Study on cloud and service oriented architectures for e-government Final report

05-12-2011 Framework Contract no: DI/06691-00

Authors: P. Wauters, K. Declercq, S. van der Peijl, P. Davies

Ref. Ares(2012)149022 - 09/02/2012

The study has been commissioned by the European Commission, Directorate General for Information Society and Media, unit ICT for Government and Public Services. All views expressed in this document, however, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on its behalf is responsible for the use which might be made of the information contained in the present publication. The European Commission is not responsible for the external web sites referred to in the present publication.

© European Union, 2011

A STUDY ON CLOUD AND SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURES FOR E-GOVERNMENT

Framework Contract no: DI/06691-00 Final report

5 December 2011

Deloitte

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Contents 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 7

1.1 Objectives.............................................................................................................. 7

1.2 Context ................................................................................................................. 7

1.2.1 eGovernment .................................................................................................. 7

1.2.2 Service Oriented Architecture .......................................................................... 8

1.2.3 ‘Universal’ or ‘Global’ SOA ............................................................................ 10

1.2.4 Building Blocks ............................................................................................. 12

1.2.5 A ‘cloud of public services’ ........................................................................... 14

2 Service taxonomy and methodology to identify public services .................................... 17

2.1 Service Taxonomy................................................................................................ 17

2.1.1 Existing Service Taxonomies ......................................................................... 17

2.1.2 Proposed Service Taxonomy.......................................................................... 20

2.2 Service Decomposition Methodology.................................................................... 23

2.2.1 Existing Service Decomposition Methodologies ............................................. 23

2.2.2 Proposed Service Decomposition Methodology.............................................. 26

3 Identifying public services and fundamental services ................................................... 31

3.1 Implementation of the methodology .................................................................... 31

3.1.1 Identifying public services as part of the life event ‘Starting up’ .................... 32

3.1.2 Identifying public services as part of the life event group ‘Managing’ ............ 33

3.1.3 Identifying public services as part of the life events ‘Expanding,’ ‘EU Market,’ ‘Responsible Business’ and ‘Exit Strategy’.................................................................... 34

3.2 Towards identifying fundamental services............................................................ 35

3.3 Implications for the service taxonomy and methodology ...................................... 40

3.3.1 Service Taxonomy......................................................................................... 40

3.3.2 Service Decomposition Methodology ............................................................. 40

4 A ‘Cloud of public services’: reusability, potential and impact ...................................... 44

4.1 Reusability of public services ............................................................................... 44

4.2 A conceptual model of a ‘cloud of public services’ ............................................... 46

4.3 Opportunities of a ‘cloud of public services’......................................................... 48

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4.3.1 Public Value Services..................................................................................... 49

4.3.2 Competitive advantage ................................................................................. 51

4.3.3 New business models.................................................................................... 53

4.4 Examples of open and interoperable services approaches .................................... 55

4.4.1 Belgium – Federal Service Bus (FSB) ............................................................... 55

4.4.2 The Netherlands - NORA............................................................................... 58

4.4.3 Germany - SAGA........................................................................................... 59

4.5 Prerequisites and Challenges ............................................................................... 60

4.5.1 Migration strategies ...................................................................................... 62

4.6 Impact Model of a ‘cloud of public services’ ......................................................... 63

4.6.1 Existing Impact Frameworks.......................................................................... 63

4.6.2 Proposed Impact Framework ......................................................................... 64

4.7 Impacts from existing implementations of open and interoperable services ......... 66

4.7.1 eDepot.......................................................................................................... 66

4.7.2 Crossroads Bank for Social Security............................................................... 69

4.7.3 German Administration Services Directory..................................................... 71

4.7.4 Danish Registration of Land and Property...................................................... 72

4.8 Potential impacts of a ‘cloud of public services’ ................................................... 75

4.8.1 Efficiency: Flu Prediction Service.................................................................... 75

4.8.2 Effectiveness: Bank as a ‘one-stop-shop’ ...................................................... 76

4.8.3 Innovation: Front office for permits and licenses ........................................... 78

4.9 Overall impacts of a ‘cloud of public services’ ...................................................... 79

5 Conclusions and recommendations ............................................................................. 81

5.1 Conclusions......................................................................................................... 81

5.2 Recommendations ............................................................................................... 83

5.3 Discussion ........................................................................................................... 85

6 Bibliography................................................................................................................ 87

7 Annex I ....................................................................................................................... 90

8 Annex II .................................................................................................................... 123

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Table of figures Figure 2 - Service Orchestration .......................................................................................... 8

Figure 3 – Service Integration Maturity Model (Open Group, 2009) ..................................... 10

Figure 4 - Silo Approach.................................................................................................... 11

Figure 5 - Silo Approach with Building Blocks .................................................................... 12

Figure 6 – Business and Infrastructure Services .................................................................. 13

Figure 7 – Cloud Model: Private Services ............................................................................ 13

Figure 8 - Cloud Model: Public Services ............................................................................. 14

Figure 9 – The Concept of a Cloud of Public Services.......................................................... 14

Figure 10 – Existing Service Taxonomies............................................................................ 18

Figure 11 - Three layers of SOA expansion (Josuttis, 2007)................................................ 19

Figure 12 – Taxonomy of Public Services............................................................................ 20

Figure 13 – SOA View of the Service Taxonomy based on Josuttis (2007)............................ 21

Figure 14 – Service-oriented Modelling and Architecture Methodology............................... 23

Figure 15 - Service Oriented Design and Development Method (SOADM)............................ 24

Figure 16 - Component Identification Methodology ........................................................... 25

Figure 17 – Three Step Service Decomposition Methodology .............................................. 26

Figure 18 – Scope example: Life Cycle of a Business........................................................... 27

Figure 19 –The Concept of Nested Services (Peristeras 2006) ............................................. 27

Figure 20 - eDepot Architecture ........................................................................................ 32

Figure 21 – Belgian Cross Roads Bank for Social Security (CBSS) ......................................... 33

Figure 22 – Service Taxonomy with Fundamental Services .................................................. 36

Figure 23 – Scope for Reuse............................................................................................... 43

Figure 24 – FSB: Task, Entity and Utility Services ................................................................ 44

Figure 25 – FSB: Multi-Partner Process ............................................................................... 45

Figure 26 – Conceptual model for the design of a cloud of public services ......................... 46

Figure 27 - Conceptual model of ‘Ordering a travel trip’ .................................................... 47

Figure 28 - eHealth Platform ............................................................................................. 48

Figure 29 - Conceptual Model of the eHealth platform....................................................... 49

Figure 30 - Conceptual Model of the Flu Prediction Service ................................................ 50

Figure 31 – Conceptual Model of ‘One stop shop’ for company registration........................ 51

Figure 32 – Conceptual Model of a Bank as a ‘One stop shop’ for company registration ..... 52

Figure 33 - Dutch Environmental Permit law ...................................................................... 53

Figure 34 - Analytical Model of a Front office for permits and licences............................... 54

Figure 35 - FEDICT Architecture ........................................................................................ 55

Figure 36 – FEDICT/FSB - layered or multiple service buses................................................ 56

Figure 37 - NORA chain of activities .................................................................................. 57

Figure 38 – NORA Lifecycle ................................................................................................ 58

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Figure 39 - SAGA Architecture ........................................................................................... 59

Figure 40 - eGEP Measurement Framework ........................................................................ 63

Figure 41 - Impact Categories ........................................................................................... 64

Figure 42 - eDepot Architecture ........................................................................................ 66

Figure 43 – Expansion of the eDepot to Real Estate ............................................................ 67

Figure 44 – Expansion of the eDepot to VZW/ASBL............................................................. 68

Figure 45 - Cross Roads Bank for Social Security................................................................ 69

Figure 46 - German Administration Services Directory ....................................................... 70

Figure 47 - Danish Registration of Land and Property ........................................................ 72

Figure 48 - Danish Registration of Land and Property (Third Parties).................................. 73

Figure 49 – Predicted Impact of the ‘Flu prediction’ Service ................................................ 74

Figure 50 – Predicted impact of the Bank as a ‘One stop shop’ for company registration .... 75

Figure 51 – Predicted Impact of a front office for permits and Licences .............................. 77

Figure 52 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Starting Up................................................. 90

Figure 53 – Italy - Service Decomposition – Starting Up...................................................... 92

Figure 54 – Belgium - e-Depot SOA platform..................................................................... 93

Figure 55 – Belgium - Service Decomposition – Starting up ................................................ 95

Figure 56 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Managing – Accounts ................................. 96

Figure 57 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Managing – Tax ......................................... 97

Figure 58 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Managing – Staff ........................................ 99

Figure 59 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Managing – Land and Property ................. 101

Figure 60 – Italy – Service Decomposition - Managing – Land and Property....................... 103

Figure 61 – Italy – Service Decomposition - Managing – Tax............................................. 104

Figure 62 – Belgium – Service Decomposition - Managing – Accounts .............................. 105

Figure 63 – Belgium - Service Decomposition – Managing – Tax....................................... 107

Figure 64 – Belgian Cross Roads Bank for Social Security (CBSS) ....................................... 107

Figure 65 – Belgium - Service Decomposition - Managing – Social Security ...................... 109

Figure 66 – Belgium - Service Decomposition - Managing – Land and Property ................ 110

Figure 67 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Expanding – Mergers................................ 112

Figure 68 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – EU Market – Import/Export....................... 113

Figure 69 – Italy – Service Decomposition – EU Market – Import/Export ............................ 115

Figure 70 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Responsible Business – Environment ........ 117

Figure 71 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Exit Strategy – Winding up........................ 118

Figure 72 – Italy – Service Decomposition - Exit Strategy – Winding Up............................. 120

Figure 73 – Italy – Service Decomposition - Exit Strategy – Bankruptcy ............................. 121

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Table of tables Table 1– Building blocks for the Service Decomposition Methodology ................................ 28

Table 2 – Total Identified Services in three Member States.................................................. 35

Table 3 – Identified Fundamental Services – Starting Up ..................................................... 36

Table 4 – Identified Fundamental Services – Managing ....................................................... 37

Table 5 – Suggested reporting template............................................................................. 40

Table 6 – Indicators of Impact............................................................................................ 64

Table 7 – Impact of the eDepot .......................................................................................... 66

Table 8 – Impact of the Cross Roads Bank for Social Security.............................................. 69

Table 9 – Impact of the German Administration Services Directory ..................................... 71

Table 10 – Impact of the Danish Registration of Land and Property .................................... 72

Table 11 – Comparison of the Danish Registration of Land and Property ............................ 72

Table 12 – Potential Impact of Flu Prediction Service .......................................................... 74

Table 13 - Potential Impact of ‘one-stop-shop’ company registration ............................... 76

Table 14 - Potential Impact of Front Office for Licences and Permits .................................. 77

Table 15 – Overall impacts of a cloud of public services ..................................................... 79

Table 16 – Taxonomy and Method Summary ...................................................................... 80

Table 17 – Sweden - Starting Up........................................................................................ 90

Table 18 – Italy - Starting Up ............................................................................................. 91

Table 19 - Belgium - Starting Up ....................................................................................... 94

Table 20 – Sweden - Managing – Accounts ........................................................................ 95

Table 21 – Sweden - Managing – Tax................................................................................. 96

Table 22 – Sweden - Managing – Staff................................................................................ 98

Table 23 – Sweden - Managing – Land and Property......................................................... 100

Table 24 – Italy – Managing – Land and Property .............................................................. 102

Table 25 – Italy - Managing – Tax .................................................................................... 104

Table 26 – Belgium – Managing - Accounts...................................................................... 105

Table 27 – Belgium – Managing - Tax .............................................................................. 106

Table 28 – Belgium - Managing – Social Security .............................................................. 108

Table 29 – Belgium - Managing – Land and Property ........................................................ 109

Table 30 – Sweden - Expanding – Branch and Mergers ..................................................... 111

Table 31 – Sweden – EU Market – Import/Export .............................................................. 113

Table 32 – Italy – EU Market – Import/Export.................................................................... 114

Table 33 – Sweden - Responsible Business - Environment ............................................... 116

Table 34 – Sweden – Exit Strategy – Winding Up ............................................................... 117

Table 35 – Italy – Exit Strategy – Winding Up .................................................................... 119

Table 36 – Italy – Exit Strategy - Bankruptcy .................................................................... 120

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Glossary Abbreviation Full expression

ACID Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable

ASA/DAV Agence pour le Simplification Administrative/Dienst Administratieve Vereenvoudiging = Agency for Administrative Simplification

BDS Basic Data Service

BLS Basic Logic Service

BPS Basic Public Service

BTEP Business Transformation Enablement Program

CBE Belgian Crossroads Bank for Enterprises

CBSS Belgian Crossroads Bank for Social Security

CIP Competitiveness and Innovation framework Programme

COFOG UN Classification of Functions of Government

CPS Composed Public Service

DVDV German Administration Services Directory

eGEP eGovernment Economics Project

EIA European Interoperability Architecture

eID Electronic identity

eIDM Electronic identity management

EIIS European Interoperable Infratsructure Services

EIS European Interoperability Strategy

eSignature Electronic signature

eTL Danish system for the Registration of Land and Property

FEDICT Belgian Federal Institution for Communication and Technology

FSB Federal Service Bus

ICT Information and Communication Technologies

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ICT PSP ICT Policy Support Programme

IDABC Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens

ISA Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations

IT Information Technology

NORA Reference architecture for the Dutch government

OSIMM Open Group's Service Integration Maturity Model

PPS Process Public Service

PSC Point of Single Contact

Saas Software as a Service

SAGA German Standards and Architectures for eGovernment Applications Guideline

SOA Service Oriented Architecture

SOADM Service Oriented Design and Development Method

SOMA Service-oriented modeling and architecture methodology

VAT Value Added Tax

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1 Introduction

1.1 Objectives The objective of this study is to identify ‘Fundamental Services’ in the context of new "Universal or Global" SOA approaches to the provision of eGovernment services. The key questions which it addresses are: at which level of granularity can ‘Fundamental Services’ be defined? Which ones have the highest potential for reuse? And what are the possibilities for and the potential impacts of delivering public services in line with the concept of a ‘cloud of public services’?

In this context and against the background of significant recent policy and technological developments, the study developed a service taxonomy and methodology in order to identify the ‘building blocks’ of public services delivered online for citizens and businesses. The proposed taxonomy and methodology, which are based on a review of existing SOA-related literature, were then applied via case studies within the scope of the life cycle of a business in three Member States (Sweden, Italy and Belgium) in order to develop a definition of a ‘Fundamental Service.’ Finally, based on real-life approaches to the provision of online public services for reuse by different actors (public administrations and third parties), as well as suggested future scenarios, the study analysed the possibilities for the design of a ‘cloud of public services’ and of the impact of offering public services in this way. The main conclusions of the study are then presented and a number of recommendations for future activities are made.

1.2 Context

1.2.1 eGovernment The end of the first decade of the 21st Century has been described as both a ‘historical turning point’ in the development of eGovernment and its ‘coming of age.’1 These statements, contained in a 2009 working document by the European Commission’s eGovernment Sub-group, are corroborated by both the increase of policy measures in this field and the changes in the availability and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for public service provision.

At the launch of the 2011-2015 eGovernment Action Plan for Europe,2 Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes outlined its aim to ”help public authorities to use ICT to offer better services at lower cost, while making life easier and better for citizens and businesses”.3 Her words reflected the evolution in the factors motivating the development of eGovernment over time:

Initially, the introduction of ICT in government was driven by the need for greater efficiency. Subsequently, the effectiveness of public service provision was included as a goal. Latterly, good governance has been added as an objective in its own right.

This sequence of drivers can be observed in the Action Plan’s four priorities, which are based on the 2009 Ministerial eGovernment Conference Declaration at Malmo, Sweden.4 It set out actions which aim to: empower citizens and businesses, reinforce mobility in the Single Market, enable efficiency and effectiveness, and create the key pre-conditions for eGovernment. The Action Plan also supports

1 Visions and priorities for eGovernment in Europe: Orientations for a post 2010 eGovernment Action Plan, European Commission eGovernment Sub-group, Working Paper (20 March 2009) 2 The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015: Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable & innovative Government, European Commission COM(2010)743 (15 December 2010) 3Digital Agenda: eGovernment Action Plan to smooth access to public services across the EU, European Commission IP/10/1718 (15 December 2010) 4 Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment, Malmo, Sweden, (18 November 2009)

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and complements the recent Digital Agenda5, which seeks to contribute towards the development of open, flexible and personalised eGovernment services for citizens and businesses.

In particular, the current eGovernment Action Plan for Europe mentions the need for eGovernment services to “rely on and benefit from innovative technical approaches, such as clouds of public services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) to build open, flexible and collaborative eGovernment services while at the same time lowering ICT costs”. Such innovative eGovernment is based on developments in recent years in which ICT in government has shifted from more ‘silo’ government approaches with a focus on the back-office, towards more back- and front-office integration, via a collaborative approach, third party involvement and public private complementarity (also referred to as Tao government) 6.

In addition to facilitating the delivery of public services by public administrations, this signifies a shift away from the question of who produces public services per se, to the problem of how to distribute value in society in an optimal way. This is emphasised by the Malmo Declaration’s call for ”collaboration with third parties for example businesses, civil society or individual citizens, in order to develop user-driven eGovernment services” and the Action Plan’s focus on the priority of the ‘Collaborative Production of Services’.

This approach is in line with what Commissioner Kroes referred to in a speech launching the eGovernment Action Plan as ‘weGov’.7 In the context of Public Service Information (PSI), the ‘weGov’ vision aims to ‘open data’ so that, as well as public administrations, citizens and businesses can make use of it. In terms of public service provision, public-private complementarity, enabling government and third parties to work together and share responsibility for the production and provision of services is compatible with these goals.

Putting this vision into practice requires a flexible and open ICT architecture and innovative technological approaches that enables the reuse of public services and data. This will not only benefit the provision of internet-based government 'one stop shops’, it also allows for third parties to embed public services into other platforms and combine them, thus acting as an intermediary gateway or independent provider of services to the user (e.g. citizens and businesses).

The move towards this increasingly participatory ICT model, is also evidenced by the following of main trends:

A shift from using ICT for supporting or replacing existing administrative processes, towards process re-engineering and reorganisation of institutional and administrative boundaries;

A growing interest in technologies (e.g. eIDM, eSignature, eAuthentication) that allow for a better integration of administrative processes and for the delivery of personalised services;

A strong interest in technologies that integrate internal/external processes (back/front office) The growing need to harmonise rules and procedures and to give more priority to

interoperability, exploiting the use of 'open' environments (e.g. open standards and source);

In this context, this study seeks to examine the potential for and impact of offering public services in an open and interoperable way. The reuse of public services by both different public administrations and third parties could make a significant contribution to the move towards the collaborative model of eGovernment and the reorientation of online service provision towards the creation of ‘public value’ shared by all actors in society.

1.2.2 Service Oriented Architecture The SOA Work Group of the Open Group, a global consortium which leads the development of open, vendor-neutral IT standards and certifications, defines SOA in the technical sense as follows:8

It ‘is an architectural style that supports service orientation. Service orientation is a way of thinking in terms of services and service-based development and the outcomes of services. [...] SOA is an architectural style that is defined as the combination of distinctive features in which the architecture is performed or expressed. The SOA architectural style has the following features: 5 A Digital Agenda for Europe, European Commission COM(2010) 245 final/2 (26 August 2010) 6 Visions and priorities for eGovernment in Europe: Orientations for a post 2010 eGovernment Action Plan, European Commission eGovernment Sub-group, Working Paper (20 March 2009) 7 ‘My vision for eGovernment, and how to make it real,’ European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes, SPEECH/10/752,

"Lift-Off towards Open Government" Conference (15 December 2010) 8 SOA Work Group of the Open Group (n.d.)

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It is based on the design of the services – which mirror real-world business activities – comprising the enterprise (or inter-enterprise) business processes.

Service representation utilises business descriptions to provide context (i.e., business process, goal, rule, policy, service interface, and service component) and implements services using service orchestration.

It places unique requirements on the infrastructure – it is recommended that implementations use open standards to realize interoperability and location transparency.

Implementations are environment-specific – they are constrained or enabled by context and must be described within that context.

It requires strong governance of service representation and implementation.’

Already widely employed in the private and public sector, SOA, according to Josuttis (2007)9 is based on three main concepts: services, interoperability through an enterprise service bus, and loose coupling. An enterprise service bus is the infrastructure, which enables high interoperability between distributed systems for services. It makes it easier to distribute business processes over multiple systems using different platforms and technologies. Loose coupling is the concept of reducing system dependencies.

SOA enables developers to reuse existing functionality to create new applications based on existing software services. The marginal cost of developing new applications via SOA is therefore relatively low, as the components and software already exist and have been tested. This is technically known as ‘orchestration’ or ‘aggregation’, a method in which new business processes and applications are combined and built from existing services. Figure 2 below, shows that different steps of a business process can be can be implemented by reusing or combining Services A and B.

Figure 2 - Service Orchestration

In the government context, a public service is a ‘real life’ business process, which can be delivered in many ways. Public services can be provided directly - in person, remotely or electronically - or via in the ‘back-office’ of public administrations without the citizens or businesses’ awareness or involvement. This study focuses on eGovernment: the provision of public services online.

An important concept in online service delivery is the notion of ‘life events’. According to Trochidis, Tambouris, and Tarabanis (2007),10 a life-event includes all public services which are related to a specific situation that citizens and businesses face. Many EU Member States have adopted this approach to organise their online public service provision in an understandable and logical way. These findings are corroborated by the development of electronic Points of Single Contact by Member States in compliance with the 2006 ‘Services Directive,’11 which follow life events for businesses.

9 SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design, Josuttis, N.M., (2007) 10 An Ontology for Modeling Life-Events, Trochidis, I., Tambouris,E., and Tarabanis, K.A., (2007) 11 Directive on services in the internal market, European Commission 2006/123/EC (12 December 2006)

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Indeed, the 2003 IDABC Report on ‘Harmonizing 'life events' online across Europe’12 concludes that ‘Europe's public administrations are increasingly defining eGovernment services around 'life events', i.e. important stages in a citizen's life, such as school, marriage, or buying a property. […] 'Life events' package government services which are usually provided by multiple government agencies around a subject that makes sense to the citizen. The IT systems of the participating government agencies then co-operate (i.e. interoperate) for the seamless delivery of the e-service.’ For this reason, the 2010 report on ‘User expectations of a life events approach for designing e-Government services’13 was based on user experiments, assessing four cross-border scenarios, which aimed to identify the ways in which people approach a life event and how they use the available online sources to find appropriate solutions. Subsequently, four life event scenarios for future eGovernment services were developed. These (stolen valuables abroad, studying abroad, working abroad and pandemic flu) served to provide a future vision of service delivery in which a combination of services, government and private, are linked to a single life event and provided in a single online application. This highlights the potential for the reuse of eGovernment services.

In order to facilitate the reuse of public services, a number of elements must be in place. As stated in the 2010 European Interoperability Strategy, interoperability can be achieved at the legal, organisational, semantic and technical level.14 For the latter, the EIIS study suggests that application of a SOA approach to eGovernment is a key enabler of reusable public services.15 It acts as ‘a service platform consisting of many services that signify elements of business processes that can be combined and recombined into different solutions and scenarios, determined by business needs.’16

1.2.3 ‘Universal’ or ‘Global’ SOA Despite the growing use and recognition of SOA as an important driver of open and interoperable service delivery in both the private and public sector, a review of related articles online, particularly specialised technology blogs, underlines the constant evolution in the ICT world. In response to the increasingly often-cited claim that ‘SOA is dead’17, already surpassed by new and innovate architectural approaches including Mashups, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing itself, proponents argue that the principles on which SOA is founded remain valid. Whilst the acronym may become outdated and the deployment mechanisms will change, the architectural approach of reusing existing services functionality to create new applications is durable.18

In this context, Web 2.0 technologies have an increasingly important role to play in the move towards ‘Universal’ or ‘Global’ SOA. Indeed, Web 2.0 has been described as being about ‘the entire Web being a reusable, shareable, public SOA.’19 Already widely employed by citizens and businesses for social networking and other online interaction online tools and platforms have the potential to alter the dynamics between public administrations and third parties in terms of public service delivery. Indeed, the report on ‘User expectations of a life events approach for designing e-Government services’ found that social networks, crowd-sourcing, rich content, blogging, and social bookmarking can offer public administrations immense opportunities in providing user-centric, collaborative online services, which are new and easy-to-use and create more value for society as a whole.

Facilitated by Web 2.0 technologies, the evolution towards ‘Universal’ or ‘Global’ SOA highlights the different levels of SOA maturity which can be identified. The Open Group has developed a seven level and seven dimension Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM)20 as is illustrated in Figure 3 below.

12‘Harmonizing 'life events' online across Europe, IDABC European eGovernment Services (2003) 13 User expectations of a life events approach for designing e-Government services, Deloitte (2010) 14 'Towards interoperability for European public services', European Commission COM(2010)744 final (16 December 2010) 15 European Interoperable Infratsructure Services: Study on reusable systems components, IDABC (2009) 16 Service Oriented Architecture Compass: Business Value, Planning, and Enterprise Roadmap, N. Bieberstein (2006) 17 SOA is Dead; Long Live Services, Thomas Manes, A., (5 January 2009) 18 4 SOA Myths Busted, InfoWorld (23 June 2009) 19 Is Web 2.0 the Global SOA? Ria News Desk (17 February 2006) 20 Technical Standard : The Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM), The Open Group (2009)

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Figure 3 – Service Integration Maturity Model (Open Group, 2009)

The OSIMM specifies:

A model against which the degree of service integration maturity of an organization can be assessed;

A process for assessing the current and desired degree of service integration maturity of an organization, using the model.

It has seven levels of maturity and seven dimensions across which maturity should be considered. Each level represents a significant increase in the level of maturity necessary to realise service orientation. The set of dimensions are considered essential indicators for effective SOA adoption.

Whilst the first ‘Silo’ level of maturity, in a similar way to the Silo Government scenario above, represents a situation in which ‘application architectures and topologies are monolithic and lack integration between other systems across the enterprise’, the seventh Dynamically Re-configurable Services level of Maturity is a scenario in which ‘application architecture supports dynamically reconfigurable business and infrastructure services and SOA solution for internal or external partner consumption.’ At this level of maturity, this means that public services can be provided in an open and interoperable way so that different actors (public administrations and third parties) can reuse these services and create new services based on them, using existing services as building blocks. ‘Universal’ or ‘Global’ SOA has been described as "outside-in" SOA,21 which means reusing services within an organisation (e.g. a public administration) as well as services not created by that organisation, by connecting internal SOA to the internet

This model is also in line with the findings of the recent study on ‘User expectations of a life events approach for designing e-Government services’22 in which the shift towards Gov 2.0 is found to entail a shift towards a more open approach to service delivery in which ‘separate information or services ‘atoms’ that are made openly available and can be re-used and mashed up’, thereby ‘will enable[ing] third-party collaboration and [..] facilitate[ing] services when and where the citizens or businesses need them’.

21 Outside - in SOA" ... Are you ready?, Linthicum, D., (21 November 2005) 22 User expectations of a life events approach for designing e-Government services, Deloitte (2010)

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1.2.4 Building Blocks According to a 2010 National University of Singapore/Microsoft study,23 public administrations, the traditional providers of public services, are ‘complex federated structures where individual government organizations work in their respective silos. This often leads to fragmented business processes and duplicated systems and technologies.’ Indeed, public services support the functioning of society and can therefore be observed across a range of policy domains: from crime and justice, education, employment and the environment, to health and well-being, tax and motoring, pensions and retirement, and travel and transport. This is reflected by the Silo Government scenario above, in which separate institutions monopolise their own ICT systems. The ‘silo approach’ is also illustrated in Figure 4 below.

Figure 4 - Silo Approach.

According to Peristeras, Loutas and Tarabanis (2008),24 public services are part of a life event and are defined by input, output and rules. In order to fulfil specific life events different online applications, represented by the green boxes, are provided to citizens and businesses. The individual components that make up these online applications are public services that serve as ‘building blocks’ of the final public service provided for citizens or businesses, which can be identified across different policy domains in the different silos of government. Duplication of services or systems may occur across these different silos, which leads to inefficiency and the duplication of effort. In the Figure above, those building blocks with similar functionality are represented by the dark and bright blue rounded rectangles. The ‘silo approach’ clearly provides scope for improvement by sharing these services as building blocks for the development and provision of other services which combine these. Through SOA-style architecture, these building blocks can be exposed or made available for other public administrations or third parties for reuse, as illustrated in Figure 5 below.

23 Enterprise Architecture as Platform for Connected Government: Understanding the Impact of Enterprise Architecture on

Connected Government – A Qualitative Analysis, Saha, P., National University of Singapore/Microsoft, (2010) 24 Organizational engineering in public administration: the state of the art on eGovernment domain modeling. Peristeras, V., Loutas, N., and Tarabanis, K., (2008)

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Figure 5 - Silo Approach with Building Blocks

Despite the traditional ‘silo approach,’ the 2010 report on ‘User expectations of a life events approach for designing e-Government services’ highlighted the growing evolution from a closed ‘monolithic’ structure of public services delivery, towards a more open approach. The ‘atomic’ government model implies a move away from a top-down system, in which public administrations develop online services in a closed, non-interoperable way, towards a bottom-up approach in which small or ‘atomic’ services are developed as part of a distributed framework and offered in an open and interoperable way.

This study seeks to categorise the building blocks of public services, which contribute to the fulfilment of life events and are found in different government silos in a cross-country context. It proposes a service taxonomy and decomposition model in order to identify those public services which can be reused and orchestrated by both public administrations and third parties, with a focus on developing the concept of ‘Fundamental Services’. Based on SOA-related literature and case studies in three Member States, this study has sought to define ‘Fundamental Services’ and the level of granularity at which these can be identified. This study also introduces the concept of a ‘cloud of public services.’

It is important to note that this study focuses in particular on Business Services which provide ‘business functionality,’ rather than Infrastructure Services, which provide a more generic ‘technical functionality. ’Business functionality’ is provided by a system to support one or more business processes and is tangible for end-users, whilst the ‘technical functionality’ of a system supports the delivery of one or multiple business services and is not directly accessible to end-users. A 2009 study on European Interoperable Infrastructure Services (EIIS)25 investigates the reusability of Infrastructure Services, and concludes that the ‘SOA paradigm appears as the more mature approach to reuse and will probably initiate more reuse.’ This holds both in the context of Infrastructure Services (the scope of the EIIS study) and Business Services (the scope of this study). Both are essential building blocks which can be reused, but Infrastructure Services provide a more generic technical support to Business Services as demonstrated by Figure 6 below.

25 European Interoperable Infrastructure Services - Study on potential reuse of system components, IDABC European

eGovernment Services (2009)

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Figure 6 – Business and Infrastructure Services

1.2.5 A ‘cloud of public services’ The notion of the cloud is often associated with ‘cloud computing’ and the technical aspects of enabling a cloud environment. In this study, however, the ‘cloud’ refers to a collection of public services serving as building blocks, which can be offered in an open and interoperable way and reused and combined by public administrations and third parties as part of other services.

It is possible to illustrate the concept by drawing on existing examples of services provided in the private sector in a ‘cloud environment.’ For example, when booking a holiday on a travel website, the customer is able to put together a complete holiday package including a place to stay, a way to get there, what to do and how to get around. Travel agents often offer these services online. Through the website, a number of related services can be used to book the different elements of the holiday package, such as flights, accommodation, a visa, transport, insurance and cultural activities at the place of destination. Although each of these services is presented via a single online application, the actual service provision is undertaken by multiple providers, which offer their services in an open and interoperable way to the travel website. This facilitates reuse by different parties. The services provide the building blocks on which the overall service is based. This is illustrated in Figure 7 below.

Traveller Travel website

Figure 7 – Cloud Model: Private Services

This private sector example could also be applied to the delivery of public services. Online applications, which rely on public services as building blocks can be provided by public administrations or third parties in order to fulfil a life event for a citizen or business. In this way the ‘cloud of public services’ enables service provision by different public and private actors. This is represented in Figure 8 below.

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Figure 8 - Cloud Model: Public Services

The ‘cloud of public services’ is linked to the concept of ‘Universal’ or ‘Global’ SOA in which services are provided openly for reuse by public administrations and third parties via the internet.

Figure 9 below illustrates the concept of a "Cloud of Public Services", which is also the framework within which the study has been performed. It focuses on the provision of the building blocks of public services in a ‘cloud of public services’ for reuse by public administrations and third parties, as illustrated by the blue arrows. In light of the factors motivating the development of eGovernment over time, as noted above, it can be expected that the ‘cloud of public services’ will have a significant impact for both service providers and the end users (citizens and businesses) in terms of Efficiency, Effectiveness and Governance. This latter factor, notably the move towards participatory systems for the collaborative production of public services by public administrations and third parties, is of relevance in the context of the Europe 2020 Strategy’s goal of ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’ and jobs.26

Figure 9 – The Concept of a Cloud of Public Services

The study analyses the possibilities for the design of a ‘cloud of public services’ and of the impact of offering public services in an open and interoperable way. It covers the following main topics:

26 Europe 2020: A Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, European Commission COM(2010) 2020 final (3 March

2010)

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Chapter 2 develops a service taxonomy and methodology in order to identify the building blocks of public services delivered online.

Following application of the service taxonomy and methodology via case studies to the life-cycle of a business in Sweden, Italy and Belgium, Chapter 3 presents the findings in terms of the public services identified. It also develops a definition of a ‘Fundamental Service’ and explores the relationship between granularity and reuse.

Chapter 4 investigates the possibilities for the design of a ‘cloud of public services’ and of the impact of offering public services in an open and interoperable way for reuse by public administrations and third parties.

Chapter 5 presents the main conclusions and recommendations for future activities. .

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2 Service taxonomy and methodology to identify public services

In order to identify the building blocks which make up public services for citizens and businesses, it is imperative to establish a common approach in terms of definitions and the categorisation of services (a service taxonomy) and a methodology to identify the different services which are part of the process of delivering an entire service to the end user (a service decomposition methodology).

This chapter describes the approach taken in this study, which comprises a review of existing SOA literature on service categorisations and SOA-related literature on methodologies to decompose a service process into different service components. The service taxonomy and the service decomposition methodology proposed allows for the identification and categorisation of services based on existing processes in the delivery of government services in three Member States (Chapter 3). This first step also facilitates an evaluation of the possibilities for the design of a ‘cloud of public services’ and the potential impacts of reuse within government or by third parties (Chapter 4).

2.1 Service Taxonomy The following section presents a set of existing taxonomies which have been reviewed for the purpose of this study. Based on these, a taxonomy of public services is proposed. It describes the building blocks of public services and contributes towards the development of a service decomposition methodology which, when applied to the case studies in different Member States, facilitates the identification of public services and the development of a definition of ‘Fundamental Services’.

2.1.1 Existing Service Taxonomies

In the SOA literature, there are a number of existing service definitions and classifications. A summary of a (non-exhaustive) number of different categorisations is elaborated below:

Application, Business and Process services (Erl, 2005); Entity, task and utility services (Erl, 2007); Element and process services (Klose, Knackstedt, & Beverungen, 2009); Process, rule and entity services (Kohlmann & Alt, 2007); Atomic and composite services (OASIS, 2009); Process, composed, basic services (Josuttis, 2007)

Application, business and process services27 In the book ‘Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design’ (Erl, 2005), the author makes a distinction between three classifications: application, business and process services.

Application services contain logic derived from a solution or technology platform; Business services contain ‘business logic’ and can be divided into task-centric services and

entity-centric services; Process services represent a business process as implemented by an orchestration platform

and described by a process definition.

27 Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology and Design, Erl. T., (2005)

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Entity, task and utility services28 In the book ‘SOA, Principles of Service Design’ (Erl, 2007), the author makes a distinction between three classifications that represent the primary service models: entity, task and utility services.

An entity service is a business centric service, which bases its functional boundary and context on one or more related business entities. It is considered a highly reusable service because it is agnostic to most parent business processes. As a result, a single entity service can be leveraged to automate multiple parent business processes.

A task service is a business service with a functional boundary, which is directly associated with a specific parent business task or process. This type of service tends to have less reuse potential and is generally positioned as the controller of a composition responsible for composing other, more process-agnostic services.

A utility service does not necessarily represent business logic, unlike the previously described service models. This essentially results in a distinct, technology-oriented service layer, which is dedicated to providing reusable, cross-cutting utility functionality, such as event logging, notification, and exception handling.

Elemental and process services29 In the article “Identification of services - a stakeholder-based approach to SOA development and its application in the area of production planning” (Klose, Knackstedt, & Beverungen, 2009), the authors make a distinction between two types of services: elemental and process services.

Elemental services comprise atomic operations. They can however, be sub-divided into entity services and task services.

• Entity services contain operations for reading and writing data that is meaningful to an organisation (such as quotes, orders, customers, or suppliers).

• Task services comprise special operations (such as the calculation of an estimated delivery date).

Process services are more complex and incorporate operations of elemental services as building blocks. Due to their modular structure, they can be set up rapidly and with a high degree of flexibility. Designed in a more sophisticated manner, process services support rather comprehensive tasks as self-contained units of the company’s business processes.

Process, rule and entity service30 In the article ‘Business-Driven Service Modeling - A Methodological Approach from the Finance Industry’ (Kohlmann & Alt, 2007), the authors identify three types of services: process, rules and entity services.

Process services support activities of the core processes of a company and include some reference to at least one activity of a business process.

Rule services encapsulate business and validation rules used by process services. Entity services encapsulate core entities and business objects, such as contract, partner or

order.

Atomic and composite services31 In the text “Reference Architecture Foundation for Service Oriented Architecture” (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards - OASIS, 2009), the authors distinguish between two kinds of services: atomic services and composite services.

Atomic Services are visible to a service consumer (or agent) via a single interface and described via a single service description that does not use or interact with other services.

28 SOA, Principle of Service Design, Erl, T. (2007) 29 Identification of services - a stakeholder-based approach to SOA development and its application in the area of production

planning, Klose, Knackstedt and Beverungen, (2009) 30 Business-Driven Service Modeling - A Methodological Approach from the Finance Industry, Kohlmann and Alt, (2007) 31 Reference Architecture Foundation for Service Oriented Architecture, Organization for the Advancement of Structured

Information Standards - OASIS, (2009)

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Composite Services are visible to a service consumer (or agent) via a single interface and described via a single service description that is the aggregation or composition of one or more other services. These other services can be atomic, composite, or both.

Process, composed and basic services Of particular interest in the context of this study, is the distinction made in the book “SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design” (Josuttis, 2007), between three types of services: Process, Composed and Basic services.

Process Services which represent actual workflows (macro flow), combining other (basic and/or composed) services through service orchestration in a long-running flow of activities (or services) which can be interrupted by human intervention. Process services are therefore stateful meaning that they can preserve certain state across multiple calls of the service;

Composed Services are based on other services which are combined into a new composed service. Conceptually composed services are stateless and short-term running. They represent a micro flow comprising a short-running flow of activities (which are services) as part of a business process;

Basic Services implement basic business functionality which it does not make sense to split into multiple services. Basic services are also stateless and can be subdivided into two types:

Basic Data Services read or write data from or to one backend system. These services typically each represent a fundamental business operation of the back-end. Basic services encapsulate platform-specific aspects and implementation details from the outside world, so that the consumer can request a service without knowing how it is implemented. These services should provide some minimal business functionality.

Basic Logic Services represent fundamental business rules. These services usually process some input data and return corresponding results.

The service categorisations summarised above are interlinked, as illustrated by Figure 10 below.

Figure 10 – Existing Service Taxonomies

The term basic service as used by Josuttis (2007) is for example also referred to in other SOA-related literature such as Krafzig, Banke and Slama (2004).32 Equally, alternative terminology is adopted for such services, including for example ‘atomic services’ (Bloomberg and Schmelzer, 2006),33 ‘elemental services’ (Kohlmann and Alt, 2007) or ‘business services’ (Erl, 2005). Similarly, Erl’s definition of process services covers both ‘composed’ and ‘process services’ in Josuttis’ definition. This term is also used in other SOA-literature, including Klose, Kanstedt and Beverungen (2009) and Kohlmann and Alt (2007). The term ‘composed service’ also reappears in the OASIS (2009) categorisation as ‘composite services’.

It is a common feature of the SOA-related literature that the different, but overlapping service definitions have been developed for the corporate or business domain. Whether applied to the business or the government arena however, services are generally implemented to support a certain process (a sequence of tasks or activities which is carried out in order to serve the end user, for example a client in a business environment, or in the case of government, a citizen or business). The

32 Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices, Krafizg, D., Banke, K., and Slama, D., (2004) 33 Service Orient or Be Doomed! How Service Orientation will Change your Business, Bloomberg, J., and Schmelzer, R., (2006)

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challenge is therefore to investigate how these definitions can be used in order to propose a service taxonomy that will be useful in the public sector domain and for the purpose of this study.

2.1.2 Proposed Service Taxonomy

The aim of this study is to investigate and analyse the possibilities of a open and interoperable approach to the provision of eGovernment services, with a focus on ‘Fundamental Services.’ The core questions that arise therefore are: At which level of granularity can ‘Fundamental Services’ be defined? and: where is the highest potential for reuse? In this context, this section proposes a service taxonomy, based on the review of existing taxonomies, which provides both for the establishment of a certain level of granularity and for investigation of the potential for reuse.

The concept of granularity implies a certain hierarchy of services, within which there are services at higher and lower levels. This hierarchy is best illustrated by the concept of service orchestration, in which different services are combined to create a new service. In other words, the newly composed service depends on the underlying services of which it consists. Josuttis (2007) captures this idea well by introducing the different stages of SOA expansion. This is shown in Figure 11 below.

In the first stage of SOA expansion, Fundamental SOA, Basic Services are introduced which are provided through a service bus in order to provide functionality captured in a back-end (of any system - database, host, mainframe, SAP system etc. - responsible for a specific group of data and functionality);

In the second stage of SOA expansion, Federated SOA, a layer of Composed Services is added which makes use of other services (Basic or Composed) through service orchestration;

In the third stage of SOA expansion, Process-enabled SOA, a layer of Process Services is added which enable processes to be managed which may be started and controlled from different front-ends and can be interrupted by human intervention.

Figure 11 - Three layers of SOA expansion (Josuttis, 2007)

Approaching SOA and the different levels of granularity at which services are provided in this way is particularly useful given this study’s objective to identify the building blocks of public services, including ‘Fundamental Services.’

In addition, as mentioned in Chapter 1, when considering life events, it is clear that public services are often interlinked and from the perspective of the end users they are part of a process. During the life event ‘getting married’, for example, a couple needs to provide the relevant authority with a birth certificate of both partners. If getting married is a service, then ‘providing the birth certificate’ is a service that precedes the getting married service. In turn, the ‘register a marriage’ service depends on the ‘provide birth certificate’ service. This simplified example shows that there is scope to combine services or even identify a process which can have different states, such as ‘couple is married for the law’, ‘couple has provided birth certificates’ or ‘couple is registered as married in the population register’. Depending on how such services are implemented, composed and process services may be identified within this life event.

On this basis, the service taxonomy proposed in this study is based on the service categorisation provided by Josuttis (2007) and is defined as follows:

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Process Public Services which represent actual workflows or business processes, combining other (basic and/or composed public) services through service orchestration.

Composed Public Services: are based on other services which are combined into a new composed service.

Basic Public Services implement basic business functionality; Basic Data Services read or write data from or to one backend system. Basic Logic Services represent fundamental business rules.

In Figure 12, the chosen service taxonomy is presented showing the relationships between the different services categories. This figure shows that a life event consists of Process Public Services. A Process Public Service is composed of Composed Public Services and/or Basic Public Services. As the name implies, Composed Public Services are composed of Basic Public Services.

These service definitions are also in line with the recommendations put forward in the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) that calls upon “public administrations to develop a component-based service model, allowing the establishment of European public services by reusing, as much as possible, existing service components”. The EIF defines basic public services as services “developed primarily for direct use by the public administration that created them, or by their direct customers, i.e. businesses and citizens, but are made available for reuse elsewhere with a view to providing aggregate public services”. According to the EIF, “aggregate public services are constructed by grouping a number of basic public services that can be accessed in a secure and controlled way [..] they can be provided by several administrations at any level, i.e. local, regional, national or even EU level"34. The service taxonomy proposed here is therefore in line with the EIF and provides a more elaborated distinction of aggregate public services into composed and process public services.

Life Event

Process Public Service

Composed Public Service

Basic Public Service

Basic Data Service

Basic Logic Service

consists of

composed of

composed of

composed of

is ais a

Figure 12 – Taxonomy of Public Services

A SOA view of the service taxonomy can also be developed. This is illustrated in Figure 13 below.

34 European Commission: Towards interoperability for European public services, COM (2010) 744

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Figure 13 – SOA View of the Service Taxonomy based on Josuttis (2007)

Returning to two of the core questions of this study (At what level of granularity can ’Fundamental Services’ be defined? and where is the highest potential for reuse?), Chapter 3 presents the main findings of the implementation of this service taxonomy as part of the methodology (proposed in the next section) in order to develop a definition of a ‘Fundamental Service.’ Whilst Chapter 4 subsequently investigates the potential for the real-life reuse of these services, the SOA-related literature provides some more conceptual ideas for looking at the concept of granularity and reusability.

In the context of the proposed service taxonomy, an important distinction is made between ‘stateful’ and ‘stateless’ services. Stateless is defined by Colan (2004)35 as the idea that a service should be independent and return a response as an independent, self-contained request, which does not require information or state from one request to another when implemented. Process Services are required to keep track of a state because they represent actual, long-running workflows. Composed and Basic Services are stateless, because they need to return the result (storing some element in a database or calculating the result of a rule, for example) as soon as the services are executed and return in their original state. Stateless services are more likely to be reusable given that they perform an operation and return as an independent, self-contained request.

Josuttis (2007) also refers to Allen (2006), who defines a set of guidelines for ‘an optimum level of granularity for a lowest level service.’ Allen argues that:

It should be possible to describe the service in terms of function, information, goals, and rules, but not in terms of groups of other services.

The function set of a service should operate as a family unit that offers business capability. A single role should take responsibility for the service. The service should be as self-contained as possible. Ideally, it should be autonomous.

Josuttis (2007) goes on to argue that Basic Services, which can be found in the lowest of the three layers of service expansion, the Fundamental SOA layer, should have the so-called ‘ACID’ properties:

35 Service-Oriented Architecture expands the vision of web services, Part 1: Characteristics of Service-Oriented Architecture, Colan, M., (21 April 2004)

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Atomic: meaning that the call of the service either succeeds or has no effect. Ensuring this

property is the task of the backend that provides a service. Consistent: meaning that after the service call, the backend is left in a legal, consistent state.

Thus, no service call should be able to bring a backend into an inconsistent state. Isolated: meaning that a service being processed by a backend is not influenced by other

service calls running on the same backend at the same time. That is, a read service should return data that is consistent in itself.

Durable: meaning that after a service call succeeds, it is guaranteed that the effect is persistent. That is, no system failure is able to undo the result of the service call by accident.

Allen (2006) further introduces the concept of service stability to indicate the level of reusability, by distinguishing between three key types of business services: Commodity, Territory and Value-Added services. The former are universal, stable services, sufficiently established to be used at a low-level of risk and with maximum reuse in mind. The latter are services which differentiate a company from competitors and usually are highly innovative.

With these theoretical concepts in mind, Chapter 3 explores the different types of services with the aim of establishing a definition of ‘Fundamental Services,’ following the implementation of the service taxonomy and methodology presented in the next section in three Member States.

2.2 Service Decomposition Methodology Based on the proposed service taxonomy, a decomposition of services must be undertaken in order to identify the different building blocks of public services, including ‘Fundamental Services’. The following section presents a set of existing service decomposition methodologies, which have been reviewed for the purpose of this study. Based on these, a new methodology to identify public services is proposed. The service taxonomy and methodology is then applied to three Member States, in order to identify public services and develop a definition of ‘Fundamental Services.’ This facilitates an analysis of the possibilities for the design of a ‘cloud of public services’ and of the impact of offering public services in an open and interoperable way for reuse by public administrations and third parties.

2.2.1 Existing Service Decomposition Methodologies

In the SOA-related literature, there are a number of existing methodologies, which aim to identify services. A summary of a (non-exhaustive) number of different categorisations is elaborated below:

Service-Oriented Modeling and Architecture (Arsanjani, Ghosh, Allam, Abdollah, Ganapathy, and Holley, 2008)

Business Transformation Enablement Program (Government of Canada); Service Oriented Design and Development Method (Papazoglou & Heuvel, Service Oriented

Design and Development Methodology, 2006); Component Identification (Wang and Zhan); Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology and Design (Erl, 2005).

Service-oriented modeling and architecture methodology (SOMA)36 The SOMA method is a process for the identification, specification and realization of services. It proposes a layered model, which uses both top-down and bottom up approaches, together with goal-service modelling. High-level business process functionality is externalized for large-grained services. Smaller-grained services -- those that help realize the higher level of services -- are identified by examining the existing legacy functionality and deciding how to create adaptors and wrappers, or componentizing the legacy to externalize the desired functionality. This is illustrated in Figure 14.

36 SOMA: A method for developing service-oriented solutions, Arsanjani, A., Ghosh, S., Allam, A., Abdollah, T., Ganapathy, S., & Holley, K. (2008)

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Figure 14 – Service-oriented Modelling and Architecture Methodology

Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP)37 The BTEP provides a Toolkit enabling strategic planning and design across governments supporting interoperability and integration. It provides a ‘common language’ to identify programs and services that serve the same target groups. The tools enable different public sector actors to undertake collaborative alignment, analysis, and problem definition. This creates consensus about transformation opportunities, such as streamlining business processes and integrating services.

One of the tools in the BTEP Toolkit – the Governments of Canada Strategic Reference Models – provides ‘universal’ definitions for terms commonly used in the public sector, such as ‘program’, ‘service’, ‘need’, ‘output’ and ‘outcome’. This enables participants to produce models that graphically and ‘objectively’ depict different views of their business, allowing high level analysis. The Toolkit aims to enable governments to use the same approach to identify, design and implement change, resulting in greater consistency and reusability in business transformation across the public sector.

Service Oriented Design and Development Method (SOADM)38 This SOADM is based on an iterative and incremental process which comprises one preparatory and eight distinct main phases that concentrate on business processes. These phases are planning, analysis and design, construction and testing, provisioning, deployment, execution and monitoring. The approach, illustrated in Figure 15 below, considers multiple realization scenarios for business processes and Web services that take into account both technical and business concerns.

37 Business Transformation Enablement Program (ВТЕР), Government of Canada (n.d.) 38 Service Oriented Design and Development Methodology. International, Papazoglou, M., and Heuvel, W., (2006)

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Figure 15 - Service Oriented Design and Development Method (SOADM)

During the Planning phase, the project feasibility, goals, rules and procedures are set and requirements are gathered. The Analysis and Design phase is based on a thorough business case analysis which considers various alternatives for implementing business processes. Service Construction and Testing involves coding web services and business processes using the specifications that were developed during the design phase. The service Provisioning phase then enforces the business model, which is chosen during the planning phase. Once the provisioning model has been established, the Web services may be deployed and advertised in a repository system. The final phase deals with the execution and monitoring of Web services. This phase includes the actual binding and run-time invocation of the deployed services as well as managing and monitoring their lifecycle.

Component Identification Methodology39 Component Identification is a formal technique used to analyse domain business models to develop a set of business components with high reuse value and good reuse performance. Component Identification is a main task in domain engineering, in which a set of reusable components are obtained by analysis, clustering and abstraction from domain business models.

The identification process consists of the following steps, which are illustrated in Figure 16 below:

Partition: Abstraction: Aggregation and decomposition: Structure design: Performance evaluation:

In the figure below, a graphical representation of the Component Identification process is given.

39 A Survey of Business Component Identification Methods and Related Techniques Wang, Z., & Zhan, X. X., (n.d.)

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Figure 16 - Component Identification Methodology

Service Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology and Design This method identifies six steps in the lifecycle of an SOA delivery project: Service Oriented Analysis; Service Oriented Design; Service development; testing; deployment; and administration.

The first two phases are of particular relevance to this study. Service Oriented Analysis is where the initial scope of an SOA project is determined, service layers are mapped out and the individual services are modelled as service candidates that comprise a preliminary SOA.

The model considers three main types of service layers: Application, Business and Orchestration.

The Application service layer abstracts non-business-related logic into a set of services that can be referred to as application services (or utility services). Their aim is to provide reusable functions that address cross cutting concerns by representing common enterprise resources and capabilities.

The Business service layer represents a collection of services based on the business service model. It is through this service layer that a close alignment between an organization’s business and technology domains can be achieved. In most enterprises, designing a business service layer leads to the creation of two common business service models, each of which establishes its own sub-layer.

The Orchestration service layer introduces a parent level of abstraction. Within this service layer, process services comprise other services which provide a specific sets of functions, independent of the business rules and scenario specific logic required to execute a process instance.

Service oriented design is a heavily standards driven phase that incorporates industry conventions and service oriented principles into the service design process. It is the process by which concrete physical service designs are derived from logical service candidates and then assembled into abstract compositions that implements a business process.

To analyse the required services in an organisation, a strategy is needed. Three common strategies emerge, each addressing this problem in a different manner: Top down; Bottom up; and Agile.

2.2.2 Proposed Service Decomposition Methodology

Each of the existing methodologies assessed include a number of advantages and disadvantages. Whilst the Service-Oriented Modelling and Architecture methodology offers a pragmatic combination of a top down and bottom up approach to service identification, its focuses on a technical approach to implementation, which is beyond the scope of this study. The Service Oriented Design and Development Method, on the other hand, is well documented and offers an iterative approach to service identification, however fails to define an appropriate level of granularity. The Component Identification approach meanwhile provides an interesting component identification process, but its formality is at once a strength and weakness - it provides a proven approach, which is though difficult to understand for the non-initiated reader. Whilst the Service-Oriented Architecture methodology is very detailed and well illustrated by case studies, it lacks the necessary criteria for reuse. The BTEP is the only model which is already used in government context and therefore provides a common language, which is commonly used in the public sector. Its presentation as Toolkit, rather than a fully described methodology and lack of granularity represent however a disadvantage.

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Given this study’s objective to identify the building blocks of public services including ‘Fundamental Services’, elements of the existing methodologies have been combined to develop a new top-down service decomposition model. It consists of three steps and is illustrated in Figure 17 below.

Figure 17 – Three Step Service Decomposition Methodology

Step 1: Define the overall scope and life events The first step is to define the scope of public services or domain. The UN Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG) is the prevalent system for the classification for public services in public sector literature and statistics.40 Given that the functions identified are designed to apply to the government of different countries, however it provides a long, general list of categories of public services.

As noted in Chapter 1.2, this study therefore adopts a ‘life events’ approach to the identification of public services. For the purpose of the case studies, the focus is placed on the life cycle of a business. The European Commission has adopted a common ‘life events’ approach, providing practical information about online government services provided to businesses in the different Member States.41 It identifies eight major groups of life events (these are also called ‘business episodes’): Starting up, Managing, Research and Innovation, Expanding, EU Market, Responsible Business, and Exit Strategy. The life cycle is illustrated in Figure 18 below.

This common approach provides a framework for application of the proposed service taxonomy and enables the involved actors to be identified per life event. The aim of the study is however not to create an exhaustive overview of public services provided throughout the life-cycle of a business by all public administrations. A number of life events have therefore been selected.

40 The UN Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG), UN Statistics Division (n.d.) 41 Your Europe, European Commission (n.d.): http://ec.europa.eu/youreurope/

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Figure 18 – Scope example: Life Cycle of a Business

Step 2: Identify the laws, input and output In the second phase, information concerning the service delivery process is analysed.

According to Trochidis, Tambouris and Tarabanis (2007) and Peristeras, Loutas and Tarabanis (2008), a service requires input and provides output in order to operate. A public service therefore contains a certain ‘logic’ which is specified in the rules.. The legislation which defines the public services which are part of the life event is therefore identified. This relationship, in which public services rely on each other and other sources for input and output, can be illustrated by the concept of ‘nested services’ in Figure 19 where PA is a public administration, s represents a service and i an input.

Figure 19 –The Concept of Nested Services (Peristeras 2006)42

42 Governance Enterprise Architecture - GEA - for Reengineering Public Administration, Peristeras, V., (2006).

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Following desk research and interviews, a set of services is identified and described, based on an abstraction of the steps which businesses need to carry out in order to complete the life event.

Step 3: Create the service maze and identify services The third step is to analyse the identified services in terms of the input, output and rules related to the public services. In this step, the identified services are mapped in accordance with the service taxonomy, according to the definitions presented above.

The approach illustrated in Table 1 is proposed as a method to visualise the building blocks of the different public services, as well as their input and output, once the relevant legislation has been identified. These can subsequently be presented in a ‘service maze’.

Table 1– Building blocks for the Service Decomposition Methodology

Building Block Meaning

Life Event

Process Public Service (PPS) / Composed Public Service (CPS)

Basic Data Service (BDS)

Basic Logic Service (BLS)

Data

“depends on” relationship: B depends on the output from A.

“uses” relationship: B uses the data in the case.

“are part of” relationship: B is part of life event.

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Based on this ‘service maze’, a list of public services categorised in accordance with the service taxonomy can be identified. This process contributes towards the development of a definition of ‘Fundamental Services’ and exploration of the potential for and impact of providing the building blocks of public services in an open and interoperable way in line with the ‘cloud of public services’ concept.

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3 Identifying public services and fundamental services

The proposed methodology presented in the previous chapter was implemented and tested in three Member States in the form of case studies. This chapter provides a synthesis of the results of these case studies, by presenting:

the most relevant findings per group of life events; the implications for re-use and ‘fundamental services’; the implications for the methodology as such and lessons learned.

The aim of the exercise was to test the methodology detailed in the previous chapter as well as to investigate the concept of fundamental services. In total 239 different services were identified in the case studies, which shows that by using the methodology one can identify the services or building blocks. Several examples were also encountered that provide an insight into how public administrations have already moved towards closer cooperation between public administrations, opening up and sharing services between actors (including third parties) and the application of SOA principles to achieve such implementations.

3.1 Implementation of the methodology In order to identify the building blocks of public services related to the life events in the business life cycle, desk research was conducted for Sweden, Italy and Belgium. In addition, interviews were undertaken with representatives of the public administrations providing services to businesses in order to gain an insight in the way public services are organised and how they can be decomposed. Focus Groups were also carried out to validate the outcome and the resulting ‘service mazes.’

Many different life events can be identified in the life cycle of a business. Within these, legal obligations arise to which public services are linked in order for businesses to interact with government. Coverage of the whole life cycle of a business is beyond the scope of this study. It focuses instead on selected parts of the life cycle, which have been analysed in the three Member States. These include life events related to starting up a business, managing a business, responsible business practices, trading beyond the EU market and the business’s exit strategy (closing down).

It is important to note that the case studies rely on the amount of existing documentation about public services, which is generally rather limited, and interviews with civil servants in charge of their delivery. This section therefore marks a departure from the ‘as is’ situation. Based on desk research and interviews, an insight was gained into the processes related to public services and service decomposition was made. The aim was not to provide an exhaustive overview for each of the public services, but to implement and test the taxonomy and methodology and engage in an open discussion with stakeholders in the Member States about them and the concept of ‘Fundamental Services.’ The resulting descriptions therefore provide a ‘to be’ situation, in which the process has been ‘decomposed’ into a set of services that support its implementation. These services may already be implemented electronically, either as part of legacy (back-end) system or in a service oriented way (in Belgium, for example), or they may not be automated and are processed manually.

The following sections provide a synthesis of the most relevant findings from the implementation of the methodology in the three Member States. In addition, it highlights the most interesting examples of existing approaches in these Member States. In Annex 1 more detailed findings are given in terms of the services identified as part of the process of delivering public service related to a life event for a business in the three Member States.

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3.1.1 Identifying public services as part of the life event ‘Starting up’

Different service providers involved Based on implementation of the methodology in Sweden, Italy and Belgium, the different actors involved in the delivery of services associated with the life event ‘Starting up’ were identified. Generally, public administrations in the domain of the business registry, tax agency and social security provide services to businesses and the legislation determines what their specific role is.

In Sweden, a company must register with the Business Registry kept by the Swedish Company Registration Office (Bolagsverket). New businesses must also report to the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket) in order to register for direct and indirect taxes.

In Italy, a business has to register in the Business Registry (Registro delle Imprese). Using the Single Notice (Comunicazione Unica), the new company simultaneously applies to the Italian Revenue Agency (Agenzia delle Entrate) for a VAT number and a fiscal code, and registers with the Social Security Administration (Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale). In specific cases, businesses also require certificates, authorisations or licences.

In Belgium, the eDepot online platform and the ‘one stop shops’ for company registration enable notaries and the so-called ‘ondernemingsloketten’ to complete, sign and deposit the forms and documents required to create a company, based on the services provided by the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE) or Business Registry, amongst other public administrations. Businesses must also register with one of the social insurance organisations for self-employed or, if the company has employees, with the Belgian social security administration for salaried workers. Registrations for social security are processed through the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS). An application for a VAT number must be filed with the local VAT office.Whilst the involvement of the different public administrations highlights the need for close cooperation in order to deliver effective and efficient public services for end-users, the similarities at the high-level in the services offered suggests a high level of reusability by public and private actors (third parties).

Closer collaboration in providing eGovernment solutions Implementation of the methodology also revealed that in recent years, attention has been paid in all three Member States to developing more efficient eGovernment solutions. In Sweden, for example, there is a joint service for electronic company registration run by the Swedish Companies Registration Office and the Swedish Tax Agency (verksamt.se). Italy has established an electronic method of business registration via the ‘Communicazione Unica,’ containing all the administrative, tax, social and insurance information which previously had to be sent to different bodies in different ways. In Belgium, the eDepot enables notaries to electronically sign the act of establishment and send it simultaneously to the Federal Ministry of Justice, the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE), and the Belgian Official Gazette.

These examples show how eGovernment solutions have been developed which improve the collaboration between the different public administrations involved in delivering services as part of the ‘Starting up’ life event.

Real life example: eDepot Analysis of the life event ‘Starting up’ in Sweden, Italy and Belgium highlights an example of a implementation of electronic public services shared between different actors. The eDepot project is a collaboration between the Royal Federation of Belgian Notaries, the Belgian Federal Institution for Communication and Technology (FEDICT) and the Agency for Administrative Simplification (Agence pour le Simplification Administrative (ASA)/Dienst Administratieve Vereenvoudiging (DAV)), which offers notaries a quick and easy way to create a company in all administrative databases, as illustrated in Figure 2043 below.

43 Image provided by: http://www.simplification.fgov.be/showpage.php?iPageID=3622&sLangCode=FR

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Figure 20 - eDepot Architecture

Via the eDepot, notaries sign deeds deposited electronically using their REALcard which serve as e-ID card, the notary then receives a company number for their client, which is able to start its activities.

As noted above, the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE) is also used by the 9 not-for-profit ‘onestopshops’ (ondernemingsloketten) in Belgium for starting a business. This platform is provided by the Federal Ministry of Economy in Belgium and is used by these third parties. Currently, the CBE is being redeveloped in a SOA-approach which is expected to be finalised in 2012.

This example shows that through collaboration of the involved parties and the SOA-based implementation for reusable services the process of starting a company in Belgium has been substantially simplified and made more efficient. Instead of taking 56 days to complete it now takes no more than 3 days.

3.1.2 Identifying public services as part of the life event group ‘Managing’

Different levels of service providers involved Based on the analysis of the ‘Managing’ life event group in the three Member States, the different actors involved in delivering public services to businesses while managing a business have been identified. Although encompassing a wider range of individual life events compared to ‘Starting up,’ similar public administrations in the domain of the Business Registry, tax and social security are involved.

In Sweden, for example, all limited companies are required to submit their annual report to the Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket). In addition, tax payers have their own account with the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket), with which declarations for direct and indirect taxes are registered. A business is also obliged to pay social security or employers’ contributions to provide social insurance cover for its employees.

In Italy, self-assessment tax declarations for direct and indirect and local taxes are submitted by companies to the Revenue Agency (Agenzia delle Entrate) using the F24 and F23 forms respectively

In Belgium, companies are required to pay direct and indirect taxes via the tax administration. A major business process re-engineering and computerisation has been carried out recently

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by 3,000 Belgian public and private actors in the social sector from different levels (national, regional and local), under the coordination of the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS).

For the tasks linked to land and property (for example, requesting a building permit and buying/selling), it is notable that alongside the national Land Agency or Registry, local municipalities and regional bodies, such as public health and fire departments, play a significant role in fulfilling the life event. This situation is true of Sweden, Italy and Belgium and highlights the multi-level dimension of public service delivery, and by extension, of open and interoperable approaches to eGovernment.

Real life example: CBSS The life event ‘Managing’ also highlights an existing SOA eGovernment implementation in Belgium, the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS). It is based on the mutual, electronic exchange of information and services between social security databases. Like the eDepot for business start-up (and the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE)), it centres around the Federal Service Bus (FSB), a service integrator managed by FEDICT, which provides an interface for public services which can be reused and combined by public administrations and third parties. It enables citizens and employers to manage their interaction with the social security sector electronically, as illustrated by Figure 2144 below.

Figure 21 – Belgian Cross Roads Bank for Social Security (CBSS)

The CSSB provides 42 e-services for employers, including declarations regarding employment, discharge, salary and working time, and social risk. The CSSB also comprises a range of e-services for citizens, including the application for and consultation of social benefits.

3.1.3 Identifying public services as part of the life events ‘Expanding,’ ‘EU Market,’ ‘Responsible Business’ and ‘Exit Strategy’

Different service providers involved Implementation of the methodology in the three Member States has enabled the different actors involved in the delivery of services associated with the life event groups ‘Expanding,’ ‘EU Market’, ‘Responsible Business’ and ‘Exit Strategy’ to be identified. Despite the variety of tasks included in the four groups, it is notable that the role of the business register is again significant, particularly in relation to the ‘Exit Strategy’ in Sweden and Italy, which reflects the life event ‘Starting up’.

44 Image provided by: http://www.law.kuleuven.be/icri/frobben/wp/

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In Sweden, the merger of one company with another must be assessed by the Competition Authority and verified by and reported to the Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket), and, for some companies, to the Tax Agency (Skatteverket). In a similar manner to a company commencing activities, its ‘Exit Strategy’ is also managed in part by the Swedish Companies Registration Office, which decides who will be the liquidator for a limited company. On under liquidation, a notice must be submitted to the Business Registry. For a business to expand outside the EU, import and export permits are granted by the customs authority, whilst the Environmental Courts or the County Administrative Boards provide licences for hazardous activities and substances.

In Italy, the Chamber of Commerce plays a role in facilitating businesses’ access to Export and Import Licences when trading outside the EU Market. As in Sweden, the dissolution of a business, whether via voluntary or enforced liquidation, must be recorded in the Business Register in which the final liquidation balance sheet must be signed and recorded.

The fact that services provided by the Business Registry are involved across a broad range of life events is not surprising as it is the base register in which information on businesses is maintained and kept up-to-date from start-up to exit. Nevertheless, it clearly highlights that across different life events, as part of different processes, collaboration between the Business Register and other public administrations is needed to fulfil the life event. Establishing reusable services at this level is therefore an obvious first enabler to establishing integrated services which build on Business Register services as building blocks.

The analysis of the life events ‘Expanding,’ ‘EU Market’, ‘Responsible Business’ and ‘Exit Strategy’ in the case studies, clearly show the continued involvement of the key public administrations such as the Business Register. The clear parallels between public services provided by the Business Registry across the life-cycle of a business suggest that there is a high potential for its services to be provided as building blocks in an open and interoperable way and to be reused by public administrations and third parties, as discussed below.

3.2 Towards identifying fundamental services The aim of this study is to identify ‘Fundamental Services’ in the context of SOA approaches to the provision of eGovernment services. The key questions which arise are: At which level of granularity can ‘Fundamental Services’ be defined? And where is the highest potential for reuse? Following a review of existing service definitions and categorisations, a service taxonomy was therefore developed, which provides both for the establishment of a certain level of granularity and for investigation of the potential for reuse. It is based on the service categorisation provided by Josuttis (2007) and is defined as follows:

Process Services which represent actual workflows (macro flow), combining other (basic and/or composed) services through service orchestration in a long-running flow of activities (or services) which can be interrupted by human intervention. Process services are therefore stateful meaning that they can preserve certain state across multiple calls of the service;

Composed Services are based on other services which are orchestrated into a new composed service. Conceptually composed services are stateless and short-term running. They represent a micro flow comprising a short-running flow of activities (which are services) as part of a business process;

Basic Services implement basic business functionality and which it does not make sense to split into multiple services. Basic services are also stateless and can be subdivided into two types:

Basic Data Services read or write data from or to one backend system. These services typically each represent a fundamental business operation of the back-end. Basic services encapsulate platform-specific aspects and implementation details from the outside world, so that the consumer can request a service without knowing how it is implemented. These services should provide some minimal business functionality.

Basic Logic Services represent fundamental business rules. These services usually process some input data and return corresponding results.

An advantage of this service taxonomy is that it distinguishes between ‘stateful’ and ‘stateless’ services. These are important when investigating reusability, as discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.

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Similarly, the taxonomy specifies a high level of granularity, which implies a hierarchy of services. SOA enables developers to reuse or combine existing functionality at different levels to create new applications based on existing services. Josuttis (2007) illustrates this idea by introducing three stages of SOA expansion. In the 1st stage, Fundamental SOA, basic services ‘wrap a backend or problem domain so that consumers (and higher-level services) can access the backend by using the common SOA infrastructure.’ ‘Backend’ refers to any ‘authentic source’, for example a database, which is accessed through the basic services, hiding the complexity to service consumers. In the 2nd stage of SOA expansion, Federated SOA, a layer of composed services is introduced, which makes use of other services via service reuse. In the 3rd stage, Process-enabled SOA, a layer of process services is added which enable processes to be managed from different front-ends and can be interrupted by human intervention.

Implementation of the methodology in three Member States revealed that the majority of public services identified are Basic Services at the Fundamental SOA level. 239 services were found in total, 118 of which are Basic Data Services and 54 are Basic Logic Services. This highlights the fact that public administrations regularly deal with the registration of data related to businesses and citizens and therefore have ownership of specific information stored in backend systems to support the delivery of public services. The Basic Logic Services, on the other hand, all contain a degree of logic derived from the legislation. Many of these services are therefore ‘verfication’ services, which verify compliance with a certain established law or rule. The totals are illustrated by Table 2 below. Many of these services are similar in scope across the Member States investigated, i.e. they provide a similar functionality (e.g. to register a new business in the business registry), although details of each service may differ due to different legal environments and requirements for data input and output.

Table 2 – Total Identified Services in three Member States

Country Process Public Services

Composed Public

Services

Basic Data Services

Basic Logic Services

Total

Sweden 19 6 46 27 98 Italy 11 11 42 18 82

Belgium 9 11 30 9 59 All 39 28 118 54 239

Given the fact that both data and rules (Basic Data and Basic Logic Services) are clearly essential to the delivery of public services for businesses and apparent in different public administrations across three Member States, it is at the basic level that ‘Fundamental Services’ should be defined.

In Josuttis (2007), Allen (2006) defines ‘an optimum level of granularity for a lowest level service:’

It should be possible to describe the service in terms of function, information, goals, and rules, but not in terms of groups of other services.

The function set of a service should operate as a family unit that offers business capability. A single role should take responsibility for the service. The service should be as self-contained as possible. Ideally, it should be autonomous.

Based on this and Josuttis’ (2007) contention that Basic Services should conform to the ‘ACID’ properties: Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable, ‘Fundamental services’ can be defined as:

A ‘Fundamental Service’ is a Basic public service (both Basic Data and Basic Logic Services) that is autonomous and that is provided by a single responsible role, and receives as input only the output

from Basic Data Services, documents or objects produced by citizens, businesses or administrations.

Figure 22 below situates ‘Fundamental Services’ within the service taxonomy used in this study. This definition also dovetails with the recommendation of the EIF for public administrations to use “a common [service] taxonomy of basic public services” and proposes an initial definition for this taxonomy of basic public services as fundamental services.

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Life Event

Process Public Service

Composed Public Service

Basic Public Service

Basic Data Service

Basic Logic Service

consists of

composed of

composed of

composed of

is ais a

Figure 22 – Service Taxonomy with Fundamental Services

According to this formulation, the study has identified a total of 172 ‘Fundamental Services’ across the Member States within a selected set of public services provided within the life-cycle of a business.

Table 3 provides an overview of the ‘Fundamental Services’ (Basic Data and Basic Logic Services) identified by applying the service decomposition methodology in the ‘Starting Up’ Life Event.

At the level of Basic Logic Services, a number of similarities can be identified across the three Member States. The setup of the company is, for example, verified in all countries, whether it is based on an official deed of incorporation by a notary or another document (such as a memorandum or business start-up notice). In addition, a verification of the professional skills, or for some professions the authorisation to perform the activity (certificates/authorisations/licences), is performed. At the level of the Basic Data Services, clear similarities can also be identified in Belgium, Italy and Sweden. In order to start up, for example, businesses are required to register, file a deed of incorporation and notify the commencement of activities (albeit via different methods) in with the Business Registry. A comparable registration process takes place with the tax administration, for both direct and indirect taxes.

Table 3 – Identified Fundamental Services – Starting Up

Starting Up Belgium Italy Sweden

Basic Data Services

Business Registry

Publish in Official Gazette

Register in Italian General Business Register (REA)

Publish in Official Gazette

Business Registry

File deed of incorporation

Register deed of Incorporation

-

Business Registry

Activate enterprise in CBE

Register Start of business notice (Municipality)

Provide certificate of registration

Tax Register business for Register business for Register company for

Fundamental services

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VAT tax (VAT/tax code) VAT and F, A, and FA-skatt

Basic Logic Services

Business Registry

Verify founders / owners

- Verify founders/ owners

Business Registry

- - Verify Board Members

Business Registry

- - Verify auditor(s)

Business Registry

- - Verify business name

Business Registry

Verify deed of incorporation

Verify Start of business notice

Verify capital shares with memorandum

Tax - - Verify company location

Economic affairs / Tax

Verify professional skills

Verify certificates /authorisations /licences

Verify business activities

Table 4 provides an overview of the ‘Fundamental Services’ (Basic Data and Basic Logic Services) identified by applying the service decomposition methodology in the ‘Managing’ Life Event.

Similar Basic Services are identified, which are related to the legal obligations faced by businesses to submit annual accounts, process tax declarations, acquire building permits and buy and sell property. At the level of Basic Logic Services, the relevant public administrations verify annual accounts. In the tax domain, comparable verifications of declarations related to indirect and direct taxes take place. In this context, the importance of national laws and practice in determining public service provision can also be observed. Only in Sweden, for example, are annual comparisons and benchmarks of tax declarations performed. For the acquisition of a building permit and buying and selling of a property, similar verification processes can again be seen, despite the fact that many take place at the municipal level. For Basic Data Services, clear similarities can also be identified in Belgium, Italy and Sweden. Businesses must for example, file annual accounts, register tax declarations and carry out comparable registrations with the Land Registry or Agency when building or buying/selling a property.

Table 4 – Identified Fundamental Services – Managing

Managing Belgium Italy Sweden

Basic Data Services

Accounts File annual account N/A File annual account / report

Tax Register declaration (direct and indirect)

Register IRAP, IREP, IPREF and VAT declaration

Register declared taxes

Land and - Register building Register building plot

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property (Building)

(shape on plot)

Land and property (Buying / Selling)

- Register ownership Register ownership

Basic Logic Services

Accounts Verify annual account N/A Verify annual account / report

Tax Verify direct tax declaration

Verify IRAP declaration

Verify obligatory declarations

Tax Verify indirect tax declaration

Verify IREP declaration

-

Tax - Verify IPREF declaration

-

Tax - Verify F24 -

Tax - Verify VAT Compare to previous years

Tax - - Perform benchmark

Land and property

- Verify buyer /seller Verify owner / seller

Land and property

Verify clearance (fire department)

Verify Clearance (Public Health)

Verify building plot

Land and property

Verify dossier Verify Clearance (Fire)

-

Land and property

Verify specific requirements

Verify Conformity (Regional Technical Office)

-

Land and property

- Determine value per unit

Estimate total value

Land and property

- Verify destination of use

Verify building usage

Land and property

- Verify property files Verify sales price

A full list of ‘Fundamental Services’ identified, which also take into account the ‘Expanding,’ Responsible Business,’ ‘EU Market’ and ‘Exit Strategy’ Life Events can be found in Annex II.

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Generally, it can be said that in the field of public service provision for businesses, there is much scope for services to be reused by public administrations and third parties, both within Member States and potentially between Member States. This is particularly apparent in the field of ‘Starting Up,’ in which, based on application of the service taxonomy and service decomposition model, clear parallels can be drawn between the building blocks of public services identified. In comparison with the tax domain, which is very task-specific for example, these high level services are likely to have a high level of reusability, as discussed below. It can also be expected that the potential impact of offering these services in an open and interoperable way will be significant. Their exposure via SOA-style architecture outside the different silos of government in which they are traditionally offered will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery. This is further investigated in Chapter 4, which explores the possibilities for the design and impact of a ‘cloud of public services’.

3.3 Implications for the service taxonomy and methodology Based on the case studies, it is clear that the service taxonomy and methodology successfully facilitated the identification of public service across the life cycle of a business in three Member States.

3.3.1 Service Taxonomy The service taxonomy provides a workable framework for categorising services. This was confirmed by the interviewees in Sweden, Italy and Belgium, several of whom have been involved in SOA-type implementations and noted that the establishment of common definitions via a taxonomy of services is useful when analysing public services at different levels of granularity and their reusability.

The definitions used for this study are therefore important enablers for the identification of public services, particularly those which can be shared by different public administrations and third parties in an open and interoperable way. The section above illustrates the importance contribution of the service taxonomy towards the development of a definition of ‘Fundamental Services’.

3.3.2 Service Decomposition Methodology Similarly, implementation of the proposed service decomposition methodology enabled public services to be identified and a service maze to be produced for different life events across different government domains. As described in Chapter 2, implementation of the methodology entailed three main steps:

Step 1: Define the overall scope and life events The first step was to define the scope of the public services to be identified. It is important to clearly establish the public administrations which act as service providers. This study focused on selected life events, which form the life cycle of a business, as in-depth coverage of all public services offered to businesses for each life event would require in-depth input from all the involved administrations.

Once a clear view on the scope has been established it needs to be evaluated in line with the available time and resources to conduct the analysis. This is crucial given the fact that gaining a detailed insight into public services is an intensive exercise in which knowledge of the legal context, the implementation of services and inputs and outputs of services is necessary.

In order to execute the analysis the commitment of the different public agencies to provide the required documentation on legislation, services and processes, and to be available for interviews and focus groups is essential. The contact people need a certain level of knowledge of the activities being carried out by the public administration linked to the overall public service which is delivered. A clear plan should be established to cover the different areas.

The amount of time required to conduct the analysis depends on:

The amount of public administrations involved in the scope; The availability of existing information ; The amount of public services to be covered; The availability of contact people at the public administrations with sufficient in-depth

knowledge of the delivery of the identified public services.

Given the experience gained from implementing the method in the three Member States the following activities are recommended for this first step:

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Activity 1: Create an overview of tasks and related public services linked to life events Activity 2: Evaluate the scope Activity 3: Gain commitment for input: information, contact persons, planning

In line with the scope, the required input is based on available secondary documentation

Step 2: Identify the laws, input and output In order to identify the laws from which public services derive, desk research was undertaken on the situation in Sweden, Italy and Belgium. It served to identify the tasks performed and the related public services offered to businesses at a high level of granularity (for example, register a new business with the Business Registry).

Interviews were then carried out with representatives of the public administrations providing services to businesses in order to gain an insight into the way public services are organised and how they can be decomposed. It is important to note that the methodology provides for an abstraction of the public services, with a focus on the input required and output. This is a creative process on the part of interviewer and interviewee. It represents a departure from the ‘as is’ situation towards a ‘to be’ situation, in which the building blocks of public services are identified. These have the potential to be offered in a ‘cloud of public services’ and to be reused by both public and private actors.

Once the planning has been established the analysis can begin with reporting in more detail on the identified public services linked to the life events. Establishing a maximum amount of knowledge on the public services that can be acquired based on desk research is essential in order to identify the gaps in knowledge. To do so, it is important to setup a reporting template which ensures an equal representation of the results of the analysis across the different life events. Table 5 below provides the reporting template that resulted from the implementation of the methodology in case studies with the three Member States.

Table 5 – Suggested reporting template

1. Life event group (e.g. starting up)

1.1. Life event (e.g. start-up, take over, etc.)

1.1.1. Tasks and public services

Description of the legal obligations and related public services at a high level.

1.1.2. Service maze

Detailed description of identified public services, application of the services taxonomy and categorisation of the services.

1.1.3. Identified ‘Fundamental Services’

Task Public Service Domain

... ... ...

ID Public Service Service type Input Output Relation with

... ... ...

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Identity the services that adhere to the definition of a ‘Fundamental Service’

FS# Fundamental service

... ...

Generally detailed information on public services and processes is not readily available. The desk research will therefore serve to identify the legal obligations, the tasks to be performed and the related public services at a high level of granularity. It is important at this stage to consider how to report the tasks and public services. A common naming convention is important in order to ensure an equal description of services across the different life events. For this study the following has been adhered to:

Tasks: are actions for businesses which derive from the legal obligations they face. These are described from the perspective of the business; e.g. Register the new business.

Public services: are services delivered by public administrations to businesses. These are described from the perspective of the public administration; e.g. Register a new business in the Business Registry..

Once the desk research is complete, it is clear at which level of detail the knowledge is developed. Based on this, interviews can be organised with the people that are able to complete the analysis and fill the gaps. It may be possible to complete the analysis based on one interview per life event or in some cases even across different life events for those services delivered by one public administration. However, the level of knowledge required should be taken into account and it must be ensured that a sufficient amount of input can be gathered.

When conducting the interviews the approach needs to be clearly established. Together with the desk research, an interview template should be established with key questions aimed at gathering the required information. In general typical questions that will be asked could be:

Please explain what the legal context prescribes in terms of legal obligations for the business and what tasks derive from this;

Please explain what services your administration provides to businesses in order to fulfill the legal obligation;

Please explain in detail, from the perspective of the public administration, what process is followed when implementing the public service and what sub-steps are carried out;

Please identify the input and output of each of the sub-steps and how these steps are interlinked to arrive at the final delivery of the service.

It is essential to keep in mind that the aim of the exercise is to make an abstraction of the public services. This means that the way a public service is implemented today (be it electronically or manually) is not as important as describing the service itself, in terms of what is done and what input is required and output which results from it. Making this abstraction may require some creativity from the reporter and as well as from the interviewee, as tasks carried out as part of the delivery of a service may not intuitively be seen as separate services. This abstraction is important, however, as the definition of sub-services is central to the methodology and allows identification of the underlying services which could potentially be reused as part of other services.

Based on the input provided, the identified services need to be categorised in accordance with the service taxonomy. The services and their relationship need to be described. As shown in this report this is achieved by reporting the services in a table as well. This helps to analyse and communicate the services to all parties involved.

Based on the implementation of the methodology in the three case studies, the following activities are recommended under this step:

Activity 1: Undertake desk research and establish the reporting template Activity 2: Organise the interviews Activity 3: Conduct interviews Activity 4: Categorise the identified services

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Step 3: Create the service maze and identify services Based on the desk research and interviews, the building blocks identified were represented schematically in a ‘service maze.’ This tool helps to analyse and communicate the services, and provides an inventory of identified services mapped to the service definitions in the service taxonomy. Finally, focus groups were undertaken to validate the outcome and the resulting service mazes.

The result is a list of public services in accordance with the service taxonomy proposed for this study. In order to verify the list of identified public services a focus group should be held with the involved actors in order to review the list and agree on the definition of the ‘Fundamental Services.’

The recommended activities for this step are therefore:

Activity 1: Categorise the identified services Activity 2: Conduct focus group Activity 3: Identify ‘Fundamental Services’

The definition results in a list of services that in principle have a potential to be implemented electronically and can be provided in an interoperable and open way to enable reuse as part of other services by public and private actors. The actual reusability of the identified public services, at each level in the service taxonomy, depends on a number of elements:

The extent to which the services can be implemented electronically (some services may require manual activity that can prove to be difficult to implement electronically);

The usefulness of the function that the service provides (some functions may be more conducive towards reuse than others);

The level of granularity at which the most reusable service may be found will depend on the specific circumstance in which the service is being reused;

Although each step of the methodology fulfilled an important function, the process proved to be an intensive exercise and largely dependent on the availability of information. The desk research in particular relies on the level of secondary documentation available, whilst the success of the interviews and focus groups were influenced by the commitment and knowledge of the individual participants.

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4 A ‘Cloud of public services’: reusability, potential and impact

4.1 Reusability of public services The concept of ‘Fundamental Services’ as introduced in the previous chapter reflects the idea that services provided at a low granular level are elementary in the sense that they are stable services which are in principle ‘reuse ready’. Actual reusability (the potential to be reused) depends on a number of factors and is very much subject to the innovative capacity of public administrations and third parties to develop a useful implementation of a service based on existing services.

The examples in Chapter 3 clearly demonstrate that there is a relationship between the domain specificity and the potential to reuse services. Public services related to tax, for example, are less likely to be reused in other contexts than public services related to businesses in general. In addition, the higher the level of granularity, the more the service tends towards providing specific functionality. As a general rule, there is therefore an inverse relationship between level of granularity and the scope for reuse - high level Process Public Services are less likely to be reused in comparison with Basic Services. The more specific a service is, or the more there is ‘domain-related logic’ contained in this service, the lower level of reuse will be. This inverse relationship is shown in Figure 23 below.

Figure 23 – Scope for Reuse

This relationship suggests that the level at which the most potential for reuse can be found is at the level of Basic Services as defined in the service taxonomy, depending on the level of specificity of the service to the domain. On the whole, Basic Data and Logic Services which are related to information originating in base registers (such as the Business Register) have a high reuse potential.

During the case studies performed for this study, several open and interoperable approaches to the delivery of public services online in Belgium were explored, notably the eDepot and the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS). The Belgian Federal ICT Service (FEDICT) has established the Federal Service Bus (FSB) through which services from different domains, related to different back-ends, are provided openly and are reused by different actors. FEDICT acts as a service integrator, which means that the FSB acts as a platform on which services are provided and integrated so that they can be openly accessed by parties that are interested in re-using them.

The Belgian example of the FSB provides a real-life example of how services can be reused and combined based on SOA principles. The way in which services are categorised within the FSB is based on the service taxonomy as defined by Erl (2007), namely:

Task services which are made openly available to consumers of the services (based on Service Level Agreements);

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Entity services which map the data from its source to a data model used within the FSB for the Task services;

Utility services which provide the technical interface for connecting to data sources (for example to the Business Registry).

An illustration of services within the FSB is illustrated in Figure 2445 below. It provides an example of different Task Services. The ‘Get person service’ is a service that in the service taxonomy used for this study would be referred to as a Basic Data Service. The ‘Gaming validation service‘, a service that checks a number of prerequisites of a person to be able to play in the Belgian National Lottery, can be labelled a Basic Logic Service and makes use of the ‘Get person service’. The ‘Gaming validation service’ therefore relies on the ‘Get person service’ through orchestration and shows how this new service is developed based on an existing service which is reused in a new context.

Figure 24 – FSB: Task, Entity and Utility Services

The Task services layer includes the services as defined in the service maze for this study - the Process, Composed and Basic Public services would all in principle feature within this layer of the FSB. All of these services are designed to be reused and combined. This implies that in principle there is scope for reuse across all the service types in the service taxonomy. This was confirmed by representatives of FEDICT during a workshop conducted during the course of this study with key stakeholders. The proposed service taxonomy can also be mapped to the scope of services provided through the FSB.

Historically, the FSB has focused on services which are related to government produced and owned information kept in various back-ends and accessed through Basic Services (mostly Basic Data Services). This results in some cases in ‘business logic’ being encapsulated in applications instead of reusable services. Since the scope for reuse of Basic Logic Services is expected to be high, FEDICT is keen on establishing more ‘validation’ type services within the Task layer on the FSB.

The Belgian example demonstrates that open and interoperable approaches to delivering public services provide opportunities for various types of reuse:

Reuse within government: different public administrations at different levels of government (federal/national, regional and local) can make use of services provided on the FSB and can combine these to create new services;

Reuse by third parties: third parties can also reuse and combine the services to provide their own services to their customers (as is the case for example for notaries which use FSB services for the services they provide to setup a new business – the eDepot).

45 Images provided by: http://www.fedict.belgium.be/nl/

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The latter situation, reuse by third parties, is in particular in line with the Tao Government scenario in Chapter 1 in which services for business and citizens are collaboratively produced and provided by public and private actors. Further expansion is foreseen in this area to include other third parties (such as the real estate and not-for-profit sectors). Therefore, the FSB enables a multi-partner process with many integration points and ample scope for reuse potential. This is illustrated by Figure 25

Figure 25 – FSB: Multi-Partner Process

A collaborative approach to public service delivery has a number of impacts on the different actors involved in service delivery as well as the end-users (citizens and businesses). In the following sections, a conceptual model of a ‘cloud of public services’ is developed. This allows for the conceptualisation of future scenarios of online service delivery. In addition, a number of real-life examples of open and interoperable approaches to public service delivery are briefly evaluated in order to identify the prerequisites and challenges for designing a ‘cloud of public services.’ Subsequently, a framework is developed to analyse and categorise the potential impact of providing services in an open an interoperable way. It is then applied to four existing eGovernment examples and three future scenarios involving the reuse of public services, which are developed and analysed in order to draw conclusions on impacts for public administrations, third parties and end-users.

4.2 A conceptual model of a ‘cloud of public services’ Following implementation of the service decomposition model in Sweden, Italy and Belgium, a conceptual model was developed to analyse the key elements in a ‘cloud of public services.’ These include:

End-user (client or web) applications which allow the end-user to use the service and interact with the service provider;

The collection of public services serving as building blocks, which can be offered in an open and interoperable way and reused

The different categories of public services - Process, Composed, or Basic (data and Logic) Services - as defined by the service taxonomy;

The conceptual model of the ‘cloud of public services’ reflects the public services (as also identified in ‘service mazes’ in the case studies) by structuring these in layers as illustrated by Figure 26

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Figure 26 – Conceptual model for the design of a cloud of public services

The green boxes represent end-user applications which deliver public services to citizens and businesses. They are typically built from Composed and/or Process Services, the blue rectangles, and Basic (Data and Logic) Services or ‘Fundamental Services’, the orange rectangles. These are the building blocks of public services, which contribute towards the fulfilment of public services for end-users.

It is possible to illustrate the conceptual model by drawing on the private sector example, presented in Chapter 1, of booking a holiday on a travel website via a cloud services. This is shown by Figure 27 below.

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Figure 27 - Conceptual model of ‘Ordering a travel trip’

The Basic (Data and Logic) Services - for registering flight bookings, hotel reservations, issue of a visa, booking local transport (e.g. car rental, train tickets), signing up for a travel insurance and booking cultural activities - are represented by the orange rectangles and are offered by different service providers in an open and interoperable way in a cloud of services. The Composed and/or Process Services – Packaged Offering, Travel Review, Bookings and Loyalty Program – are represented by the blue rectangles and are constructed using the Basic (Data and Logic) Services, all of which can be reused and combined and presented via a single online application. The different services provide the building blocks on which the Composed and Process services and subsequently the end-user application are based. In theory, all services can be combined with each other allowing for a high level of reuse. The cloud of services gives rise to a wide range of opportunities for public and private actors and a variety of impacts.

4.3 Opportunities of a ‘cloud of public services’ Based on the conceptual model, it is possible to identify three scenarios of possible future service delivery, which highlight the many opportunities provided by a ‘cloud of public services’. It should be noted that the opportunities depend on the specific context in which a new service is provided. In addition, the possible future scenarios are limited only to the actual functionality provided by the available services and the creativity of service providers in combining these services to serve a specific purpose in a new context. For the purposes of this study, the scenarios provide examples, which allow a number of potential high level opportunities to be explored. These include:

Public Value Services: an example of open and interoperable service delivery based on a single platform can be found in Belgium. The eHealth platform allows different actors to interact and provide related services based on the existing platform. The availability of the services and information contained in this platform could also be combined to provide a Flu Prediction service which could be used to predict the spread of a flu pandemic, thus increasing the efficiency of public health-related services;

Competitive Advantage: an example of third party involvement in service delivery identified during the study is the ‘one stop shop’ (‘ondernemingsloketten’) for company registration in Belgium, in which third parties (non-profit organisations authorised by the government to implement public services) are involved in providing services for business start-up. A scenario could be foreseen in which other third parties, such as banks, could also provide such services based on available public services thus providing a better, more integrated service to their clients.

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New Business Models: specific licenses are often required for businesses to undertake activities, such as building premises (building permit), production (environmental permits) and specific economic activities (licenses or authorisations for certain professions). Obtaining the correct licenses can be time-consuming and complicated, often involving different public administrations. In the future, it could be possible for a single service provider to be authorised to carry out all activities and coordination necessary to acquire the necessary permits, thus providing a new and innovative service for end-users;

These scenarios are analysed in the following sections and illustrated using the conceptual model. The scenarios depart from the ‘as is’ situation, by building on existing initiatives to illustrate the new opportunities, which can be derived from providing services in an open and interoperable way.

4.3.1 Public Value Services Based on the services provided by the existing eHealth platform, additional services, including the sharing of x-ray images, electronic prescription and electronic birth registrations, have been implemented in Belgium. It is possible to suggest that the efficiency of public health-related services could be further increased by reusing and broadening the scope of the existing services provided by the platform to create, for example, an application which allows for the prediction of the spread of a flu pandemic. This scenario is elaborated below.

Real life example: The eHealth platform The eHealth platform digitizes the exchange of medical information between healthcare actors in Belgium. This exchange of information has traditionally taken place in paper form.

The goals of the eHealth project are:

To manage and coordinate the IT related aspects of data exchange in relation to electronic patient records and electronic medical prescriptions

To act as an independent, trusted third party for the coding and anonymizing of personal healthcare data for certain organisations, listed by law to support scientific research and policy

The eHealth platform enables different actors, such as doctors to retrieve and exchange information electronically. All of a patient’s relevant medical information is accessible from separate databases provided by different actors via a single platform. This ‘cloud’ is shown in Figure 28 below.

eHealth

Figure 28 - eHealth Platform

The platform began with only a few services but now offers more than 20, including registration for vaccinations, central management of service hours for doctors and dentists and the electronic exchange of invoices for insurance purposes. In the example of registering the birth of child, previously, the father or mother of a new born child needed to register the birth of their child in person at the town hall. With eHealth it is now possible to register the child’s birth via an online form.

The eHealth platform can be illustrated using the analytical model. This is shown in Figure 29.

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Coordination of electronic processes

Web portal Personal electronic mailbox

Coding and anonymisation

Electronic time stamping

System for end-to-end encryption

Logging managment

Integrated user and access management

Data access services to national registry of

physical persons

Central X-rays image repository

Support of electronic care

presriptions

Electronic birth registration

(eBirth)

Data access services to social security authorisations

Data access Services to registry of healthcare

providers

Figure 29 - Conceptual Model of the eHealth platform

The basic services which provide access to the authentic sources, such as the registry of healthcare providers, social security and registry of physical persons, are represented by the orange rectangles.

As per the ‘service mazes’ and conceptual model, the green rectangles represent the life event or the delivery of public services to citizens and businesses via end-user applications.

The central X-rays image repository, for example, allows doctors to retrieve all x-rays of a certain patient. It would use a Composed Service, which initiates the search and retrieval of images from all hospital databases. Data access to these would be provided by the Basic Services.

Support for electronic care prescriptions speeds up the process of approving prescriptions by third parties. By using electronic time-stamping and encryption services, prescriptions can be generated and approved within minutes, allowing the patient to receive the required medicines sooner.

The eBirth service entails the establishment of a new record in the national registry of physical persons. At the same time, a new record can be created in a healthcare provider’s database subscribing the new born child to its services. Both actions could be initiated by a Composed Service via a service bus. This service could be offered to end-users via a single web-form.

Delivering medical data in line with the concept of a ‘cloud of public services’ allows processes to be completed more quickly, avoids the duplication of data entry and reduces the margin for error, saving time, costs, resources and administrative burdens, and improving public health

Future Scenario: Flu Prediction Based on this model, it is possible to broaden the scope of the eHealth platform to facilitate the development of a Flu Prediction service. In addition to reusing the existing services, additional building blocks, such as social media and search engines, could be added and combined to increase the efficiency of the existing medical information exchange service. Google, for example, has stated that it sees an increase in searches for keywords like ‘flu’ in areas where epidemics are present. Evidence suggests that citizens often search the internet for medical information before they consult a doctor. Analysis of the keywords would allow flu outbreaks to be identified and earlier and more accurately than at present.

The Flu Prediction Service can be illustrated using the conceptual model. This is shown in Figure 30.

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Coordination of electronic processes

Web portalPersonal

electronic mailbox

Coding and anonymisation

Electronic time stamping

System for end-to-end

encryption

Logging managment

Integrated user and access

management

Data access services to national registry of

physical persons

Central X-rays image repository

Support of electronic care

presriptions

Electronic birth registration

(eBirth)

Data access services to social security authorisations

Data access Services to registry of healthcare

providers

Flu Prediction

Data harvesting

Social Media / Search Engines

Figure 30 - Conceptual Model of the Flu Prediction Service

The conceptual model illustrates how a flu prediction application could be built based on existing services on the eHealth platform. These include access to the registration of flu cases by healthcare providers represented by the orange box which is composed of Basic Data Services for data access. In addition, by including Basic Services which provide data from social media/search engines on the frequency of searches for ‘flu’ online, combined with a Composed Service which allows the data to be harvested and interpreted a more accurate and enhanced flu prediction service could be provided.

This scenario shows how an additional service could be created by combining existing services and data (both based on public services and other services) which allows governments to more efficiently monitor and predict a flu pandemic, creating public value.

4.3.2 Competitive advantage The application of the service taxonomy and methodology in Belgium identified the examples of the eDepot and ‘one stop shops’ for company registration in Belgium, in which third parties (notaries and the ‘ondernemingsloketten’) provide services for business start-up by reusing public services provided in an open and interoperable way by the public administrations. It is possible to envisage a situation in which other third parties, such as a bank, could gain a competitive advantage by providing a similar service to the ‘one stop shops’ to its clients, in addition to its traditional offering. This scenario is described below.

Real life example: ‘One stop shop’ for company registration In Belgium, the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE) provides services which are used by third parties. Specific, authorised organisations implementing the so called ‘one-stop-shops’ for enterprises (‘ondernemingsloketten’) use services offered by the CBE to provide services for starting-up businesses. There are in total nine organisations which offer these services as officially recognised ‘one stop shops.’ These organisations are non-profit and have offices in different parts of the country.

In addition, the Belgian eDepot system provides services for notaries integrating services provides by the CBE and others, thereby supporting the process of legally setting up companies.

Based on the findings of the case study phase of this study, it is possible to map the building blocks of public services provided by the public administrations involved in the start up of new businesses in Belgium (the Business Registry (CBE), justice department, the tax authorities/national bank, and social security). The ‘one stop shop’ for company registration has been developed according to the availability of these services. It can be illustrated using the conceptual model and is shown in Figure 31.

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Figure 31 – Conceptual Model of ‘One stop shop’ for company registration

By combining the Basic or ‘Fundamental Services’ represented by the orange rectangles, the ‘one stop shop’ is able to fulfil a number of higher level services related to business start-up, including the registration and activation of the business, and registration for social security and tax, as shown by the blue rectangles.

Although the public services required for company registration are provided for reuse by public administrations, ‘one stop shops’ and notaries based on a SOA-approach, access to the services is at present restricted to these appointed actors. Making these services fully available in an open and interoperable way in line with the concept of the ‘cloud of public services’ to other parties could allow new models of integrated service delivery or ‘one stop shops’ to be developed.

Future Scenario: Bank as a ‘one stop shop’ Establishing a business as a legal entity often requires a bank account to be opened in which starting capital can be deposited. The first step in the process is therefore for the entrepreneur to go to the bank. Currently, this obliges the founder to visit at least two actors: a bank and a notary or the ‘one stop shop’. In the future, the current ‘one stop shop’ service could also be offered by banks. Using the conceptual model, the Bank as a ‘One stop shop’ scenario is illustrated in Figure 32.

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Figure 32 – Conceptual Model of a Bank as a ‘One stop shop’ for company registration

The building blocks of public services needed to register a new business could be made available via a ‘cloud of public services’ to a bank. In this way, the existing service could be offered by a new service provider (the bank) as a new ‘one-stop-shop’. Significantly, the bank would be able to offer an integrated service, by complementing the company registration process with its traditional business banking services, such as business plan advice, account management, loan facilities and insurance.

If banks were able to provide this service to their clients, they could be expected to gain an advantage over competitors. By extension, different banks could provide this service, thus generating inter-bank competition and potentially improving on the effectiveness of the service delivery.

4.3.3 New business models The development of new services based on existing services can also provide business opportunities for private sector actors which use existing public services to offer a value added service of their own. Based on the real life example of the Dutch implementation of the Environmental Permit law, it is possible to foresee a situation in which a new business model could arise from the provision by one private sector actor of permits and licenses currently available from different public sector providers. A ‘Front Office’ for permits and licenses could provide a service based on existing public services to implement a complex and knowledge intensive process on behalf of a citizen or business. This scenario is presented below.

Real Life example: Dutch Environmental Permit Law The Dutch Environmental Permit law46 establishes the combination of different permit which need to be granted to be compliant with environmental law. These include building and demolition permits, usage permits, waste permits and water permits. The implementation of the Environmental Permit law in municipalities demonstrates how establishing services as building blocks has helped municipalities to solve the problems related to the implementation of this law.

Traditionally, most of the municipalities deal with permit requests in isolation. Each department in a municipality in charge of providing a permit has the specific knowledge about its own domain and is responsible for handling permits according to this scope. The Environmental Permit law obliged municipalities to combine the different permit services into one integrated permit service. The law also prescribes the time limit for a municipality to provide a positive or negative answer for the integrated

46 Information provided by: http://omgevingsvergunning.vrom.nl/

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Environmental Permit. The permit request is made at the national level and at this point, the time limit is decided.

Instead of asking for multiple permits with individual time limits, the citizen or business requests only one Environmental Permit with several elements (such as building and water) and only one time limit at the national level. This permit request is then forwarded from the national level to the municipality, where the permit is split into several cases. Each permit is dealt with by the responsible department.

The Environmental Permit example shows how different services provided by different departments have been combined into an ‘integrated’ environmental permit. This ‘integrated’ environmental permit is illustrated using the conceptual model in Figure 33 below.

Figure 33 - Dutch Environmental Permit law

The ‘intake of request’ service ensures that all the required information is collected from the permit requestor. The ‘orchestration & follow’ up keeps track of the sequence (performance of the cases in parallel or sequence), the time limit and the consistency between the regulations47 of the overall permit. This orchestration services are the ‘glue’ between the domain specific services, such as the building, water, waste and usage permits, all of which are provided by different departments.

Future Scenarios: Front office for permits and licenses A ‘cloud of public services’ can facilitate the creation of new services by reusing already existing services as building blocks. The Dutch Environmental Permit Law notwithstanding, if a citizen or a business needs to request several licences or permits, these are often distributed by different institutions at different times. As the process of requesting and granting a license depends on the nature of the license, requestors are often not familiar with all procedures, steps to be taken and required information.

It is however possible to envisage a scenario in which a company - a ‘Front office’ - is established to provide a consumer with all of the licences and permits necessary to undertake a particular activity. By reusing and combining existing public services, it is able to request and receive licences and permits from different public administrations, according to the end-users’ circumstances, thus providing an new service and a new business model, based on a ‘cloud of public services.’ Through this service, a third party could handle the request (and even granting) of licences and can therefore:

Communicate directly with all institutions involved for all licences Group and follow up on all requests in a single place Handle the transport of physical documents Follow up on the expiry and renewal of licenses

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Keep track of legislation that influences the licence

The building blocks of public services used by the new Front office for permits and licences have been derived from the decomposition of life events related to permitting undertaken in Chapter 3. These included applications for building permits (‘Expanding’), for hazardous activities and chemicals (‘Responsible Business’) and for the Import and Export of goods and services (‘EU Market’).

Via the ‘cloud of public services,’ the Front office would be able to access a range of public services (Process, Composed and Basic Services) delivered by different public administration and to reuse them to create new services. These could be offered to citizens or businesses in person or online.

The ‘Front office for permits and licences’ is illustrated using the conceptual model in Figure 34.

Figure 34 - Analytical Model of a Front office for permits and licences

The new Front office could offer its services either via face to face contact with the customers or potentially via the internet, resulting in clear benefits for the end-user. The creation of a new, innovative business model by making public services available online in a ‘cloud of public services’ can also be expected to have a positive impact in terms of job creation and growth.

4.4 Examples of open and interoperable services approaches Several EU Member States have already put into practice elements of the concept of a ‘cloud of public services.’ Based on desk research, interviews and the expert workshop undertaken in the course of this study, the following section analyses three existing, open and interoperable approaches to providing eGovernment services in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands in order to investigate the prerequisites and challenges for the realisation of a ‘cloud of public services’. This section contains a summary of the examples.

4.4.1 Belgium – Federal Service Bus (FSB) As noted in section 4.1, FEDICT is the Belgian Federal Service for Information and Communication Technology. Its role is to help federal institutions improve the delivery of public services for citizens and business via renewed information and communication technology. FEDICT is responsible for the implementation of the Federal Service Bus (FSB). The goal of the FSB is to facilitate the technical integration between the different governmental services.

Whilst developing and implementing an eGovernment system, FEDICT faced several challenges. Many process partners (including public administrations and third parties) were involved, for example,

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as well as a multitude of integration points and n-to-n communications in processes. In response, the FSB was developed. It provides one unique connection to different back-ends via secured access. The FSB is a common infrastructure on the basis of which customer-centric services are deployed. Through a central platform it serves its customers via web applications based on strict identification and access management. This architecture is illustrated by Figure 35.

Identity and Acces Management

Security & Privacy

Access & Application environment

Transaction Environment

Network Environment

Security environment

Acces & application environment

Transactional environment :

–FSB

–Authorative sources

Network environment

(Fedman)

Citizens

Civilservants

Enterpriss

portal

Federal Metropolitan Area Network (FedMAN)

SPF / FOD

SPP / POD

REG

ION

CO

MM

UN

ITY

LOC

AL

GO

VER

NM

ENT

S

Other A

uthorities &

Institutions

Authoritative Sources

RRN

Figure 35 - FEDICT Architecture

Through its architecture FEDICT facilitates:

Single stop shopping: less connection points and using standard security allow to provision different services by a single provider;

Standardization of services: common data model and standardized behavior aligns different services to adhere to a similar format/process;

Governance: centralized control over the platform allows managing releases of new services, controlling the development of services (via different development stages) and loose coupling (adding/removing services from the cloud).

Besides the service bus, the architecture contains a registry and repository which acts as a service catalogue: a central library storing all the detailed service descriptions, their functionality, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and current contracts. Service descriptions should contain the scope of the service and include dependencies upon other services to set the right expectations for the service consumer. The SLAs inform the users of the services level they can expect (e.g. % uptime, incident resolution time, etc) from the service provider. It acts as a basis for service contracts; contractual agreements between the service provider and consumer stating the service delivery and its conditions.

The FSB employs layered or multiple service buses. These are connected and rely on each other based on a security layer and a trust relation between the organisations providing services at the regional or local level. This architecture (the interconnection of layered or multiple service buses) is shown inFigure 36.

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Figure 36 – FEDICT/FSB - layered or multiple service buses

The FSB started off with the publication of only a few services in the domain of social security. Currently a total of 53 existing services are made publicly available on the FSB, including for example applications for eBirth (electronic registration of the birth of a child by hospital personnel), the Crossroad Bank for Social Security (CBSS) and the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE), the latter of which is currently being deployed within this architecture, and the eDepot.

The establishment of electronic services for the CBSS and eDepot on the FSB could only become a reality after amendments to existing legislation. The CBSS was developed in order to address the fragmentation of the Belgian social security system which involves 3000 public and private actors at federal, regional and local level. For the establishment of the CBSS a number of institutional and legal measures had to be taken. Institutional measures included the set up of an independent Control Committee established by the Parliament, which is in charge of the supervision of information security, authorisation of information exchange and complaint handling amongst other tasks), and the set up of an information security department in each involved institution. In addition, legal measures were taken to specify both the obligations on the side of the controllers or information providers (including principles concerning data quality, legitimate data processing, rules for processing sensitive data, confidentiality and security, and notification of processing of personal data) and the rights of the individual whose data is processed (including the right to information, access, rectification, erasure, blocking, and judicial remedy). In addition, penalties where established by law. In short, the changes in the legal framework were needed to organise an integrated information management for electronic service delivery (organisational principles of cooperation, permissions and obligations for use of common identification keys, rights and obligations of different actors), and to establish clear liability, as well as adhering to data protection and a legal recognition of electronic signatures. These institutional changes and amendments to the legal framework were needed in order to provide a transparent, secure and reliable environment for the electronic public services of the CBSS to be shared amongst the different involved actors.

The Belgian government has worked towards including more and more actors in the social sector into the CBSS, such as organisations in charge of social funds, pension funds, and the social divisions of municipalities and regions (for example public employment services and those responsible for social housing). In addition, the expansion towards organisations outside the social sector has been made possible by the amendment of the legislation through which social benefits could be automatically attributed by organisations such as private companies implementing ‘services of general interest’. The amendment made it possible for citizens entitled to additional social benefits (such as lower tariffs for phone use) to more easily acquire these by avoiding the obligation to show official documents themselves and instead allow the organisation providing services ( for example, the telecom companies) to directly access the CBSS.

The Belgian government has recognised the importance of being able to make the appropriate institutional and legal changes to foster the aim of establishing more efficient and effective eGovernment services. The Belgian Agency for Administrative Simplification (Agence pour le Simplification Administrative (ASA)/ Dienst Administratieve Vereenvoudiging (DAV)), part of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, aims to reduce administrative burden and to provide legal guidance

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for and coordination of different eGovernment projects (for which the technical aspects are guided by FEDICT), including the eDepot..

The ASA/DAV typically runs small-scale pilot projects of new electronic systems through which the impact can be assessed. If the pilot is successful, the necessary legal changes can be made to oblige users to switch from the previous manual system. Where no legal modification is possible, tariffs can be adjusted to give incentives for the use of the electronic solution and discourage use of the manual option. The high level of political support provided by the ASA for implementing eGovernment services has enabled the necessary changes in legislation to be made and for applications to be established, which are based the building blocks of public services and the FSB architecture.

4.4.2 The Netherlands - NORA NORA48 is the reference architecture for the Dutch government. Its goal is to improve the data connections between the many programs, projects and facilities covered by the growing deployment of eGovernment services. It provides a service based framework with design principles, models and agreements to (re)design the provision of services through eGovernment. NORA defines four cornerstones for its reference architecture:

Design style: service understanding plays a central role, distinguishing itself from data oriented and workflow oriented approaches.

Standards and Security: as a connection between many parts the e-government is essential, standardisation is an important aspect to ensure a common methodology is used. Standards include security prerequisites to assure that data is protected.

Publication and agreements: stating the content, execution, conditions and quality of the services in a central services catalogue is important. It facilitates the agreement on the service delivery between the provider and consumer of the service.

Infrastructure: both for the operational aspect as well strategic reasons (publication of the service offerings), SOA uses infrastructural facilities like portals, service busses and service catalogues

As with FEDICT in Belgium, NORA applies an architecture in which Services are connected to data sources through a central service bus. The chain of activities is illustrated in Figure 37.

Service Requestor

Components Front office service provider

Back office service provider

Figure 37 - NORA chain of activities

The grey rectangles represent services which are considered infrastructure services (related to, for example, a common layer of security provided), the green rectangles correspond to the business services and the yellow ‘u-shaped box’ acts as a service bus.

NORA uses a terminology, which reflects the service taxonomy employed in this study:

48 Service-Georienteerde Architectuur, Luttighuis, P. A., (1 November 2010)

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Content and technology: the content services offer business value to its users, while the technology services offer generic infrastructure services. This relates to the distinction made between Business Services (which are the focus of this study) and Infrastructure Services (which are beyond this study’s scope).

Front-end and back-end: front-end services are organized around the consumer service, while back-end services are organized around content themes and domains. Front-end services typically use back-end services. The back-end services correspond to Basic, Composed and Process services.

Storage, logic and presentation: the logic services are information processing services, using the storage services. Storage and logic services correspond to Basic Data and Logic services in the taxonomy. Presentation services use both logic and storage services and communicate with the consumer via a user interface, which corresponds to the life event fulfilling end-user applications in thee taxonomy

In every step of the process, data security is guaranteed (as defined in the grey and black boxes) via infrastructure services. From the web portal to the internal domain of the core service provider, data flows through a private network and data is encrypted. In a similar way to FEDICT in Belgium, NORA also defines a service catalogue and service agreements through the service provision lifecycle, which is shown in Figure 38.

Service provider Service consumer

Service provider & service consumer

development publication

need

selection

negotiations

contract

usage

Servicecatalogue

Service agreement

Figure 38 – NORA Lifecycle

Service providers develop new services, which they publish in the service catalogue. Consumers select a service from the catalogue and negotiate its conditions. This leads to a service agreement, which acts as the basis for the usage of the service.

A practical example of the NORA platform is INDiGO, supporting the primary business processes of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service. Laws and regulations are implemented in a rule engine which can be called a service. Based on a SOA architecture approach, INDiGO uses business services to provide customer oriented applications.

4.4.3 Germany - SAGA In an effort to create a more modern and service-orientated administration, the German federal government is implementing more and more administration processes electronically. The application of eGovernment is making it possible for citizens, business and administrations to handle matters both faster and more efficiently. Standards are needed in order to enable these many different applications for the future and make them accessible for all. This is guaranteed by the Standards and Architectures for eGovernment Applications Guideline (SAGA),49 which enjoys widespread acceptance and especially growing interest among federal states and in Germany.

49 SAGA - Standards and Architectures for eGovernment Applications: Version 4.0, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, (2008)

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From an architectural point of view, SAGA draws a clear distinction between client, presentation, business logic and data storage logic which leads to a multi-tier model as shown in Figure 39.

Figure 39 - SAGA Architecture

The architecture consists of a number of elements:

The client tier is where users and software interact. The data processed by the presentation logic as well as the user interface is visualized. The client tier hence represents different access channels reflecting different users, devices, transmission paths, as well as different application purposes in order to interact with special applications.

The presentation tier implements the processing of application data for the client (for example as a website) and the interaction between the user and the special application. The presentation tier includes all the standards for communication with the relevant terminal devices of the client tier.

The middle tier, also referred to as the business tier, implements the business logic irrespective of its presentation and processes the data from the persistence tier. This is carried out on the basis of services and by components when services are unable to perform this. This is where the program sequence is controlled and this steers interaction between the services and components.

The persistence tier is responsible for the storage of data objects. It abstracts from the database. The backend is the collective term for functionalities of the operating system, specific databases as well as existing, non-SAGA-conformant special applications, legacy or ERP systems.

SAGA’s strategic goal is to introduce new ways for reform and innovation in public administrations using electronic services and processes. This relates to internal relationships within administrations, as well as external relations between administrations, citizens and business.

The organisational implications of creating the eGovernment include the need for cross-administration interaction, ensuring the continuous qualification of staff and assuring a high level of user acceptance.

In addition to organisational frame of reference, legal guidelines must also be considered. Examples include electronic signatures, data protection regulations, and the EU Services Directive.

The German Administration Services Directory (DVDV) was created based on the SAGA model. It began with a single service (notifications in the area of civil registration) to gain experience, and avoided a complex ICT solution, focusing on generally accepted technology and standards. The system has over time expanded its approach by upgrading the platform to provide more than 20 related services. Effective governance is considered by the responsible authorities to be of paramount importance to the DVDV’s success. Dealing with many different federal states and involved parties necessitates central control to manage the service offerings.

4.5 Prerequisites and Challenges The analysis above of existing structures for public service delivery reveals common prerequisites and challenges. Each of these approaches clearly indicated that a need for open, published standards and agreements is crucial. With many players involved and a dynamic playground, it is important to clearly

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state the ground rules. Communication between different actors in the cloud of public services requires common data models, for example, in line with each party’s architecture.

Besides standards, a service catalogue describing the available services, their content, quality and SLAs is of utmost importance to agree on expectations from both the supplier and consumer side. Service descriptions should also list their dependencies on other (basic) services. It enables users to assess the impact of the disruption of the dependent services. NORA states a clear definition of the service catalogue and its components as a corner stone of its platform.

Data security is of crucial importance when making public services available in a ‘cloud of public services.’ When electronic data is interchanged within and between public agencies, data protection requirements must be considered and implemented by way of suitable technical and organizational measures. Personal data, in particular, may not be gathered, processed or disclosed for any purpose other than the use explicitly contemplated by law. Data security is not the main focus of this study as it is considered an Infrastructure Service, rather than a Business service, and is the subject of a separate 2009 report on European Interoperable Infrastructure Services (EIIS)50.

Users, whether citizens, businesses or administrations, will only use a service if they have a certain level of trust in these services. Appropriate data security and transparency in the operations and data contained in public services as part of a ‘cloud of public services’ will improve this trust. Citizens and administration should have a full view of which data is treated by whom and for what reason. An audit trail is a functionality which allows the logging of all access and changes to data which is also identified in the EIIS study as an essential Infrastructure Service. This functionality can for example be found in the Belgian FSB. The implementation of an audit trail in the context of a ‘cloud of public services’ can be challenging. One of the characteristics of a ‘cloud of public services’ is that a dynamic reuse and combination of services should be possible (services are interlinked and depend on each other, creating different layers of dependency). Tracing data manipulations across a complex stack of services therefore requires a clear approach to audit trail and logging.

Making public services openly available electronically for reuse by public administrations and third parties often requires process redesign, which in turn may have implications for the legal framework. The methodology for identification of services and the service taxonomy proposed in this study can form essential elements to support such process redesign. Analysing existing processes and organisational structure behind the delivery of public services and proposing new more efficient services that allow for the reuse of electronic public services in a ‘cloud of public services’ is a first step. This analysis likely results in a number of issues for which legal and institutional changes may be necessary before the new services can be implemented.

The example of the CBSS shows how redesign of processes requires legislative action in order to be made a reality. This is a particular challenge which may be encountered in many different settings depending on the extent to which current legislation prevents new ways of service provision. Legislation can form both an obstacle and an enabler. For the ‘cloud of public services’ in which many different actors potentially make use of public services, an appropriate legal framework which establishes the appropriate level of security, liability and transparency serves to establish trust between the different actors as well as a clear framework in which public service can be reused by the different actors. The legal implications need to be tackled in order to enable service delivery in line with the concept of a ‘cloud of public services’. Obtaining sufficient political support to modify the legal framework can be a critical success factor. In Belgium, the ASA/DAV is part of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, ensuring the right level of political buy-in, which eases the modification of legislation.

In addition, a common element observed in existing implementations of service delivery based on the concept of a ‘cloud of publics services’ is the need for coordination. In Belgium for example the services for registering new businesses were made available on the FSB through the eDepot business start-up project. It was established through cooperation between a large number of different parties (including the Royal Federation of Belgian Notaries, FEDICT, the National Register, Belgian Enterprise Database, Department for Justice, Department for Finance and the Belgian Official Gazette). These different involved parties signed an agreement of collaboration which the DAV facilitated through consultation and cooperation with other stakeholders. This shows the clear need for changes in the mindset of organisations as well as their personnel in terms of agreeing on new ways of working through cooperation. The human factor involved should not be overlooked. As demonstrated by the

50 European Interoperable Infrastructure Services - Study on potential reuse of system component, (Deloitte, 2009).

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Belgian example, providing incentives for organisations to take on new working practices through the use of tariffs as a disincentive to continue the ‘old’ way of working may prove necessary.

4.5.1 Migration strategies Moving towards a ‘cloud of public services’ clearly entails several prerequisites and poses a number of challenges. Nevertheless, this migration can be facilitate particularly by focussing on different sub-domains (by gradually developing new services for the cloud of public services per sub-domain) and basing new services on already existing public services embedded in existing legacy systems.

Focusing on different sub domains Within the reality of a multifaceted and heavily departmentalised public administration, it may prove workable to focus on a number of separate domains thereby reducing the complexity of the implementation of a ‘cloud of public services.’ Such sub-domains can be identified according to a function (for example, Social Security, Finance or Health), related to the implementation of a new law or directive, or based on public services which are linked through life events. It is essential in the selection and definition of a domain that existing functionalities are tightly connected, and will therefore have greater dependencies on each other than the services outside of that domain. Focusing on sub-domains therefore provides a clear rationale for more effective and more integrated service delivery.

An approach based on division will result in a series of domain specific ‘clouds of public services’, which initially can be segregated but will gradually move towards a more integrated set of ‘clouds of public services.’ Both the Belgian and Dutch examples of approaches to online service delivery (FSB and NORA) have a layered architecture which integrates different sub domains, but which is federated at a higher level. These approaches illustrate individual efforts towards using services as building blocks for new services shared between different actors within a single sub-domain, for example social security (the CBSS in Belgium), business registration (the eDepot in Belgium) or civil registration ( the German Administration Services Directory (DVDV)). The examples show that a clear focus on a sub-domain can result in a highly successful implementation which can be gradually expanded to other domains.

The Open Group’s Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM) described in Chapter 1 specifies:

A model against which the degree of service integration maturity of an organization can be assessed

A process for assessing the current and desired degree of service integration maturity of an organization, using the model

Whilst the first objective enables the extent to which services are offered in an open and interoperable way to be assessed, the second describes a common approach for migrating towards the ‘cloud of public services.’ The seven levels of maturity and seven dimensions across which it can be assessed suggest a gradual, phased or incremental approach to service integration. Indeed, the OSIMM is intended to help an organisation, whether a public administration or a third party, ’to create a roadmap for its incremental transformation towards more mature levels of service integration, in order to achieve increasing business benefits associated with higher levels of maturity.’

The 2010 report on ‘User expectations of a life events approach for designing e-Government services’51 also provides a possible roadmap for migrating to a SOA-approach to eGovernment. The roadmap includes an envisioning phase in which the vision, the principles, the standards, the methods are set and tested. Three alternatives are suggested for this phase: describing and implementing a finite set of life events, government as a platform, and dynamic public service mediation. When the vision and a tested – and agreed – set of principles, methods and standards are formalised, an implementation phase could start. It would consist of the installation of the platform, developing and providing services, marketing these services, and evaluating and adjusting the vision, methods and standards.

Reusing existing public services

51p. 28-30, User expectations of a life events approach for designing e-Government services, Deloitte 2010

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The architectural prerequisites of SOA allow for the reuse of existing implementations of public services by adding a service layer and exposing this to a ‘cloud of public services.’ This approach is a common strategy for reusing functionality captured in existing ‘legacy’ systems. 52 The example of the migration of the Belgian Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE) is a point in case, where the functionality in the current mainframe system is being converted into a SOA-approach, which is expected to be finalised in 2012. This reuse approach has two advantages. Firstly, it allows a service to be built based on an existing implementation with a minimum of effort. Secondly, it creates an abstraction layer between the service and its underlying implementation, which will ease the migration towards a top down service based environment at a later stage.

Whether dividing the cloud into different sub domains or reusing existing public (legacy) services, the migration towards a ‘Cloud of public services’ represents a paradigm shift, which provides the potential of new opportunities. In this context, implementation should go hand in hand with practical examples, which often prove the best way of convincing stakeholders of its importance and potential. As discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.7, real life examples exist that provide a strong rationale in favour of migrating towards openly provided public services which can reused by different actors and combined to create new services.

The above migration strategies could also be applied to the provision of cross-border services at the EU level. Services could be selected within specific domains based on a clear rationale for more integrated service delivery and made operational in ‘clouds of public services’ at the EU level. While gradually expanding their range and scope, existing implementations of cross-border public services could also be reused via the addition of a service layer and exposure to the ‘cloud of public services.’

As demonstrated in Chapter 3, a number of parallels between the identified ‘Fundamental Services’ in Belgium, Italy and Sweden can be drawn. For the ‘Starting Up’ Life Event, at the level of Basic Logic Services, the setup of the company is, for example, verified in all countries. At the level of the Basic Data Services, new businesses are for example required to register, file a deed of incorporation and notify the commencement of activities with the Business Registry in all three countries. Even though the actual content of the services across the different Member States differs depending on the legislation in place and different institutional realities, by taking the life events approach it becomes clear that within a specific domain of public services (e.g. starting up a business), cooperation between Member States can be envisaged based on existing services.

Generally, it can be said that there is much scope for services provided in a ‘cloud of public services’ to be reused by public administrations and third parties, both within and between Member States. This is particularly apparent in the domains in which clear similarities can be observed between the building blocks of public services identified. As discussed in Chapter 4.1, there is however an inverse relationship between domain specificity and the potential for reuse. Public services related to tax, for example, are less likely to be reused in other contexts than public services related to businesses in general. This would need to be taken into consideration when investigating the potential for cross-border service reuse at the EU level. Nevertheless, by moving towards the establishment of services online as building blocks, their mere availability will both encourage the development of new services as well as provide a rationale for the continuous development of new services based on already existing ones.

4.6 Impact Model of a ‘cloud of public services’ As demonstrated above, the design of a ‘cloud of public services’ provides a number of opportunities for different actors involved in the delivery of public services, notably public administrations, third parties and end-users. In order to evaluate and categorise the potential impact of real-life examples and future scenarios based on the ‘cloud of public services’ concept, it is first necessary to develop a model for analysis based on an assessment of existing frameworks.

4.6.1 Existing Impact Frameworks For the predecessor to the 2011-2015 eGovernment Action Plan, the i2010 eGovernment Action Plan,53 the European Commission and experts from the Member States agreed on a series of basic 52 Design strategies for legacy system involvement in SOA solutions: Understand the challenges of business transformation using SOA in legacy environments, Caine, J & Hardman, J., (19 April 2007) 53 i2010 eGovernment Action Plan: Accelerating eGovernment in Europe for the Benefit of All, European Commission COM(2006) 173 final, (25 April 2006)

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indicators to facilitate cross-border comparison. Aligned to the Action Plan’s five priority actions, these included the availability of public services on-line and the use of eGovernment services by citizens and businesses in their interaction with public administrations.

A similar approach was adopted for the benchmarking activities which were undertaken by the eGovernment Observatory and the Good Practice Framework for eGovernment from the IDABC Programme. Both platforms are now part of the ePractice.eu initiative, a portal, which offers information and exchange opportunities in eGovernment, eInclusion and eHealth in Europe.

In addition, an annual eGovernment Benchmark Survey is undertaken. The 2010 version54 demonstrated that more people across the EU now have access to public services online, but there is a disparity between countries in terms of eGovernment provision. The Survey focuses in particular on the sophistication of services and their online availability from a high-level, end-user perspective.

Launched in 2006, the eGovernment Economics Project (eGEP) 55 developed a model for the cost-benefit analysis of eGovernment services. It was also subsequently used in the European Commission’s 2009 Benchlearning Project, which resulted in the development of eGEP 2.0.56

The measurement framework proposed focuses largely on the economic impact derived from increased efficiency and effectiveness. For efficiency, these factors include cashable financial gains, better empowered employees, and better organizational and IT architectures. The criteria for effectiveness focus on reduced administrative burden, increased user value and satisfaction, and more inclusive public services. A third category, democracy, assesses openness, transparency, accountability and participation. This is demonstrated in Figure 40 below.

Figure 40 - eGEP Measurement Framework

4.6.2 Proposed Impact Framework This study seeks to examine the potential for and impact of offering eGovernment services in an open and interoperable way in a ‘cloud of public services.’ It looks at the possibility for public administrations and third parties to reuse public services, with a focus on ‘Fundamental Services’.

Whilst the eGEP models provide a useful framework to measure the implementation of existing examples of public service provision online, an adapted measurement framework is necessary to assess the potential impact. A greater degree of abstraction is therefore required.

54 Digitizing Public Services in Europe: Putting ambition into action - 9th Benchmark Measurement, Capgemini, IDC, Rand Europe, Sogeti and DTi for the European Commission, (2010) 55 eGovernment Economics Project (eGEP) Measurement Framework Final Version, RSA SPO and Luis Management, (2006) 56 See also: http://www.epractice.eu/community/benchlearning

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Within the context of online public service delivery, three main high-level categories of impact can be identified as a result of providing services based on the ‘cloud of public services’ concept. These are illustrated in Figure 41 below:

Efficiency: combining services in a cloud to increase the efficiency of an existing service (time, costs, resources and administrative burdens)

Effectiveness: enabling an existing service to be offered by new service providers (integrated service delivery and ‘one-stop-shops’)

Innovation: facilitating the creation of new services by reusing already existing services in the cloud as building blocks for innovation

The Innovation dimension is of particular interest in the context of current eGovernment policy and the Europe 2020 Strategy. It highlights the potential for public administrations and third parties in the private sector to reuse services in the ‘cloud of public services’ to provide new services for end-users.

Figure 41 - Impact Categories

The different high-level impacts can be expected to overlap as a real-life delivery of services in an open and interoperable way is likely have an impact in each of these three domains. The proposed model can be further detailed. A series of indicators are suggested, which characterise the three main impact categories. These are listed in Table 6. The below analysis of real-life examples of open and interoperable services and the future scenarios provides more detail on a case-by-case basis.

Table 6 – Indicators of Impact

Innovation Effectiveness Efficiency

Added-Value Services, which

are user-friendly (Quality)

Integrated Service Delivery Time Savings

New Services, which are

secure and reliable (Quantity)

Competitive Advantage

(particularly for third parties)

Cost Reductions

Resource Reallocation

Administrative Burden Reduction

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The indicators listed under Efficiency are similar to those used to measure Efficiency and Effectiveness in the eGEP framework, notably cashable financial gains, better empowered employees, and reduced administrative burden. They therefore represent impacts, which are likely to be common to existing examples of online service provision by public administrations.

It is however this study’s primary objective to investigate the specific impacts of a ‘cloud of public services’ for each of the actors involved. Whilst it could be expected that the public administration, which provides the building blocks of a public service, would benefit internally from delivering its services online, it is possible to identify external impacts from a ‘cloud of public services’ along the Efficiency dimension, which are distributed between public administrations at the local, regional, national and even European level. By providing public services in a cloud, Efficiencies such as time and cost savings could be expected to be passed on to third parties, which reuse public services as building blocks, as well as to the end-user. There is clearly a spill-over effect on other actors.

In addition, a number of indicators of further impacts can be identified, which are enhanced by the application the ‘cloud of public services’ concept. These are listed under the categories Effectiveness and Innovation.

It can be expected that the delivery of public services in an open and interoperable way will enable public administrations and third parties to act as a ‘one-stop-shop’ for the provision of their own and other existing services. This model of Integrated Service Delivery will in turn offer government bodies and private sector actors in particular a competitive advantage.

The potential to reuse public services is also likely to facilitate an increase in both the quality and quantity of the services. Via a ‘cloud of public services,’ public administrations and third parties are expected to be able to offer added-value and new services, which were not previously available. These impacts encompass the indicators of user value and satisfaction, and more inclusive public services outlined in the eGEP model. In this context, a wider impact in terms of a contribution to the goal of achieving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and jobs could be anticipated.

4.7 Impacts from existing implementations of open and interoperable services In this section, a number of real life examples are presented in which Member States have implemented services, which can be used as building blocks and allow for reuse by both public administrations and third parties. These examples therefore represent real life implementations of the ‘cloud of public services’ concept. In Belgium, two examples centre on the FSB, which provides an interface for the reuse of public services by public administrations and third parties. These are the eDepot for business start-up and the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS). In Germany, the German Administration Services Directory (DVDV) acts as a service directory between the different levels of Government in the area of civil registration, whilst the Danish system for the Registration of Land and Property (eTL) is an External Service Oriented Application, which digitizes, centralises and automates the land and property registration system. The proposed measurement framework is subsequently applied to these examples and to the future scenarios developed in Chapter 4.3 in order to evaluate and categorise the impact. It should be noted that the impacts identified and discussed are based on desk research, interviews and the expert workshop undertaken during the course of the study. As such, they depend on the availability of evidence.

4.7.1 eDepot The eDepot project57 is collaboration between the Royal Federation of Belgian Notaries, FEDICT and the Agency for Administrative Simplification, which offers notaries a quick and easy way to create a company in all administrative databases, as illustrated in Figure 42 below.

57 Fast publication of notary acts through a SOA platform, Gathy, L., (7 January 2010)

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Figure 42 - eDepot Architecture

Using an e-ID card (the REALcard), the eDepot enables notaries to sign deeds electronically, which are sent to the government databases required to establish a company, including the National Register, Belgian Enterprise Database, Department for Justice, Department for Finance and the Belgian Official Gazette. The notary then receives by return the company number for the client, which is able to start its activities.

It is possible to identify a range series of specific impacts derived from the eDepot. Using the indicators identified above, these have been classified in Table 7 below, according to the three main impact dimensions identified.

Table 7 – Impact of the eDepot

Innovation Effectiveness Efficiency

Company start-up in 3 days

(in comparison with 56 previously)

Enhanced quality of the

service delivery process

Enhanced competitiveness

due to more entrepreneurs

E-procedures of between

10 minutes and 1 hour

Cost Reductions (saves 3 forms,

12,000 pages and 4,000 letters / month)

Elimination of front-desk data entry

freeing capacity for added-value tasks

Administrative burden reduction

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The table illustrates that the majority of the impacts derived from the SOA eDepot project can be characterised as Efficiencies. These cover the four main indicators: time savings, cost reductions, resource re-allocation and a reduction in administrative burdens. This tendency may be influenced in part by the fact the Agency for Administrative Simplification, which aims to propose and implement measures to reduce red tape, is reponsible for the horizontal program coordination and development of the eDepot. It is notable however that the Efficiencies are shared by the different government bodies involved. A positive spill over effect can also be observed on third parties, the notaries and the end-user, their clients. They in turn are the principle beneficiairies of the indicators, which characterise Innovation and Effectiveness – enhanced quality of service delivery and competitiveness.

Significantly, the scope of the eDepot project has the potential to be expanded for future projects as the ‘building blocks’ on which it is based are reusable in different situations. Plans are currently being developed for the eDepot’s generic web services to be reused by other third parties.

Figure 43 below is an illustration of an ongoing project on the sale of buildings, which the Agency for Administrative Simplification is currently undertaking with the professional body for Real Estate Agents and the Royal Federation of Belgian Notaries. In common with the effect the eDepot has had on the registration of a company, the DER-ve project (‘Document Electroniquement Reconnaissable – Vente’) seeks to cut the costs, time, resources and red-tape required for the sale of real estate. It will build on existing interfaces between the third party in the sector and the relevant public administrations.

Figure 43 – Expansion of the eDepot to Real Estate

Similarly, the ASA/DAV has launched a project in collaboration with the Department for Justice to allow for the direct establishment of associations (VZW/ASBL) via a client application without the involvement of notaries. Again, a primary objective is to achieve Efficiencies in terms of time savings, cost reductions, resources reallocation and red tape reductions. A screenshot of the forthcoming online client application for this service is illustrated in Figure 44 below.

and simplified procedure

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Figure 44 – Expansion of the eDepot to VZW/ASBL

This underlines the potential for third parties to provide new and added-value services by reusing the building blocks of public services provided in an open and interoperable way by public administrations.

4.7.2 Crossroads Bank for Social Security The Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS)58 is based on the mutual, electronic exchange of information and services between social security databases. It was developed in order to address the fragmentation of the Belgian Social Security System which involves 3,000 public and private actors at federal, regional and local level. Using multiple channels, it enables citizens and employers to manage their interaction with the social security sector electronically, as illustrated by Figure 45 below.

58 e-Government Program of the Belgian Social Sector, Crossroads Bank for Social Security, (2009)

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Figure 45 - Cross Roads Bank for Social Security

Using an unique Identification key, the CSSB provides 42 e-services for employers, including the submission of declarations regarding employment, discharge, salary and working time, and social risk. The CSSB also comprises a range of e-services for citizens, including the application for and consultation of social benefits.

It is possible to identify a range series of specific impacts derived from the CBSS. Using the indicators identified above, these have also been classified in Table 8 below according to the three main impact dimensions identified.

Table 8 – Impact of the Cross Roads Bank for Social Security

Innovation Effectiveness Efficiency

Quality - services are:

- well performing

- personalised

- user-friendly (self service/multi-channel)

An integrated portal providing:

- a life-cycle approach

- across government levels

Services are delivered quicker due

to direct interaction between public

/ private actors and real time replies

Cost Reductions (saves 50

declaration forms for employers and

functional task sharing)

Quantity - services are:

- permanently available

- reliable and secure

Rationalization of the information

exchange processes implies a

saving of 1 bn € / year for companies

Improved social protection

Support of social policy

A minimised administrative burden

Due to electronic procedures

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The table reveals a range of impacts derived from the CBSS, which can in this case be largely categorised under the Innovation and Efficiency domains. Again, the four main indicators related to Efficiency can be identified, with significant cost reductions predicted for businesses in particular. Both indicators, which characterise Innovation can also be observed, with the CBSS resulting in an improvement of both the quality and quantity of service delivery. In comparison with the eDepot, this may reflect the wider scope of the CBSS project, which is aimed at citizens and businesses generally. It is also interesting that additional indicators are identified, which do not directly match the measurement framework proposed. These highlight the contribution the CBSS makes to social protection, social policy and fraud prevention, which underlines the potentially wider societal impact of providing public services in an open and interoperable way.

4.7.3 German Administration Services Directory The German Administration Services Directory (DVDV)59 acts as a service directory between the different levels of Government. It was initially developed in order to allow notifications in the area of civil registration to be transferred electronically, namely changing addresses across state borders. In this context, all 5246 civil registration agencies are entered into the system, reflecting Germany’s federal structure, as illustrated by Figure 46 below.

Figure 46 - German Administration Services Directory

The DVDV targets all scenarios which require electronic communication between public administrations based on SOA. Its objective is to list all eGovernment agencies, services and providers. Today it provides more than 20 services in domains related to civil administration, including services in the area of taxation, justice, car-registration and business licenses.

A well elaborated impact analysis of the DVDV project based on the eGEP model has been undertaken for the e-practice.eu initiative60 It is however also possible to classify the indicators in Table 9 below according to the three main impact dimensions identified.

59 German Administration Services Directory, DVDV/UN (7 June 2007) 60 German Administration Services Directory (DVDV), Hagen, M., (7 January 2010)

Boosts fraud prevention

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Table 9 – Impact of the German Administration Services Directory

The table again demonstrates a series of different impacts, with a predominance of those indicators, which characterise the Efficiency domain in the model. In a similar way to the eDepot, the DVDV project was in the first instance motivated largely by the goal of cutting red tape for public administrations and citizens in the area of civil registration. The DVDV project therefore also covers the four main Efficiency indicators: time savings, cost reductions, resource re-allocation and a reduction in administrative burdens. Whilst third parties, notably citizens, can expect to benefit directly from the Effectiveness and Innovation characteristics of the DVDV, indirect benefits can also be observed. These relate in particular to the significant cost savings made by public administrations on behalf of tax payers, the excellent ROI and the increasing economic returns for new services.

4.7.4 Danish Registration of Land and Property The Danish system for the Registration of Land and Property (eTL) 61 is an External Service Oriented Application, which digitizes, centralises and automates the land and property registration system in Denmark. It was developed in order to streamline the previously paper-based system and centres around the submission of a digital document signed with a digital signature to a Single of Land and Property Court. The majority of the process of verifying the registration has been automated and a decision is sent directly to the applicant. This is illustrated in Figure 47 below. 62

61 Automating Land Registration in Denmark, Computer Sciences Corporation for csc.com (2010) 62Images provided by: http://www.devoteam.dk/

Innovation Effectiveness Efficiency

Total Savings of 1 m € / month

Cost reduction per electronic

transaction from 2.70 € to 0.38 €

Decrease in errors and

higher quality of data

One-stop-shop and

faster enquiry handling

Set-up costs of 500,000 € =

Rapid Return on Investment

An increase in economic returns

with each new service offered

Re-allocation of resources due

to electronic data exchange

Administrative burden reduction of

1 person day / month / agency

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Figure 47 - Danish Registration of Land and Property

It is possible to identify a series of specific impacts derived from the eTL. Using the indicators identified above, these have again been classified in Table 10 below according to the three main impact dimensions. Table 11 provides a clear, direct comparison of the situation before and after implementation of this approach.

Table 10 – Impact of the Danish Registration of Land and Property

Table 11 – Comparison of the Danish Registration of Land and Property

Innovation Effectiveness Efficiency

Automatic, unbiased case

management and

continuous business process

Third parties can integrate

e-TL directly into their

business models/systems

Cases are processed in seconds,

as opposed to days or weeks

Potential annual savings of 70 m €

v. cost of 30-35 m over 5 years

Catalyst for value chain

digitisation and increased

competitive advantage Courts 10 m €

Companies 50 €

Citizens 20 m €

Before After

− Paper-based documents

− 82 County Courts

− 400 clerks

− Electronic documentation with digital signatures

− 1 Land and Property Registration Court

− 150 employees

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The tables highlight a range of impacts derived from the eTL, which can again be largely categorised under the Efficiency domain. The ‘Before’ and ‘After’ comparison reflects the eTL’s objective to centralize and digitise the land and property registration system by moving to an electronic system managed by a single central court. This streamlining process has resulted in significant time and particularly cost Efficiencies, which are shared between the public administration, companies which integrate the eTL system into their business models, and citizens. The eTL’s design has a strong focus on third parties. This is illustrated by the impacts listed under the Effectiveness and Innovation categories in terms of service quality and increased competitiveness.

One distinctive feature of the Danish eTL is its ability to cooperate with external entities and the possibility for private actors, such as banks, mortgage brokers, real estate-agents, lawyers, surveyors and car finance companies, to integrate it directly in their systems. This is illustrated in Figure 48 below.

Figure 48 - Danish Registration of Land and Property (Third Parties)

The eTL is connected to the financial services sector via a common broker, the e-nettet. 63 Established by the Association of Danish Mortgage Banks and later converted into a limited company, its objective is to establish a 100% digital housing market. It is currently used by 2,500 estate agent offices, bank branches and mortgage lending offices and has seen web-traffic grow tenfold.

The interface has created new opportunities for businesses and their customers. The impacts identified include: unprecedented efficiency; dramatic effects on time spent, costs and customers’ experience of ease and smooth-running transactions; reduced documentation and streamlined governance; access to a range of tools via partnership agreements with the content suppliers and public registers (including property surveillance, reports, price history, the building, housing and land registers; and information on debts); minimised financial risks; and improved administrative quality. The interface has created new opportunities for businesses and their customers. The impacts identified include: unprecedented efficiency; dramatic effects on time spent, costs and customers’ experience of ease and smooth-running transactions; reduced documentation and streamlined governance; access to a range of tools via partnership agreements with the content suppliers and public registers (including property surveillance, reports, price history, the building, housing and land registers; and information on unpaid debts); minimised financial risks; and, an increase in

63 The story of e-nettet, e-nettet.dk (n.d.)

− 2.5 m files/80 m papers − Paperless

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administrative quality. These impacts can also be equated to the indicators and categories of impact identified in the proposed measurement framework above.

In a similar way to the eDepot project, the eTL again underlines the potential for and impact of third parties reusing the building blocks of public services provided in a ‘cloud of public services’

4.8 Potential impacts of a ‘cloud of public services’ The three future scenarios presented in Chapter 4.3 4.3 have been developed to illustrate the possibilities for the design of a ‘cloud of public services.’ As illustrated by the conceptual model, the potential to combine the building blocks of public services in a ‘cloud of public services’ provides fertile ground for public and private sector innovation. The scenarios developed are theoretical, but are intended to illustrate this. The impact framework can also be applied to the scenarios in order to assess the impact for service providers and end-users.

4.8.1 Efficiency: Flu Prediction Service

Figure 49 – Predicted Impact of the ‘Flu prediction’ Service

Figure 49 above recalls the suggestion of broadening the scope of the SOA –based Belgian eHealth platform to facilitate the development of a Flu Prediction service. In addition to reusing the existing basic services, additional building blocks, such as social media/search engines, could be added and orchestrated to increase the efficiency of the existing medical information exchange service.

The model can be further detailed to propose a series of impacts of the Flu prediction service. These are illustrated in Table 12 below. The scenario clearly demonstrates impacts in terms of efficiency, but also illustrates the existence of innovation and effectiveness indicators. This is illustrated by the figure above.

Table 12 – Potential Impact of Flu Prediction Service

Innovation Effectiveness EFFICIENCY

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In a similar manner to the CBSS, the Flu Prediction Service could be expected to demonstrate the four main indicators related to Efficiency: Time Savings, Cost Reductions and to a lesser extent Resource Reallocation and Administrative Burden Reduction. Whilst the public administration is likely to be the primary beneficiary, spill over effects for third parties, including health care professionals are anticipated. End-users, in this case patients, would also be expected to benefit from increasingly integrated medical care and the prognostic service delivery along the Effectiveness and Innovation dimensions.

4.8.2 Effectiveness: Bank as a ‘one-stop-shop’

Figure 50 – Predicted impact of the Bank as a ‘One stop shop’ for company registration

Figure 50 above illustrates the idea to develop a new ‘one-stop-shop’ company registration service. Currently undertaken by notaries in Belgium for example, the scenario envisages making the services which together comprise the SOA eDepot project available to a high street bank. In this way, the existing service could be offered by a new service provider. The bank would also be able to

More prognostic service delivery

resulting in better health care

The provision of medication /

vaccines alongside other care

Time Savings in predicting and

reacting to Flu outbreaks

Cost Reductions as a result of more

targeted medical intervention

The possibility of reallocating

resources due better treatment

A reduction in red tape as a result

of electronic data exchange

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complement the company registration process with its traditional business banking services, which include business plan advice, account management, loan facilities and insurance.

It is possible to propose a series of impacts of the new ‘one-stop-shop’ company registration. These are illustrated in Table 13 below. Once again, several impacts can be distinguished, particularly concerning effectiveness impacts, but also in terms of efficiency and innovation indicators. This is illustrated by the figure above.

Table 13 - Potential Impact of ‘one-stop-shop’ company registration

Due to the one-stop-shop procedure, the bank and consumer is likely to benefit from a positive spill over effect from the significant Efficiencies currently derived by public adminsitrations from the SOA eDepot project. These include the potential to save further time, cost and resources and reduce red tape, as traditional buisness banking services are currently offered seperately to company registration. Additional costs may, however, be incurred in terms of staff recruitment and training, as well as investment in new software. The banks customers could also benefit significantly along the Effectiveness and Innovation domains from an increasingly integrated and enhanced service offering. In light of the range of services already offered by banks, the predicted customer satisfaction could in turn put the third party at a competitive advantage within the financial services sector.

Innovation EFFECTIVENESS Efficiency

Quantity and quality in one place Integrated Service Delivery

(existing and new services)

− Additional time savings

− Further cost savings

− Extra resource re-allocation

− More red tape reduction:

due to one-stop-shop procedure

Competitive Advantage

within the financial sector

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4.8.3 Innovation: Front office for permits and licenses

Figure 51 – Predicted Impact of a front office for permits and Licences

Figure 51 above illustrates the proposal of a new business model, based on a cloud of public services. It presents the scenario in which a ‘Front Office’ is established to provide a citizen or business with the licences and permits necessary to undertake a particular activity. By reusing and orchestrating existing public services, it is able to request and receive licences and permits from different public administrations, according to the end-users’ circumstances, thus providing an innovative, new service.

The model can be further decomposed to propose a series of impacts of the Front Office for Licences and Permits. These are illustrated in Table 14 below. In this case, impacts derived from innovation can in particular be identified, but also impact in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. This is illustrated by the graphic above the Figure.

Table 14 - Potential Impact of Front Office for Licences and Permits

INNOVATION Effectiveness Efficiency

Services will be (Quality):

- user-friendly

- personalised

An integrated portal providing:

- a life-cycle approach

- across government levels

Services will be (Quantity) :

- available

- reliable and secure

Time Savings

Cost Reductions

Resource Reallocation

Administrative Burden Reduction

Increased jobs and growth

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Given the scenario’s theoretical nature, the possibility of accurately predicting its impact is reduced. In common with the existing SOA approaches to eGovernment examined and the other future scenarios, it is however possible to foresee Efficiencies in terms of Time Savings, Cost Reductions, Resource Reallocation and Administrative Burden Reduction. Given the proposal to provide all licences and permits necessary, these benefits may be experienced by the different public administrations involved, the third party and the end-user. In addition, the consumer can expect to benefit from the delivery of a new, high quality and integrated service. Importantly, by reusing existing public services, the development of the new ‘Front Office’ can be expected to contribute to the creation of growth and jobs.

4.9 Overall impacts of a ‘cloud of public services’ The real life examples and future scenarios presented clearly demonstrate that positive impacts can be derived from moving towards the provision of public services in an open and interoperable way. The ‘cloud of public services’ provides many opportunities for the different stakeholders involved:

Public Administrations: can more easily develop new services based on existing services, benefit from services provided openly by other public administrations, work more effectively together based on interoperable services, develop services that better serve businesses and citizens, which as shown above leads to efficiency and effectiveness gains;

Private Sector: can benefit from the move towards a ‘cloud of public services’ in two ways: 1) by acting as third parties, companies, organisations as well as individuals, can provide new services based on existing government services. This can lead to new business opportunities, more efficiency and effectiveness, competitive advantages, and ultimately economic growth and jobs; 2) as service providers to government, private sector players can support the government in establishing their services in the ‘cloud’ of public services by providing technologies, consultancy services and by setting standards for interoperability of services;

End-users: can benefit from newly developed services which are innovative and provide a more effective integrated service. As the examples provided show, this can lead to efficiency gains in terms of saving time, money and red tape, and lead to more user-satisfaction.

The principle of the ‘cloud of public services’ is based on the reuse of existing services as building blocks. The potential for reuse is immense. A simple calculation shows that from any set of services (of say ‘n’ amount of services) the potential number of combinations which can be made in order to make new services based on a certain amount of existing services (say ‘k’) amount to:

For example, with a total set of say 100 services over 1 billion new services could potentially be created by combining sets of 6 existing services (as building blocks for the new services). The imagination of the service provider is the limit, however the feasibility of combinations of services would obviously need to be evaluated, in the light of the specific objective of a service (as presented in the examples provided by the future scenarios above). It is therefore difficult to specify exactly what the impact will be in terms of possible new innovative services which can be developed based on an existing set of services. Nevertheless, it is clear that the ‘cloud of public services’ opens up many opportunities for both public administrations and third parties to provide new innovative services for end-users.

Based on the real-life examples above and the impact framework, Table 15 below provides a more detailed overview of the types of impact which can be expected from governments moving towards a ‘cloud of public services.’

Public administrations, which traditionally provide the building blocks of a public service, benefit internally from delivering their services online. Indeed, significant Efficiency savings in terms of time, cost and resources and reduced red tape can be observed. It is however noticeable that a significant spill-over effect can also be identified, with third parties and end-users sharing in similar gains. The Danish system for land and property registration (eTL) clearly illustrates this distribution of benefits, with the Danish courts saving 10 € million per year, third parties 50 € million per year and end-users 20 € million per year.

Analysis of the Effectiveness and Innovation domains reveals a similar picture. The delivery of public services in a ‘cloud’ would enable public administrations at the local, regional, national and even

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European level to improve cooperation and reduce the duplication of resources and effort between government ‘silos’. Third parties in turn can benefit from the increased competitive advantage of integrated service delivery, whilst the development of innovative new services and new business opportunities can be expected to improve the quality and quantity of services for end-users (citizens and businesses).

It is noticeable that the costs of providing public services in an open and interoperable way are relatively small in comparison to the benefits. In monetary terms, although differing in scale and ambition, both the DVDV and eTL projects display impressive returns on investment. The DVDV for example cost 500,000 € to establish, but resulted in savings of 1 m € per month. In comparison to the costs, the benefits of SOA-based approaches to eGovernment are however also significant in terms of their wider impact. They provide a positive impact on goals such as increased social protection in the case of the CBSS and, in the context of current eGovernment policy and the Europe 2020 Strategy, can contribute to the goal of ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive’ growth and jobs.

Table 15 – Overall impacts of a cloud of public services

Category Public Sector Private Sector End-Users

Efficiency Significant cost savings (e.g. 1 m € per month via DVDV and 10 € m per year via the eTL )

Possibility to reallocate staff for added-value activities

Significant reductions in red tape (e.g. less paper forms)

An increase in economic returns with each new service

Significant cost savings (e.g. 50 € m per year via the eTL)

Possibility to reallocate staff for added-value activities

Significant reductions in red tape (e.g. less paper forms)

Significant cost savings (e.g. 20 m € per year via the eTL)

Significant time savings (e.g. time to set-up a business)

Significant reductions in red tape (e.g. less paper forms)

Effectiveness Less duplication and better cooperation (national and EU)

Integrated service delivery Catalyst for supply chain digitisation and increased competitive advantage

‘One-stop-shop’ provision

Innovation New service development

New business opportunities Quality – services are:

- personalised

- user-friendly (self service /multi-channel)

- more accurate

- automatic/impartial

Quantity - services are:

- always available

- reliable and secure

Benefits

Other Positive impact on policy goals (e.g. social protection, fraud prevention and health care)

Increased jobs and growth

Increased jobs and growth Increased jobs and growth

Costs Efficiency Set-up (e.g. 500,000 € DVDV)

Operational (e.g. 30-35 m over 5 years via the eTL)

But rapid return on investment

Set-up, running and training N.A.

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5 Conclusions and recommendations

5.1 Conclusions The objective of this study is to identify ‘Fundamental Services’ in the context of new "Universal or Global" SOA SOA approaches to the provision of eGovernment services. The key questions which it addresses are: at which level of granularity can ‘Fundamental Services’ be defined? Which ones have the highest potential for reuse? And what are the possibilities for and the impact of delivering public services in line with the concept of a ‘cloud of public services’?

The study focuses on the provision of the ‘building blocks’ of public services in a ‘cloud of public services’ for reuse by public administrations and third parties in order to build new services. The notion of ‘cloud’ is often associated with ‘cloud computing’ and the technical aspects of enabling a cloud environment. In this study, however, ‘cloud’ refers to a collection of public services, which can be offered in an open and interoperable way.

Against a background of recent policy and technological developments, the study developed a service taxonomy and methodology in order to identify the building blocks of public services delivered online. The taxonomy and methodology is summarised in Table 16.

Table 16 – Taxonomy and Method Summary

Via application of taxonomy and method to case studies within the scope of the life cycle of a business in three Member States, 239 services were identified. The majority of public services identified were Basic Services (118 Basic Data and 54 Basic Logic Services), services whereby administrationsregister data related to businesses and citizens and services to check rules and regulations.

Given that both data and rules (Basic Data and Basic Logic Services) are clearly essential to the delivery of public services and are apparent and comparable in different public administrations across three Member States, it is at the basic level that ‘Fundamental Services’ should be defined.

Fundamental services are therefore defined as:

A Fundamental Service is a basic public service (both basic data and basic logic services) that is autonomous and that is provided by a single responsible role, and receives as input only the output from basic data services, documents or objects produced by citizens, businesses or administrations.

According to this formulation, the study identified a total of 172 ‘Fundamental Services’ across the Member States case studies. Many of these services are similar in scope across the Member States investigated, i.e. they provide a similar functionality (e.g. to register a new business in the business registry), although details of each service may differ due to different legal environments and requirements for data input and output.

Taxonomy Method

Process Public Services

Composed Public Services

Basic Public Services

Basic Data Services

Basic Logic Services

Step 1: Define the overall scope and life events

Step 2: Identify the laws, input and output

Step 3: Create the service maze and identify services

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Based on the try-out of the methodology and service taxonomy in three Member States it is clear that these tools can serve the purpose of supporting public administrations to move towards more open and interoperable delivery of public services in a cloud of public services. A total of 239 services (including 39 process public services, 28 composed public services and 172 basic public services (of which 118 basic data services and 54 basic logic services)) were identified in the case studies and interviewees from public administrations have indicated that both the service taxonomy and methodology provided a useful framework to investigate processes and define services that serve as building blocks supporting the process.

Reuse of public services can in principle be found at each level of services (within public administrations or by third parties). However, the examples explored in the study demonstrate that there is a relationship between the domain specificity and the potential to reuse services. In addition, the higher the level of granularity, the more the service tends towards providing domain-specific functionality. As a general rule, there is therefore an inverse relationship between level of granularity and the scope for reuse - high level Process or Composed Public Services are less likely to be reused in comparison with Basic (Data and Logic) Public Services.

Following implementation of the methodology in Sweden, Italy and Belgium, the study developed a conceptual model of a ‘cloud of public services.’ Three future scenarios were then elaborated which illustrate opportunities for public and private actors arising from the ‘cloud of public services:’

Public Value Services: The public services provided by the eHealth platform in Belgium could also be used to provide additional services such as a Flu Prediction service;

Competitive advantage: A scenario could be foreseen in which third parties, such as banks, also deliver company registration services currently provided by ‘one-stop-shops;’

New business models: In the future, it could be possible for a single service provider (a single ‘front office’) to be authorised to carry out all activities needed to acquire permits and licences;

In addition, three real-life examples of open and interoperable approaches to eGovernment were evaluated in order to investigate the prerequisites for and challenges of a ‘cloud of public services’. These were the Belgian Federal Service Bus (FSB), the reference architecture for the Dutch government (NORA) and German Standards and Architectures for eGovernment Applications (SAGA). The examples demonstrated the need for:

Open, published standards and agreements, which clearly state the ground rules;

A service catalogue describing the available services, their content, quality and SLAs;

Consideration of data security requirements and the establishment of trust via transparency;

Attention to the legal implications of process redesign, political buy-in and coordination.

Based on the prerequisites and challenges identified, the study suggested that migration to this eGovernment model could be facilitated by using layered architecture to create domain specific clouds, which are gradually integrated at a higher level. Alternatively, functionality captured in existing ‘legacy’ systems could be reused by adding a service layer and exposing this to a ‘cloud of public services.’ Both strategies necessitate a gradual, phased or incremental approach and could also be applied to the provision services at the EU level. The domain specificity of services would however also need to be taken into consideration when investigating the potential for cross-border reuse.

Based on a review of existing impact frameworks, the study finally developed a new model for impact analysis. It was subsequently applied to four existing examples of open and interoperable service delivery: the Belgian eDepot and the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS), the German Administration Services Directory (DVDV) and the Danish system for the Registration of Land and Property (eTL). Their evaluation revealed significant impacts for public administrations, third parties and end-users in terms of Efficiency, Effectiveness and Innovation.

In terms of efficiency, significant time savings, cost reductions, resource re-allocation and reductions in administrative burdens were identified. The eDepot for example reduces the time needed for a company to start up from 56 to 3 days, whilst the introduction of eTL in annual cost savings of 70 million Euros, divided between the public administration (courts), companies and citizens. The CBSS and DVDV meanwhile demonstrate important Effectiveness indicators, acting as an integrated portal and one-stop-shop in the fields of social security and civil registration respectively. Indicators, which

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characterise Innovation, can also be observed across the two examples, with the CBSS and DVDV resulting in an improvement in the quantity (availability) and quality (accuracy) of service delivery.

It is significant that the design of the both the eDepot and eTL have a strong focus on third parties. The building blocks on which the eDepot is based can be reused by different parties to provide new services online, including notaries, the real estate sector and to allow for the direct establishment of associations (ASBL). Similarly, the eTL is designed to enable private actors, such as banks, mortgage brokers, real estate-agents, lawyers, surveyors and car finance companies, to integrate it directly in their systems.

Importantly, the costs of providing public services in an open and interoperable way are relatively small in comparison to the benefits. The DVDV and eTL projects in particular display impressive returns on investment. Application of the proposed measurement framework to the three future scenarios, revealed a similar picture. In addition, the study demonstrated that the potential for reuse provided the ‘cloud of public services’ is ultimately only limited to the domain specificity of the services and the imagination of the service provider.

It should be noted that moving towards a cloud of public services has potentially large benefits for all actors involved; however, it also requires a certain amount of investment and challenges to be overcome. Given the usually large amount of actors (e.g. different public administrations) the coordination between these organisations may well pose a significant challenge, as well as the established legal framework governing the service delivery of these actors that may pose a blocking factor to move towards new ways of delivering services. Therefore, changes in legislation may be needed for which political buy-in is essential. In addition, the actual take-up of services relies on the willingness of organisation and their employees to change their way of working, this human factor also needs to be taken into account.

Nevertheless, as existing examples have shown, success can be achieved mainly by starting small and focusing on specific domains to establish a proof of concept and to subsequently expand to other domains thereby gradually providing more and more services in the cloud of public services. In addition, existing functionality captured in established (legacy) back-end systems can be made available for reuse through a service layer, thereby not reinventing the wheel and keeping established responsibilities intact. Managing the challenges successfully can result in impressive returns on investment as shown by the examples explored in the study (e.g. the Danish eTL reports potential savings of €70mln per year compared to a cost of €30-35 mln over 5 years, and the German DVDV reports total savings of €1mln per month compared to setup costs of €500.000).

Not only changes to the delivery of existing services can result in significant savings, but also the potential of services to be reused provides numerous possibilities for applications in a wide variety of domains (both public and private) to build on these building blocks and provide new services. Given the possibility to make new services based on existing ones, theoretically the potential for developing new applications is virtually unlimited. The full potential depends on the level of reusability of services as well as on the creativity of service providers to build new services on top of existing ones. The future scenarios explored in this study show that the potential certainly exists and is likely to emerge more and more as more services are openly provided in a cloud of public services.

5.2 Recommendations Given the potential opportunities and impact of providing public services in line with the ‘cloud of public services’ concept, notably the examples of financially lucrative investments for public administrations, it is clear that migration towards this model of service delivery is highly recommended.

In order to facilitate further exploration of the potential move, a set of suggestions for future discussion and next steps can be made. These emerge from the conclusions of the study and are intended to indicate the potential future direction and activities, which could be undertaken at the local, regional, national and European level by both public administrations, including the European Commission, and third parties involved in the collaborative production of public services. The extent to which these recommendations are implemented is a matter for future political decision-making.

Further development of the concept The scope of this study was limited to case studies within the life cycle of a business in Italy, Sweden and Belgium. A broader investigation of the same situation in other Member States could usefully

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identify the actors involved in public service delivery, facilitate a comparison of services offered (particularly ‘Fundamental Services’) with a view to potential cross-border provision, and learn from alternative open and interoperable approaches to service delivery. This exercise would complement the conclusions of this study.

In addition, two of the future scenarios developed (Flu Prediction and Front office for permits and licences) demonstrate the potential for the ‘cloud of public services’ concept to be implemented in situations beyond the scope of the case studies. Indeed, public services support the functioning of society in general and are consumed by different end-users. They can therefore be observed across a range of policy domains: from crime and justice, education, employment and the environment, to health and well-being, tax and motoring, pensions and retirement, and travel and transport. Application of the taxonomy and methodology to life events in a limited number of these areas would enable the potential for and impact of a ‘cloud of public services’ to be more broadly assessed.

The study’s conclusions nevertheless demonstrate that the adoption of a common service taxonomy and method is crucial to facilitate the identification of the building blocks of public services. It is therefore recommended to adopt the service taxonomy and proposed method in future research and encourage the Member States to use these in their implementation of electronic services in order to ensure consistency. They also could provide a common scheme to decompose public services into buildings blocks, which could facilitate the identification of commonalities (e.g. in information, processes, semantic assets and infrastructure services) across borders. A fundamental services taxonomy and method, as well as core semantic assets and common infrastructures services are the first steps of an overall approach. Extension of the scope of the study (to other Member States or domains) would also increase stakeholder engagement and enable best practices to be recorded.

Roadmapping and alignment with existing initiatives In order to stimulate the adoption of the concept of a cloud of public services (closely linked to ‘Universal’ or ‘Global’ SOA) a high level roadmap should be developped taking into account and integrating existing initiaves. The 2011-2015 eGovernment Action Plan, for example, sets out actions to empower citizens and businesses, reinforce mobility in the Single Market, enable efficiency and effectiveness, and create the key pre-conditions for eGovernment. The Digital Agenda for Europe also seeks to contribute towards the development of open, flexible and personalised eGovernment services for citizens and businesses. In particular, the current eGovernment Action Plan for Europe mentions the need for ‘innovative eGovernment’ services to “rely on and benefit from innovative technical approaches, such as clouds of public services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) to build open, flexible and collaborative eGovernment services while at the same time lowering ICT costs”64.

The development of service platforms and repositories to enable services to be provided in an open and interoperable way for reuse should be developed. In 2011, the CIP ICT PSP programme called for proposals including an objective "Towards a cloud of public services" that aims to test and show the added value of SOA and cloud computing for eGovernment services in view of their larger deployment in the public sector. The concepts and conclusions of this study could be used as an input and could be further developed in selected pilots.

Furthermore the aims and objectives of the interoperability initiatives within the ISA governance pyramid65 are significant and a link between the ISA initiatives and any future activities in the scope of this study should be maintained. Currently there are a number of ongoing ISA studies that are highly relevant in the context of this study. The European Interoperability Architecture (EIA) study for example supports the elaboration of a common vision for EIA, a project on Base Registries will formulate recommendations on facilitating data exchange between public administrations in order to foster cross-border public service delivery, the Catalogue of Services study seeks to assess the feasibility and impact of a common catalogue of services, and the EIS Governance project will review implementation of and revise the EIS.

The development of a high level policy roadmap on the possibilities for the design and impact of a cloud of public services would also necessitate the identification of the costs and benefits and a more extensive assessment of the social, economic and environmental impacts.

64 Visions and priorities for eGovernment in Europe: Orientations for a post 2010 eGovernment Action Plan, European Commission eGovernment Sub-group, Working Paper (20 March 2009) 65 'Towards interoperability for European public services', European Commission COM(2010)744 final (16 December 2010)

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Potential Practical Implementation Based on the examination of real-life examples of open and interoperable approaches to eGovernment, this study suggests migration strategies in order to address the identified prerequisites for and challenges of a cloud of public services. These involve focusing first on different domains and reusing existing functionality for public services captured in existing ‘legacy’ systems.

Both strategies necessitate a paradigm shift. The current policy initiatives and studies outlined above are contributing towards the establishment of open standards, specifications and agreements. The prerequisites for a cloud of public services as identified in this study, include open standards, a service catalogue, SLAs and data security. The need for process redesign and institutional and legal change also need to be addressed and taken into account when implementing services in line with the concept of a cloud of public services. As illustrated by this study there is clear need for coordination between different actors involved in order to establish reusable services. The subsequent take-up of newly created services equally requires sufficient political buy-in and incentives to ensure a successful migration.

In combination, the examples of open and interoperable service provision examined and the related literature underline in particular the need for a gradual, phased or incremental approach to migration.

The German Administration Services Directory (DVDV) for example began with a single service in the area of civil registration but has over time expanded its approach to provide more than 20 related services. The Open Group’s Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM) described in Chapter 1 also creates a roadmap for incremental transformation towards more mature levels of service integration, in order to achieve increasing business benefits. In addition, the 2010 report on ‘User expectations of a life events approach for designing e-Government services’ provides a detailed roadmap for migrating to a SOA-approach to eGovernment, based on an envisioning and an implementation phase.

By further developing the concept and engaging in a roadmapping exercise, implementation of an effective migration strategy will help to ensure that any future move towards a cloud of public services will enable public administrations, third parties and end-users to take full advantage of the benefits derived from providing the building blocks of public services in an open an interoperable way.

5.3 Discussion On 24 February 2011 the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Directive with the aim of interconnecting Business Registers within the EU. The proposal amends a number of existing Directives (namely, Directive 89/666/EEC, Directive 2005/56/EC, and Directive 2009/101/EC)66. This Directive if adopted will require all Member States to link up their Business Registers electronically to provide up-to-date information on companies and their foreign branches in Europe and improve efficient cooperation between business registers in cross-border transactions and mergers through improved electronic inter-linkages as well as cross-border access to official business information. The latter is particularly interesting for involved actors such as consumers, existing or potential business partners, the public and the tax and justice administration throughout the EU.

Reaching this objective would mark an important achievement in cross-border interoperability of eGovernment across the EU. Ultimately, facilitating this cross-border electronic access to business information could generate annual savings of more than 69 million euro.67 The potential that may arise from this achievement may be even larger if the interconnection of business registers would be achieved through applying the concept of a cloud of public services, by making public services related to the business registers openly available in an interoperable way for reuse (this is currently already taking place in Belgium, where the Crossroads bank for Enterprises (CBE) (the Belgian Business Register) is being migrated towards the Belgian Federal Service Bus).

This is an important opportunity towards establishing cross-border services based on the cloud of public services concept. It is clear that many different stakeholders may be interested in making use of services related to the business registers of the Member States, such as the ones mentioned above consumers, businesses, tax and justice administrations and the public as a whole. To serve their 66 Proposal for a Directive amending Directives 89/666/EEC, 2005/56/EC and 2009/101/EC as regards the interconnection of central, commercial and companies registers, http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/company/docs/business_registers/20110224_proposal_en.pdf 67 Commission Staff Working Document, Impact Assessment accompanying the proposed Directive (SEC(2010)),

http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/company/docs/business_registers/20110224_impact_en.pdf

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interests online applications will have to be developed which could be based on openly provided services by the Member States in a cloud of public services. One could envisage applications for:

consumers, to look up details on a company to gain trust in buying their products (for instance online),

businesses: to look for specific business in a sector to find potential business partners, tax and justice administrations: to have access to accurate information on the situation of a

business and its foreign branches,

Many more examples could be envisaged and the demand is certainly real, as stated in the impact assessment the UK Companies House “received 185 million (domestic and cross-border) requests for free company information” and in Austria, Finland or Sweden, business registers receive, on average, between 10 and 15 requests per company per year, and in Ireland around three. By not just facilitating the interconnection of Business Registers but by providing their supporting services in a cloud of public services would allow public administrations as well as third parties to take-up these services and build new applications to meet the needs of consumers, business and administrations. This would bring forward considerable benefits at EU and Member State level for all stakeholders involved.

In addition, this would also contribute greatly to the Points of Single Contact (PSCs) that are being established in the Member States in accordance with the Services Directive. The Points of Single Contact are set up to facilitate the lives of entrepreneurs wishing to establish a business or to provide their services in another Member State on a temporary basis by enabling them to complete administrative formalities online, both in their own country and in other EU Member States. The functioning of the PSCs often involves large-scale cooperation between different public administrations at national, regional and local level. The availability of open services in a cloud of public services could contribute to the development of Points of Single Contact, towards more sophisticated online eGovernment services. Clearly, the development of PSCs themselves also provides an example in which the cloud of public services would be largely beneficial. Instead of linking to websites of competent authorities and having a complex reality of different websites and different procedures on each of these websites, the availability of interoperable and openly provided services of different public administration related to the PSCs would allow for easy integration of services in one place based on existing services. As indicated in the study this is indeed one of the benefits a cloud of public services could provide.

As suggested in the conclusions and recommendations from this study, the migration towards a cloud of public services is likely most successful by focussing on a specific domain and gradually expanding. A potential test bed could therefore be the implementation of services linked to the Business Registers in the Member States into a cloud of public services. In order to achieve this, the available interoperability assets, guidelines and national infrastructures (such as the ones investigated in this study) should be taken into account in establishing the necessary prerequisites and address the challenges ahead. This would certainly be an important opportunity to drive eGovernment services in the EU towards the next level of maturity.

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Peristeras, V., Loutas, N., and Tarabanis, K., Organizational engineering in public administration: the state of the art on eGovernment domain modeling. (2008) Ria News Desk, Is Web 2.0 the Global SOA? (17 February 2006) RSA SPO and Luis Management, eGovernment Economics Project (eGEP) Measurement Framework Final Version, (2006) Saha, P., Enterprise Architecture as Platform for Connected Government: Understanding the Impact of Enterprise Architecture on Connected Government – A Qualitative Analysis, National University of Singapore/Microsoft, (2010) SOA Work Group of the Open Group (n.d) Thomas Manes, A., SOA is Dead; Long Live Services, (5 January 2009) Trochidis, I., Tambouris,E., & Tarabanis, K.A., An Ontology for Modeling Life-Events, (2007) UN Statistics Division, The UN Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG), (n.d.) Wang, Z., & Zhan, X. X., A Survey of Business Component Identification Methods and Related Techniques, (n.d.)

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7 Annex I

Implementation of the methodology

Life Event: ‘Starting Up’

SWEDEN

Business registration Generally, new businesses are required to register in the Business Registry. A registration number or identification number is provided and the creation of the new business is announced in an official journal. In Sweden, there is a joint service for electronic company registration run by the Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket) and the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket).

The company data is provided via forms directly to the Company Registration service. The business is registered after a number of verifications have been performed in line with the legislation concerning:

The composition of the board The Founders / Owners The Auditor Business name Any branches Capital shares

Legislation:

Partnership and Non-registered Partnership Act -Lag (1980:1102) om handelbolag och enkla bolag

Limited Companies Act -Aktiebolagslag (2005:551) Trade Register Act -Handelsregisterlag (1974:157)

Tax registration In addition to the Business Registry, new businesses must also report to the Swedish Tax Agency. Information is required in order to:

apply for − F tax (paid by an entrepreneur who is a natural person or legal entity) − A tax (paid by a natural person or legal entity who has taxable earned income) − FA tax (A tax on income from employment and F tax for the business)

apply for VAT registration register as an employer when hiring staff provide details for the calculation of the preliminary tax.

Once these registrations are completed, the business receives an F or FA tax certificate, which certifies that the business is registered for VAT and must pay social security contributions. It also states how much preliminary tax must be paid. The corporation tax registration card is provided as proof that the company pays taxes and social security contributions.

In addition to the tasks performed for registration with the Business Registry, a number of additional requirements need to be verified by the Tax Agency. These include:

Company location Business activities

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Legislation:

Value-Added Tax Act -Mervärdesskattelag (1994:200) Tax Payment Act – Skattebetalningslagen

Table 17 – Sweden - Starting Up

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 52.

Figure 52 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Starting Up

By applying the methodology outlined in chapter 2, the Life Events group ‘Starting Up’ has been broken down to identify its different ‘building blocks’ (Process, Composed and Basic Public Services).

ITALY

Business and Tax Registration

Tasks Public Service Public Administration Domain

Register with the Business Registry

Register a business with the Business Registry Business Registry

Register with the Tax Administration Register a business for Taxes Tax

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A business intending to trade in Italy begins by registering in the Business Register (Registro delle Imprese). It brings together what was previously the Register of Companies (Registro delle Società), kept by the Commercial Court, and the Register of Business Names (Registro delle Ditte), kept by the Chambers of Commerce.

The Chambers of Commerce in Italy are organised regionally. Since 1 April 2010, it has been compulsory to carry out all tasks for starting up a company with a Single Notice (Comunicazione Unica) to the Business Register. This Notice should contain all administrative, tax, social and insurance information which previously had to be sent to different bodies in different ways. The procedure can be performed online and requires the use of ComUnica software. A registration fee is to be paid for this service.

The Single Notice allows business to perform all the tasks necessary to start a business and for those to be revisited later in the case of changes to the enterprise or the closing of the company. It is a single digital dossier which, when starting up a business, includes the following files:

a document showing the details of the applicant and requests to the various entities; forms to apply for entry to the Business Register; forms to the Italian Revenue Agency in order to obtain the VAT number (Partite IVA) and a

fiscal code (Codice Fiscale); forms for registering with the Social Security Administration (Istituto Nazionale della

Previdenza Sociale - INPS) forms for the Accident Insurance Office (Istituto Nazionale Assicurazione sul Lavoro - INAIL). Details for registering as an employer by notifying the competent Labour Office (Direzzione

Provinciale del Lavore della Massima Occupazione, DPLMO) when hiring staff.

The Single Notice procedure is the only way to fulfil the necessary legal obligations. A number of organisations are involved in providing public service, including:

the Business Registry - Chambers of Commerce the Italian Revenue Agency (Agenzia delle Entrate) INPS and INAIL The Register of Craftsmen/Artisans (Albo delle Imprese Artigiane - when required by the

regional legislation); The Labour Office

Using the Single Notice, the new entity is able to register simultaneously at these organisations. After the Notice is filed, the firm receives all of the relevant documents within the following timescale:

immediately, a reference number for the registration procedure and receipt of the filing of the Single Notice with the Business Register;

immediately, the fiscal code and the VAT number; within 5 business days, the Registration with the Business Register; within 7 days, the INAIL documentation; within 7 days, the INPS documentation.

In specific cases, businesses also require certificates, authorisations or licences.

All changes which occur in the lifetime of a business are also entered into the Business Register, which is linked to the Italian General Business Register (Repertorio Economico Amministrativo - REA) kept by the Ministry of Industry.

Legislation:

Law of 29 December 1993 580, Reordering the chambers of commerce, industry, trade and agriculture

Rules of implementation of the Business Register (DPR Dec. 7, 1995, n. 581)

Table 18 – Italy - Starting Up

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Registering new business Business registration Business Registry

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(business registry)

Register new business (tax) Fiscal Code / VAT registration Tax

Register with Craftsmen/Artisans’ Register

Craftsmen/Artisans’ registration Economy

Specific certificates, authorisations or licences

Apply for /provide certificates, authorisations or licences

Economy

Register a business for social security

Social Security Administration (INPS) registration

Social Security

Register a business for insurance Accident Insurance Office (INAIL) registration

Social Security

Registering as an employer Labour Office ( DPLMO) registration Employment

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 53.

Figure 53 – Italy - Service Decomposition – Starting Up

BELGIUM

Business Registration In Belgium, a business can registered within three days undertaking the following three steps:

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Go to the bank: to deposit a minimum required amount of capital; Go to the notary: to submit a financial plan to a notary, who prepares the deed of incorporation

and electronic statutes needed to obtain the business identification number. Go to the one-stop-shop for businesses: to activate the business identification number.

Thanks to recent reforms, which established an online subscription, notaries can electronically sign the act of establishment and send it simultaneously to the public administrations involved. These are:

The Federal Ministry of Justice, which keeps the keeps files (deed of incorporation) of registered businesses (commercial court registry);

The Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE), which is the database created and maintained by the Federal Ministry of Economy and brings together the information on business from different sources (Justice, Finance, Social Security);

The Belgian Official Gazette

The e-Depot online platform provides notaries with a way to complete, sign and deposit the forms and documents required to create a company in all administrative databases. Tax, social security and land registry information can also be researched electronically. The e-Depot is an example of a successful SOA implementation. Notaries sign deeds deposited electronically using their REALcard which serves as e-ID card. The file is sent to various official databases, such as the National Registry, the Belgian Enterprise Registry and the Belgian-Moniteur (Belgian official gazette). The notary then receives a company number for their client and can electronically invoice the services provided. The client can then use this number to start their activities. All information about clients and their files is treated confidentially in electronic communications. The process is standardised, for example, through model deeds that are automatically completed in advance and intelligent calculation programmes.

The site can only be accessed using the REALcard, which also allows notaries to officially sign a whole range of documents. This professional-card offers notaries and their partners (authorities, administrations, banks) maximum security. A fully automated procedure is available.

Figure 54 below provides an overview of the provision of services through the e-Depot.

Figure 54 – Belgium - e-Depot SOA platform

The one-stop-shops (Ondernemingsloketten) are also responsible for a number of tasks including:

Register the business with the business register through the CBE Investigate a number of obligations on behalf of the company, such as the provision of

certificates, permissions, licences and work permits Provide abstracts from the Business Register Receive payment from the start-up

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In Belgium there are in total nine organisations that offer these services as officially recognised one-stop-shops. These organisations are non-profit and have offices in different parts of the country.

Social Security Registration Businesses must register with one of the 11 social insurance organisations for self-employed persons (Caisse d'assurances sociales pour travailleurs indépendants or Sociale verzekeringskas voor zelfstandigen) within 3 months of incorporation. If the company has employees, it must register with the Belgian social security administration for salaried workers (ONSS/RSZ) and comply with all applicable Belgian employment regulations. Registrations for social security are processed through the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS).

Tax Registration For businesses that need a VAT number, an application must be filed with the local VAT office. The company may request the VAT registration number either directly (Form 604A) or through the one-stop-shop, which can apply for the VAT registration number electronically. As of January 1, 2005, the VAT registration number and the social security number were replaced by a single enterprise number that includes the previous trade registration number. There are three main VAT-schemes:

Standard VAT scheme Flat-rate VAT scheme VAT exemption

Legislation:

Company code (Wetboek van Vennootschappen, 07-05-1999); Law for the establishment of the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises, January 2003 (Wet tot

oprichting van een Kruispuntbank van Ondernemingen, tot modernisering van het handelsregister, tot oprichting van erkende ondernemingsloketten en houdende diverse bepalingen, januari 2003);

Promotion of Independent Enterprise (General Provisions) Act of February 10, 1998.

Table 19 - Belgium - Starting Up

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 55.

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Register the new business Register Business in the Register of Legal Entities (CBE) Justice, Business Register

Register with social security Register Business for social security Social Security

Register for VAT Register Business for VAT Tax

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Figure 55 – Belgium - Service Decomposition – Starting up

Life Event: ‘Managing’

SWEDEN

Submit Annual Account Businesses are obliged to keep annual accounts. Accounting is undertaken in compliance with the Regulation on International Accounting Standards (IAS), which requires all EU businesses to prepare consolidated accounts in accordance with International Financing Reporting Standards (IFRS).

In Sweden, the type of reporting depends on the form and size of company. A small, sole trader can, for example, prepare a simplified annual account. A large, limited company is obliged to have an auditor, while a small, limited company can choose not to. All limited companies are though required to submit their annual report to the Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket).

The company's accounting records should consist of:

A day book and general ledger; Income statements and balance sheets; Annual accounts, and in some cases an annual report. A certificate of adoption of the original A report on the shareholders' meeting (when a decision on a dividend has been made) The audit report (where necessary)

Legislation:

Bookkeeping Act - Bokföringslag (1999:1078) Annual Reports Act - Årsredovisningslag (1995:1554)

Table 20 – Sweden - Managing – Accounts

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Submit annual account / report

Register annual account / report Business Registry

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 56.

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Figure 56 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Managing – Accounts

By applying the methodology outlined in chapter 2, the Life Events ‘Managing’ has been broken down to identify its different ‘building blocks’ (Process, Composed and Basic Public Services).

Submit Tax declaration Tax payers have their own account with the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket), in which charges are recorded. VAT, employer's contributions and tax deductions are also recorded in the tax return.

In Sweden, the tax system also depends on the type of company.

Sole traders: Income tax is paid monthly in advance and then reconciled against the return. Estimates of income tax and self-employed social security contributions are included in the corporation tax , which is paid into the clearing account. Estimated VAT is also included.

Partnerships: Partners pay income tax on their individual share of the company's profits. They pay a preliminary tax each month into their respective clearing accounts.

Limited companies: Profits are distributed to the shareholders by way of dividends. The shareholder pays tax as income from capital. A special form is used for closed corporations.

In the case of VAT, all entrepreneurs are liable if they trade in taxable goods or services on a commercial basis. The taxable basis determines filing and payment dates. Companies with a taxable basis for VAT that does not exceed SEK 40 million annually must file the VAT declaration and the payment must be recorded no later than the 12th of the month. For companies with an annual turnover exceeding SEK 40 million, deducted tax and F-or SA-tax (special A-tax) payments must also be recorded by the 12th. The VAT declaration must be filed and paid by the 26th of the month.

There are two main types of tax declaration, one for direct and one for indirect taxes. For both a number of verifications are conducted and the taxes are registered according to checks announced annually by the Tax Agency. The processing of the tax declaration for inspection involves a number of verifications and controls according to the annual rules of the Tax Agency. A standard feature is the performance of a benchmark compared to an average of businesses carrying out similar activities.

Legislation:

Value-Added Tax Act -Mervärdesskattelag (1994:200) Tax Payment Act – Skattebetalningslagen

Table 21 – Sweden - Managing – Tax

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Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Submit tax declaration Process tax declaration Tax

Submit tax declaration for inspection

Process tax declaration for inspection Tax

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 57.

Figure 57 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Managing – Tax

Staff Social security contributions A business is obliged to deduct tax when paying employees’ salaries (via pay as you earn - PAYE) and pay social security or employers’ contributions to provide social insurance cover.

A business must report its contributions, income tax and in some cases VAT once a month via tax returns. Employers must also submit a statement of earnings and deductions annually. The data provided by the business is compared to the previous monthly declarations throughout the year and registered and subsequently allocated to the employees of the business in the system.

Legislation:

Income Tax Act -Inkomstskattelag (1999:1229) Tax Payment Act – Skattebetalningslagen Tax Return and Verification Act - Lag om självdeklaration och kontrolluppgifter

Hiring new personnel

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In Sweden, companies can recruit staff from both within and outside the EU. When a company wants to recruit staff from outside the EU, it must apply for a work permit, for which the conditions are:

the employee must have received a written offer of work in Sweden; the employer must guarantee that the salary, insurance cover and other conditions of

employment comply with collective agreements or practice within the profession or industry; accommodation in Sweden must have been arranged for the employee the relevant trade union must have had the opportunity to comment the employee must be prepared to leave Sweden when the employment ends.

Legislation

Employment Protection Act -Lag om anställningsskydd (1982:80) Employment (Co-Determination in the Workplace) Act -Lag om medbestämmande i arbetslivet

(1976:580) Swedish Contracts Act

Illness and sick leave Employees can receive sickness benefit or sick pay if they fall ill or hurt themselves. Sickness compensation is received instead of wages from the employer for the first 14 days or from Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan) if ill for longer than two weeks. Employees must report sick to the employer on the first day when they cannot work due to illness. No payment is received for the first day’s illness, but the employer then pays sick pay for the next 2 weeks.

Legislation

Swedish Social Insurance Act (1999: 799)

Table 22 – Sweden - Managing – Staff

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Declare employee contributions and deductions

Process statement of earnings and deductions

Social security

Tax

Obtain work permit Provide work permit Public Employment Service

Illness of an employee Report Ill employee Social Insurance

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 58.

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Figure 58 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Managing – Staff

Land and property Request a building permit The Planning and Building Act (PBA) guides the regulation of land use in Sweden. According to PBA, each municipality must adopt individual plans. A building permit may be granted by the building committee of the municipality if the plans are in line with the Municipal Comprehensive Plan. It is not legally binding, but is intended to form the basis of decisions on the use of land and water areas.

In addition, a Detailed Development Plan is drawn up, which specifies the obligations and rights between the municipality and land owners. The Plan is legally binding and is the municipality’s implementation instrument. It contains detailed regulations with respect to the use and design of buildings and public places, for example. The building plot should be indicated and other conditions may apply concerning utility and transport access. This is decided by the municipality.

New buildings in specific areas need to adhere to the Development Plan. It is time limited with an implementation period of between 5 and 15 years. The Plan must show which areas are intended for private or public buildings. In areas for which no development Plan is established, a building permit can be granted according to the PBA and the Municipal Comprehensive Plan.

The PBA is closely connected to the Natural Resources Act (NRA), now included in the Environmental Code. The latter specifies the fundamental rules for the sustainable management of land and water resources and of the physical environment in general. The Code specifies the requirements for an environmental impact assessment. An impact assessment must accompany an application for a permit relating to environmentally hazardous activities and health protection, water, and quarrying.

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The property owner is in principle entitled to a permit if the project adheres to the Development Plan and construction standards. Negative decisions may be appealed. Few restrictions exist with regard to transfers of Swedish real estate and there are no restrictions on foreign ownership.

All Swedish land is divided into property units, which are individually identified by a name and a code. All units and their ownership are registered in the Swedish Land Register (Fastighetsregistret). It contains information regarding the location of the property unit, the title holder, plans and regulations, mortgages, easements, tax assessment values and the purchase price for the last transfer.

Buying / Selling When buying a building, the buyer (or the bank) provides the deed of accession signed by both the buyer and seller to the Land Register. In Sweden, there is no need for a lawyer or notary. A bank is commonly involved in the process to facilitate the payment of registration fees and transaction tax.

The purpose of registering the transfer of ownership is to protect the interests of any party that holds a right to the property as well as to inform others of that right by publishing this information. Once registration is completed, both buyer and seller receive a letter or digital certificate of ownership.

The Land Register processes the registration and performs a number of, such as verifying the owner and seller of the property, as well as verifying the sale price (in line with the expected valuation).

Legislation:

Planning and Building Act, PBA (Plan- och bygglagen) Natural Resources Act and Environmental Cod

Table 23 – Sweden - Managing – Land and Property

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Ask for a building permit Apply for a building permit Land register

Register the building Register building Land register

Register the ownership Registering ownership Land register

Apply for a mortgage bond Process mortgage application Land register

Sell the property Register property transfer Land register

Demolish property Process demolition permit request Land register

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 59.

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Figure 59 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Managing – Land and Property

ITALY

Land and Property Request a building permit In order to obtain a building permit, the business must first obtain technical clearance (Nulla Osta) from the Regional Technical Office (Genio Civile). According to the Ministerial Decree of September 14, 2005, the project design drawings must be consistent with certain specific technical provisions.

The application for a building permit is filed with the local municipality, for which the company must provide proof of title of ownership, as well as the project design drawings signed by professional. The municipality then requests clearance from the Fire Department and from the Public Health Agency. Once the plans are cleared, the building permit is provided. The fees for the issuance of the building permit are calculated based on the value and on the urbanization costs sustained by the municipality. The Land Agency registers the shape of the building on the building plot according to the plans.

Once the building is complete, the business must submit an application for an occupancy certificate with the local municipality. It must also file:

a request for cadastral registration; the builder's statement confirming the compliance of the building with the project specifications

and the favourable outcome of the Fire Department’s inspection; statements of the independent experts involved in infrastructure and utilities’ tests; the conformity certificate issued by the Regional Technical Office.

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The municipality issues the occupancy certificate after the application is filed. The fee based on building value must be paid at the post office after the completion of the building.

Legislation:

Code of laws and regulations concerning construction, 2001 (Testo Unico)

Register a transfer of ownership In order to begin the transfer of a property between two companies, the notary must obtain a copy of the Building and Occupancy Permits from the local municipality. The notary should also request a report from the Land Agency stating the ownership history of the property for the last twenty years and giving it a clean bill of health. The notary must verify the files and extract the relevant information. In addition, the notary is required to obtain the historical cadastral situation, Cadastral Certificate, and maps of the premises and land from the Cadastral Office. This data can be requested online. The notary must then check the online Company Registry regarding the selling and purchasing companies and verify the powers of the relevant signatories. A copy of the Seller's purchase documents and Transcription Note are subsequently authenticated by the notary, who prepares and executes the deed of sale. The notary is then able to file the deed of sale and the transcription note online with the Registration Office in one file (Modello Unico). The local Registration office will provide a receipt and registration number after which the notary delivers a copy of the deed of sale and transcription note to the parties. The Registration Office’s role is to grant the deeds a certified date and collect the relevant taxes, either VAT or the proportional Deed Registration Tax. The notary public files the deed of sale and the transcription note with Land Agency, which in turn delivers a receipt and registration number. Registration at the cadastral office is automatic. The notary then delivers a copy of the deed of sale and transcription note to the parties.

Legislation:

Based on Italian Civil Code (Il Codice Civile Italiano)

Table 24 – Italy – Managing – Land and Property

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Obtain technical clearance Apply to Regional Technical Office Local Administration

Request a building permit Process building permit request Local Administration

Register new property Process property registration Local Administration/Land Agency

Register a transfer of ownership Process property transfer Local Administration/Land Agency

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 60.

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Figure 60 – Italy – Service Decomposition - Managing – Land and Property

Tax Italian Companies are subject to different tax regimes according on their legal status, turnover and transactions. Taxes in Italy can be divided into three categories: direct, indirect and local:

Direct taxes are calculated on the basis of the company's income. The main ones are: Personal income tax (IRPEF), applied to the revenues of sole proprietorships, partnerships (simple, general and limited partnerships); Corporate income tax (IRES), applied to the revenues of business corporations; and a Regional tax on productive activities (IRAP): applied to sole proprietorships, partnerships and business corporations.

Indirect taxes apply to specific transactions carried out by the company. The main ones are:

Value-Added Tax (VAT): In Italy, the standard rate of VAT is 20%. Reduced rates of 4% and 10% are applied to certain services. The Italian system is in line with the EU VAT rules, acording to which VAT is paid by the end-user only. At the production and distribution level, the suppliers of goods and services deduct VAT. A Registration fee is charged for specific transactions such as the transfer of movable and immovable property, when VAT is not applicable.

Local taxes

In addition to taxes at the national level, local taxes also apply. The most common are: on municipal solid waste management, for the occupation of public areas and a communal tax on advertising.

Tax declarations can be submitted using the ‘modello UNICO’ via the Revenue Agency's Fisconline or EntraTel services, which enable all necessary tax payments to be made online, including filing declarations and consulting personal tax details. To be able to use the online services it is necessary to obtain a pin code which can be requested by phone, online or from the Agency’s office.

Most companies make self-assessments, independently calculating their tax returns and what they owe the Revenue Agency. Direct taxes are paid twice a year, while indirect taxes such as VAT are paid once a month. Companies which have a high turnover pay taxes more often.

For the payment of direct taxes, VAT, substitute taxes, contributions and premiums, all taxpayers, must use the payment form F24. Payments of registration fees, other indirect taxes, and relative sanctions must be made using the F23 form.

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All taxpayers entitled to a VAT identification number are obliged to submit their declaration electronically. This can be performed directly, by way of qualified intermediaries, via banks and post offices, or by using the remote banking services offered by other financial institutions.

The F24 form allows the taxpayer to perform in one single operation the payment of the sums due. Taxpayers can fill in the F24 form on the Agency’s website. To pay online, the taxpayer must be: authorised to access Fisconline or Entratel and be the holder of a bank account at one of the affiliated national banks or at Poste Italiane SpA. The payment can also be made in cash or by debit.

Once the form has been completed and certified, the system requests the details of the bank or post account from which the amount must be debited or credited and the electronic authentication.

For each file containing a F24 form transmitted via Entratel or Fisconline, the Inland Revenue provides three electronic receipts: confirming the completed acceptance of the file by the system; confirming the charging of each payment and formal correctness of the relative data; revealing the outcome of the debit request on the basis of what was previously communicated by the banks or Poste Italiane SpA.

Legislation:

Decree no. 633 of 26 October 1972 (The main legal framework regulating VAT)

Table 25 – Italy - Managing – Tax

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Submit Tax declaration Process tax declaration Tax

Submit Tax payment (F24) Process tax payment Tax

Submit Tax payment (F23) Process tax payment Tax

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 61.

Figure 61 – Italy – Service Decomposition - Managing – Tax

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BELGIUM

Accounts In Belgium, companies are categorised into three broad areas for accounting purposes:

Retailers are only required to maintain simplified accounting records; SMEs must maintain complete, double-entry accounting records; Large companies must file their annual accounts in the complete, long format.

Most limited companies in Belgium need to file annual and/or consolidated accounts. This can be done electronically through the website of the National Bank. Access to the E-Filing application is granted via digital certificates. Each account must be uniquely identified as a separate file.

A fee is charged for filing the annual account according to whether the account is filed on paper or electronically). Upon acceptance of the annual account, a ‘notice of annual account filing’ (‘mededeling van neerlegging van de jaarrekening’) is provided by the National Bank to the business.

Legislation:

Company Code, 7 May 1999; Vade-mecum of companies, accounting section;

Table 26 – Belgium – Managing - Accounts

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 62.

Figure 62 – Belgium – Service Decomposition - Managing – Accounts

Tax

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Submit annual account Register annual account National Bank

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In Belgium, companies are required to pay direct taxes, such as business and corporate tax (ISOC), and indirect taxes, including VAT, registration duties, excise tax, and environmental levies.

Direct taxes Any profit-making, incorporated company which is has its office, principal place of business or managerial or administrative HQ in Belgium is subject to the corporate tax. This is collected through prepayment, specifically via: property tax and advance levy on income from securities.

Companies subject to the corporate tax must file a tax declaration once annually. The return must be filed in print or electronic form within the timeframe specified by the competent authorities.

Indirect taxes

Anybody providing goods or services for commercial gain on an independent and regular basis as specified under the VAT Code is subject to VAT. There are optional, special schemes through which small businesses may reduce their tax burden: the flat rate scheme for companies with an annual turnover under €750,000 in certain fields and an exemption scheme for small businesses with annual turnover of less than €5,580. These companies are exempt from most tax obligations applicable to regular VAT taxpayers. This benefit is available through application at the local VAT Office.

BIZTAX is a new application for electronic tax declarations for businesses. The application provides proof of declaration after submission. It can be used by filling in the data manually or through an electronic format. BIZTAX enables information to be stored and reviewed centrally as well as calculating the amount of taxes that are due. It can be used via an e-ID card of a digital certificate.

For VAT declarations, the Intervat application can be used in order to declare VAT and VAT refunds periodically. It also contains a listing of clients that have a Belgian VAT number. All businesses must submit the listing of clients, except those businesses exempt in accordance with the VAT Code.

Legislation:

VAT Code (wetboek van de belasting over de toegevoegde waarde); Company code (Wetboek van Vennootschappen, 07-05-1999);

Table 27 – Belgium – Managing - Tax

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 63.

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Declare direct tax Process direct tax declaration Tax

Declare indirect tax Process indirect tax declaration Tax

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Figure 63 – Belgium - Service Decomposition – Managing – Tax

Social security In Belgium, a major business process re-engineering and computerisation has been carried out recently by 3,000 Belgian public and private actors in the social sector from different levels (national, regional and local), under the coordination of the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS).

The CBSS is a SOA implementation based on the mutual, electronic exchange of information and services between social security databases. It was developed in order to address the fragmentation of the Belgian Social Security System and it enables citizens and employers to manage their interaction with the social security sector electronically, as illustrated by Figure 64 below.

Figure 64 – Belgian Cross Roads Bank for Social Security (CBSS)

The CSSB is based on the authentic source principle for information, information aggregation and service orchestration. It brings together the data from many different databases that are in place within the social security domain in Belgium and makes this information and related services accessible to the many stakeholders involved.

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Using an unique Identification key, the CSSB provides 42 e-services for employers for example. It also comprises a range of e-services for citizens, including the application for and consultation of social benefits. Following a ‘life event’ approach, the socially insured and their employers must now only make a declaration to the social security system in the following cases:

at the beginning of a work relation, an employer has to declare at which time the worker enters into office (referred to as a DIMONA, Déclaration Immédiate/ Onmiddelijke Aangifte);

every quarter, the employer has to make a declaration to social security concerning: the income and the amount of workdays and assimilated days of each employee.

when a social risk occurs, the socially insured persons or their employers have only to declare the information about that social risk through a Social Risk Declaration (SRD);

at the end of a work relation, an employer has to declare at which time the concerned worker leaves office via an official employment notification email (DIMONA).

The CBSS is a service integrator, with a board of directors representing several government and social sector actors. It aims to stimulate the development of SOA applications which are modular, can be integrated, are re-usable, loosely coupled, technology neutral, and based on open standards.

Legislation: Charter of the socially insured, 1-1-1997

Table 28 – Belgium - Managing – Social Security

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Set up a staff register and file an official employment notification (DIMONA)

Process official employment notification Social Security

Declare income and days for each employee

Process social security declaration (DMFA) Social Security

Declare the information about that social risk

Process social risk declaration (SRD) Social Security

Declare termination of work for employee

Process end of work relationship declaration Social Security

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 65.

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Figure 65 – Belgium - Service Decomposition - Managing – Social Security

Land and property In Belgium, obligations regarding building permits for new buildings are governed by specific decrees, which specify when the Municipality needs to be informed and the permit requested.

The building permit request must be filed with the Municipality along with drawings. If this is done by an architect, the request must be signed by the business. For technical or terrain works, specific rules are in place concerning the contents of the dossier requesting a building permit.

The request can be submitted in person, by regular mail, or digitally (depending on the procedures in place in the Municipality). A receipt is provided by the Municipality. Since January 2010, building permits can be requested together with environmental permits in a one-stop-shop. In this case both requests will be dealt with together. A clearance from the fire department must also be obtained.

The municipality performs a number of steps to process the request for a building permit:

Safety check Public inquiry (when necessary) Expert advice (when required)

The municipality will decide on the building permit taking into account a number of factors, including: possible objections, acquired advice, the spatial plan, and possible obstructions. A notice of the decision is provided by the Municipality along with the permit.

Once a permit is granted, the business must notify the Municipality of that the work has begun. The permit expires in 2 years if construction has not started within that period. The Municipality Office will carry out an inspection to check that the building permit is visible on the site.

Once the building is complete, a number of steps take place before the building can be occupied. The Tax administration, fire department and utilities companies all perform on-site inspections. The Municipality must also be informed of the end of the construction works.

Legislation:

Law on spatial planning -Wetgeving ruitmelijke ordening Flemish Codex Spatial Planning -Vlaamse Codex RO Decree on organisation of spatial planning -Decreet de organisatie van de ruimtelijke

ordening, 18 mei 1999 Coordinated Decree on spatial planning -Decreet betreffende de ruimtelijke ordening,

gecoördineerd op 22 oktober 1996 Decree on appointing organisations for advice on building permit -Besluit tot aanwijzing van de

instanties die over een vergunningsaanvraag advies verlenen, 5 juni 2009

Table 29 – Belgium - Managing – Land and Property

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Request building permit (Municipality Office)

Provide building permit Municipality / Land Register

Inform municipality of the end of the construction works

File final notification (Municipality Office) Municipality

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 66.

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Figure 66 – Belgium - Service Decomposition - Managing – Land and Property

Life Event: ‘Expanding’

SWEDEN

Branches In Sweden, an office, agency, branch or subsidiary opened in a foreign country must be registered with the Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket). The registration must be signed by the branch's Managing Director and sent to the Registration Office with the registration fee.

Any company within the EU/EEA, which wishes to start a business in Sweden can open a branch there. This is a legal form, which means that a foreign company has a local office in Sweden. It too must be registered with the Swedish Companies Registration Office and will subsequently be allocated a ten-digit corporate identity number. Businesses may require a permit from the relevant local authority for certain business activities, such as in the financial, agricultural or environmental sectors. A branch must have its own accounts, separate from those of the foreign parent company.

Mergers In Sweden, the acquisition of another company can take place in several ways:

by making a takeover bid for a company quoted on the stock exchange; by acquiring the majority or a controlling percentage of shares in a company quoted on the

stock exchange; by buying the shares of a company following an agreement with its shareholders; by merging with another company - when two or more companies join together under the

same ownership.

When companies seek to merge, the proposal is assessed by the Swedish Competition Authority. The Authority ensures that the relevant regulations are followed. A company should contact the Authority if it intends to make an acquisition to determine whether the merger has to be registered.

Changes in information due to new ownership must be reported to the Companies Registration Office and, for some companies, to the Tax Agency. This can be done via the web portal www.verksamt.se.

The procedure to acquire a limited liability company (aktiebolag) begins with strategic evaluation, preliminary analysis and a feasibility study and ends with due diligence and completion of the deal.

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Typically, this process takes 8–10 months. In line with the Directive 2005/56/EC on cross-border mergers of limited liability companies, mergers should be governed in each Member State by the principles and rules applicable to ‘domestic’ mergers, except where there are other requirements due to the cross-border nature of the operation. Accordingly, the relevant Swedish laws states that most of the current provisions on domestic mergers apply to cross-border mergers. There are however a number of supplementary provisions specific to cross-border mergers. In addition, the Directive states that verification of the pre-merger procedures will be the responsibility of the competent national authorities, which in Sweden is the Swedish Companies Registration Office.

Legislation:

Act on Branches of Foreign Companies - Lag (1992:160) om utländska filialer m.m. Annual Reports Act - Årsredovisningslag (1995:1554) Competition Act - Konkurrenslag (2008:579) Trade Register Act - Handelsregisterlag (1974:157) Company Act Law on employee participation in cross-border mergers Directive 2005/56/EC on cross-border mergers of limited liability companies

Table 30 – Sweden - Expanding – Branch and Mergers

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Register Merger Register merger Finance and Competition

Register foreign branch Register foreign branch Business Registry

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 67.

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Figure 67 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Expanding – Mergers

By applying the methodology outlined in Chapter 2, the Life Event ‘Expanding’ has been broken down to identify its different ‘building blocks’ (Process, Composed and Basic Public Services).

Unfortunately, it was not possible to cover the ‘Expanding’ Life Event in Italy and Belgium.

Life Event: ‘EU Market’

SWEDEN

Import/Export For a business to expand outside the EU, it will have to import and export its goods or services.

In Sweden, it is not necessary to obtain a general permit to import or export in and out of the EU. Export permits are, however, required for items such as cultural artefacts, endangered animals and plants, or hunting weapons, used cooling agents, and radioactive waste. The EU has also entered into a number of Free Trade Agreements at the global level. To be able to export to countries in which FTAs apply and benefit from customs exemptions or reductions, a certificate of origin is required. When exporting goods to or from the EU they should be classified in accordance with the EU customs tariff, TARIC.

Ann import license is equally required for certain items, such as iron, steel, textiles and ready-made clothing, shoes and foodstuffs. A product imported by a business for occasional use, such as exhibition, may be exempt from certain customs regulations and taxation, provided that the good is unmodified and has not increased in value. Authorization is required for this and the company may need to provide security. Generally, an import declaration must be presented and all customs duties,

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VAT and other taxes settled. Regulations also apply for the transport of certain goods prior to export or import.

Legislation:

Ordinance on Import and Export Control -Förordning (1997:969) om import- och exportreglering

Table 31 – Sweden – EU Market – Import/Export

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Import goods

Handle importing of goods

Provide import licence

Customs

Export goods Process export permit request Customs

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 68.

Figure 68 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – EU Market – Import/Export

By applying the methodology outlined in Chapter 2, the Life Event ‘EU Market’ has been broken down to identify its different ‘building blocks’ (Process, Composed and Basic Public Services).

ITALY

Import/Export In Italy, export to countries outside the EU is regulated by the relevant national, EU and international laws. The Ministry of Foreign Trade has responsibility for commercial activities with non-EU countries.

The exporting company must be aware of both the applicable regulations in the destination country and the documents and certificates, which must be enclosed with the goods. These can include:

certificates of origin, certificate of free sale,

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consular visas, phytopathalogical certificates.

The type of document required depends on the country of destination and the type of goods. It is widely recognised that comprehensive information on the different requirements is not currently available. Exporters are however recommended to request detailed instructions from:

the foreign importer the carrier or consigner the bank in the event of payment with a letter of credit or payment against documents

Exporters should also consult relevant bodies including diplomatic missions, sales offices and Chambers of Commerce. Generally, however, the documents required to export goods are:

Export licence Bill of lading Commercial invoice Customs export declaration Technical standard/health certificate

Import is regulated by the EU’s Common Customs Tariff, which is a single system of duties applicable to imported goods from third countries. The goods are subject to the same rate of duty published by the Customs Agency. The rates of VAT and excise are however different in each Member State.

As with export, a variety of documents is required for import. Some of the most common are:

Import licence Certificate of inspection Models of release of surety / bond clearance Form for import of high-tech goods International import certificate (Mod. 181.2 and Mod. 01)

Both imported and exported goods must be accompanied by a certificate of origin issued in the country of despatch. This is often requested in order to apply the correct customs regime.

In Italy, an application for a certificate of origin must be submitted to the Chamber of Commerce. In order for an assessment to be made, it should be marked with the place of manufacture and name of the manufacturer. It must also contain a copy of the export bill with information about the good’s final destination. The Italian certificate of origin is issued by the Ministry of Economic Development.

Similarly, the Chamber of Commerce plays a role in facilitating businesses’ access to Export and Import Licences. Companies which trade outside the EU and are entered in the Business Register can apply for an eight-digit computerised code. In order to obtain it, an application should be filed by using a standard form. A secretarial fee must also be paid to the Chamber. The code is issued after carrying out the relevant inspections to verify registration in the Business Register or the activity carried out.

Legislation:

Council Regulation (EEC) No 2913/92 of 12 October 1992 establishing the Community Customs Code (Official Journal L 302, 19.10.1992 p. 1-50)

Table 32 – Italy – EU Market – Import/Export

Task Public Service Domain

Import/Export Goods Provide certificate of origin Customs

Import Goods Provide import licence Customs

Export Goods Provide export permit Customs

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 69.

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Figure 69 – Italy – Service Decomposition – EU Market – Import/Export

Unfortunately, it was not possible to cover the ‘EU Market’ Life Event in Belgium.

Life Event: ‘Responsible Business’

SWEDEN

Environment Acquire license for hazardous activities The Swedish Environmental Code (Miljöbalken) and the Nature Conservation Act (Naturvårdslagen) are the most important laws in the environmental field. The Code specifies ‘rules of consideration’ that imply that those who cause or risk causing damage to the environment are responsible for repairing or preventing the damage. This means that businesses that carry out hazardous activities require a specific license and must carry out an environment impact assessment before operations can start.

The main licensing authorities are Environmental Courts or the County Administrative Boards. There are five Environmental Courts and 21 County Administrative Boards, one in each county. Activities with an environmental impact are classified into categories A and B and must have licenses to operate. The Class A activities (for instance steel works and large ports) must obtain a licence from the Environmental Court. The County Administrative Board is the issuing authority for B licenses. An application for a licence must be submitted, which prove that the requirements of the ‘rules of considerations’ are met. Activities must also respect environmental quality standards.

A permits states the conditions under which an activity may be carried out. The licensing authority may refuse a permit if they find that the activity is not permissible under the Environmental Code. Impacts on land, air and water are jointly considered. Permitting conditions may include:

Purpose and scope of the operation; Emission limit values;

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Management of chemicals; Energy efficiency measures; Waste management; Compensatory measures for adverse effects; Measures to prevent accidents; Traffic to and from the site; Measures to restore the site after the cessation of activities; A financial guarantee.

The business is obliged to consult the County Administrative Board or the local Environmental and Public Health Committee (EPHC) before submitting an application for a permit. This gives the authorities an opportunity to comment on the application and a public hearing is held.

An environmental impact statement (EIS) must also be submitted with the permit application. Its aim is to describe the direct and indirect impact of the planned activity. The EIS must include a site description of the plant or activity as well as descriptions of the technology that will be used. It must also describe the impact on people, animals, plants, land, water, air raw materials, climate, landscape and the cultural environment.

Register use of chemicals

Chemicals used in business activities must also be registered with the Swedish Chemicals Agency. The EU REACH Regulation (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances) has been incorporated into the Swedish Environmental Code. Based on a system of pre-registration, it makes companies responsible for ensuring that any chemicals used in their operations are not hazardous to health or the environment.

Legislation:

Environmental Code -Miljöbalk, 1998:808 Nature Conservation Act -Naturvårdslag, 1964:822 Ordinance on Environmental Impact Assessments -Förordning om

miljökonsekvensbeskrivningar, 1998:905

Table 33 – Sweden - Responsible Business - Environment

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Acquire license for hazardous activities

Provide license for hazardous activities

Environment

Register use of chemicals Register company use of chemicals Environment

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 70.

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Figure 70 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Responsible Business – Environment

By applying the methodology outlined in chapter 2, the Life Event ‘Responsible Business’ has been broken down to identify its different ‘building blocks’ (Process, Composed and Basic Public Services).

Unfortunately, it was not possible to cover the ‘Responsible Business’ Life Event in Italy and Belgium.

Life Event: ‘Exit Strategy’

SWEDEN

Winding up There are two forms of liquidation, which is when a company’s assets are converted into cash, debts are paid and any surplus is distributed. In Sweden, a company can decide in a general meeting to liquidate voluntarily or be forced to liquidate by a court or the Patent and Registration Office.

When a company goes into liquidation, it is represented by its board and managing director until a liquidator has been appointed. In most cases, the Swedish Companies Registration Office decides who will be the liquidator for a limited company. Afterwards, the company is represented by the liquidator who and carries out the liquidation, by winding the company up until it is dissolved.

On liquidation, a notice must be submitted to the Business Register and a de-registration fee must be paid. The business must also be deregistered as a taxable entity at the National Tax Board. This authority will remove the company in question from its VAT and corporation tax registers. The phrase ‘in liquidation’ must also be included in the partnership's official name.

Legislation:

Limited Companies Act -Aktiebolagslag (2005:551) Economic Associations Act -Lag (1987:667) om ekonomiska föreningar Act on Partnerships and Non-registered Partnerships -Lag (1980:1102) om handelsbolag och

enkla bolag Trade Register Act -Handelsregisterlag (1974:157) Income Tax Act (Inkomstskattelag, 1999:1229)

Table 34 – Sweden – Exit Strategy – Winding Up

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

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Register company closure Register company closure Business Registry

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 71

Figure 71 – Sweden - Service Decomposition – Exit Strategy – Winding up

By applying the methodology outlined in chapter 2, the Life Event ‘Winding Up’ has been broken down to identify its different ‘building blocks’ (Process, Composed and Basic Public Services).

ITALY

Winding up The Italian Civil Code, Social Contract and the Companies Act govern how businesses are wound up. As in Sweden, there are two main types of dissolution: voluntary and enforced liquidation.

Voluntary liquidation:

Article 2448 of the Civil Code states that stock companies, partnerships limited by shares and limited liability companies may be dissolved if: the company expires; if the business has already fulfilled/cannot fulfil its purpose; operations become impossible or remain inactive for a prolonged spell; capital falls below the legally required minimum; there is a board decision.

For partnerships, article 2272 of the Civil Code allow winding-up if: the company term expires; there is an unanimous decision by the partners; or partners who resign are not replaced within six months.

Enforced liquidation:

In the event of an enforced liquidation, entrepreneurs and partners must follow different administrative procedures. These begin with paying off all company debts and end with the removal of the name of the business from the Business Register. Partners must use the services of a notary to draw up the dissolution document, and one or more liquidators to pay off the business's debts and loans.

The dissolution of a business must be recorded in the Business Register in one of two ways:

company managers verify one of the causes of winding-up, then register the dissolution declaration in the business register. A shareholders' meeting must then appoint a liquidator and record this in the Business Register;

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if the shareholders' meeting votes for dissolution, winding-up and the appointment of a liquidator, this too must be recorded in the Business Register.

The shareholders' meeting appoints and instructs liquidators and must record these details in the Business Register within 30 days of their appointment.

In order to remove a business from the Business Register, owners must apply to the local chamber of commerce. Administrative procedures vary according to the type of business and the nature of the activity performed.

Once the liquidation process has been completed, liquidators must draw up and sign the final liquidation balance sheet and record this in the Business Register. Partnerships can be wound up either without initiating liquidation or through liquidation and appointment of the liquidator.

Legislation:

Civil Code, Book 5 On Labour on which the Social Contract and Companies Act are based.

Table 35 – Italy – Exit Strategy – Winding Up

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Draw up dissolution document Process dissolution document Business Register

Record in the Business Register Deregister from business registry Business Register

Remove from Business Register Process removal from the register Business Register

Submit liquidation balance sheet Receive and process final liquidation balance sheet

Business Register

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 72.

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Figure 72 – Italy – Service Decomposition - Exit Strategy – Winding Up

Bankruptcy The bankruptcy process is implemented by the competent bankruptcy court and requires recognition by this court that the business concerned is insolvent. The business owner, creditors and public prosecutor can apply to the court for a bankruptcy declaration. The owner must lodge all financial and commercial details for the previous three years, an assessment of activities and a list of creditors with the court. The business owner then loses his or her corporate assets, which are administered by a court-appointed receiver. Within 60 days of the declaration of bankruptcy, the receiver must submit a report on the circumstances behind the bankruptcy. This must include an inventory of assets and a liquidation programme.

The debtor and the person or body initiating the bankruptcy are summoned by the court, which verifies all documents, written statements and technical reports submitted by the parties.

Bankruptcy is not permitted if the outstanding debt is below EUR 30,000. Temporary administration can be authorised, but may be revoked at any time by the competent court or by the bankruptcy court.

Legislation:

Royal Decree no. 267 of 16 March 1942 (Official journal no. 81 of 6 April 1942) - Regulation of bankruptcy, composition with creditors, receivership and enforced liquidation

Legislative Decree no. 169 of 12 September 2007 (Official journal no. 241 of 16 October 2007) - Regulation of bankruptcy, composition with creditors, receivership and enforced liquidation

Legislative Decree no. 5 of 9 January 2006 (Official journal no. 12 of 16 January 2006) - Organic reform of regulations for insolvency procedures in accordance with Article 1(5) of Law no. 80 of 14 May 2005

Law no. 80 of 14 May 2005 (Official journal no. 111 of 14 May 2005) - Conversion to law, with modifications, of Decree Law no. 35 of 14 March 2005, governing urgent regulations regarding the plan of action for economic, social and territorial development Government powers to amend the Code of Civil Procedure in the areas of the appeal process and arbitration, as well as for organic reform of the regulations for insolvency procedures

Table 36 – Italy – Exit Strategy - Bankruptcy

Task Public Service Public Administration Domain

Apply for bankruptcy declaration Process bankruptcy declaration Justice (bankruptcy court)

Submit bankruptcy report Process bankruptcy report Justice (bankruptcy court)

Service Maze Based on desk research and interviews, a decomposition of public services has been made. The public services identified are presented in Figure 73.

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Figure 73 – Italy – Service Decomposition - Exit Strategy – Bankruptcy

Unfortunately, it was not possible to cover the ‘Exit Strategy’ Life Event in Belgium.

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8 Annex II

Identified Basic (Data and Logic) Services

Sweden, Italy and Belgium

Starting Up Belgium Italy Sweden

Basic Data Services

Business Registry

Publish in Official Gazette

Register in Italian General Business Register (REA)

Publish in Official Gazette

Business Registry

File deed of incorporation

Register deed of Incorporation

-

Business Registry

Activate enterprise in CBE

Register Start of business notice (Municipality)

Provide certificate of registration

Tax Register business for VAT

Register business for tax (VAT/tax code)

Register company for VAT and F, A, and FA-skatt

Basic Logic Services

Business Registry

Verify founders / owners

- Verify founders/ owners

Business Registry

- - Verify Board Members

Business Registry

- - Verify auditor(s)

Business Registry

- - Verify business name

Business Registry

Verify deed of incorporation

Verify Start of business notice

Verify capital shares with memorandum

Tax - - Verify company location

Economic Verify professional Verify certificates Verify business

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affairs / Tax skills /authorisations /licences

activities

Managing Belgium Italy Sweden

Basic Data Services

Accounts File annual account N/A File annual account / report

Tax Register declaration (direct and indirect)

Register IRAP, IREP, IPREF and VAT declaration

Register declared taxes

Social security

- N/A Process statement of earnings and deductions

Land and property (Building)

- Register building (shape on plot)

Register building plot

Land and property (Buying / Selling)

- Register ownership Register ownership

Basic Logic Services

Accounts Verify annual account N/A Verify annual account / report

Tax Verify direct tax declaration

Verify IRAP declaration

Verify obligatory declarations

Tax Verify indirect tax declaration

Verify IREP declaration

-

Tax - Verify IPREF declaration

-

Tax - Verify F24 -

Tax - Verify VAT Compare to previous years

Tax - - Perform benchmark

Social security

- N/A Compare to previous declarations throughout the year

Land and property

- Verify buyer /seller Verify owner / seller

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Land and property

Verify clearance (fire department)

Verify Clearance (Public Health)

Verify building plot

Land and property

Verify dossier Verify Clearance (Fire)

-

Land and property

Verify specific requirements

Verify Conformity (Regional Technical Office)

-

Land and property

- Determine value per unit

Estimate total value

Land and property

- Verify destination of use

Verify building usage

Land and property

- Verify property files Verify sales price

Expanding Belgium Italy Sweden

Basic Data Services

Competition N/A N/A Register the merger plan

Business Registry

N/A N/A Register the completed merger

Basic Logic Services

Competition N/A N/A Verify merger plan

Business Registry

N/A N/A Verify Board Members

Competition N/A N/A Verify employee participation

Competition N/A N/A Verify merger timing

EU Market Belgium Italy Sweden

Basic Data Services

Customs N/A - Register notification of arrival of goods

Customs

N/A

Provide Import / Export Code

Register permit

Business Registry

N/A - -

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Basic Logic Services

Customs N/A Verify origin of goods Check the certificate of origin

Customs

N/A -

Perform risk analysis

Business Registry

N/A Verify registration (business register) and activity

-

Responsible Business

Belgium Italy Sweden

Basic Data Services

Environment / Safety

N/A N/A File environmental report

Environment / Safety

N/A N/A Provide licence for selling / use of chemicals

Basic Logic Services

Environment / Safety

N/A N/A Verify environmental impact assessment (EIS)

Exit Strategy Belgium Italy Sweden

Basic Data Services

Tax N/A - Deregister company

Business Register

N/A Register liquidator Register liquidation

Business Register

N/A Remove from business register

Deregister Company

Basic Logic Services

Tax N/A - Check on taxes (income tax, assets)

Justice N/A Verify cause and payment of debts and loans

-

Business Register

N/A Verify bankruptcy documents

-

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