.

Answer:

Is used to represent a possible answer to a question.

Input Document:

Is used to represent a document required for invoking a public service.

Information:

Is used to represent any additional information a citizen/business should know.

Value:

Is used to represent any monetary amount (it is a special case of Information).

Not Eligible:

Is used to stop all control flows (thus it represents an end node)

It suggests the citizen/business is not eligible for the service.

Eligible:

Is used to stop all control flows (thus it represents an end node)

It suggests the citizen/business is eligible for the service.


Rules

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1. There is only one Start node that contains only one outgoing arrow

leading to the first Question.

2. There are one or more End nodes. An End node has one or more

incoming Arrows but no outgoing Arrow.

3. All paths (representing potential dialogues) should end in an End

node.

4. An Arrow always connects two nodes which should be different.

5. Arrows indicate the control flow of the dialogue.

6. An Answer may lead to only one Question, Information, Input

Document or End Node.

7. Question nodes should have at least two outgoing Arrows. All other

internal nodes should only have one outgoing Arrow.

8. No node should be “orphan”, i.e. all nodes should have at least one

incoming and one outgoing arrow (subject to other rules).

9. The resulting graph should be acyclic, thus no cycling paths should

exist.


Indicators to measure PSP IP complexity

Number of dialogues

Number of dialogues that result in a not eligible node

Maximum/Minimum/Average number of questions

Maximum/Minimum/Average total cost

Maximum/Minimum/Average total subsidy

Maximum/Minimum/Average number of input documents

Indicators for set of services

– Involvement of other public authorities

– Number of services per public authority

– Document’s Importance

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Contents

17/ 21

Motivation and Aim

Relevant Work


Platform

Main Usage Scenario



Main Functionality

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Technologies

Service Modeling Tool and Service Admin Tool: Java.

– Service Modeling Tool graphic: Jgraphx library.

– Service Modeling Tool xml files processing: XOM library.

– The calculation of indicators was performed using depth-first search

(DFS) graph theory algorithms.

– The validation of the graph in terms of identifying cycles was performed

using the topolorder algorithm.

Dialogues Presentation Website: PHP programming language.

Services database: MySQL.

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Example of a burdensome public service Complex services = burdensome services

The case of “Declaring of a property to the Hellenic Cadastre” in Greece [1]

– The service is governed by 30 laws and ministerial decisions.

– The service includes 82 different input documents (in the simplest case the citizen/business should submit along with the application 5 documents while in the worst case 22)

– The model of the dialogue includes 11 questions (the minimum number of answers that a citizen could give is 4 and the maximum number of answers is 9)

– and more than 280 different dialogues

– in the first case (i.e. where the citizen answers 4 questions) there are 15 different possible dialogues while in the second case there are 240 different dialogues.

[1] Tambouris E., Kliafas A., Kalampokis E. and Tarabanis K. (2009) “Reducing administrative burden through online dialogues: The case of declaring a property to the Hellenic Cadastre”,

Rural Inclusion:

e-Government

Lowering

Administrative

Burdens for

Rural Business.

Funded by

Competitiveness

and Innovation

Framework

Progrmme –

ICT Policy

Support

Programme

(ICT PSP)

20


Example of a burdensome public service The conventional ways for receiving information about the declaration

process and identify the required input documents include:

– Studying all needed documents available in the official website of the Hellenic cadastre

– Consulting the employees of the Hellenic Cadastre

– Hiring a lawyer or a surveying engineer

– Studying the relevant laws (more than 30)

Using an online dialogue-based application for receiving information about the declaration process:

– It is estimated that the time needed for answering the most complicated instance of the dialogue is about 5-10 minutes, while the time for the simplest one is about 1-3 minutes.

– The cost for using this application is practically zero if we do not consider the cost of the necessary technical infrastructure.

Hence, all the conventional ways require more time and/or cost (thus more administrative burdens) comparing to an online dialogue-based application.

Rural Inclusion:

e-Government

Lowering

Administrative

Burdens for

Rural Business.

Funded by

Competitiveness

and Innovation

Framework

Progrmme –

ICT Policy

Support

Programme

(ICT PSP)

21


Contents

22/ 21

Motivation and Aim

Relevant Work


Platform

Main Usage Scenario



Case Study

Step 1. Input documents are described

Step 2. Domain Expert models the PSP IP dialogue

Step 3. Content Manager stores the dialogue to the database

Step 4. Citizen launches the dialogue

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Create_Evidences.wmv

Create_Evidences.wmv

Create_dialogue.wmv

Upload_Citizen_site.wmv

Explore_graph_Calculate_indicators.wmv


Contents

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Motivation and Aim

Relevant Work


Platform

Main Usage Scenario




PSP IP is important for citizens and public agencies!

Providing personalised info on public services in an easy way should

be a priority for public agencies

In this work

– A simple model was presented to model PSP IP

– A set of indicators was proposed for measuring interesting

characteristics of PSP IP

– A prototype platform was demonstrated

Future work includes:

– Revisiting the notation and indicators

– Allowing indicators to measure administrative burden

– Increasing the functionality of the platform

– Using the platform in “real life” conditions!

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© Information Systems Laboratory - 2012 26/34

Thank you for your attention!!

Questions?

Assist. Prof. Efthimios Tambouris

University of Macedonia

[email protected]

Presentations & Public Speaking

On Public Service Provision Informative Phase: A dialogue-based Model and Platform