A Practical Perspective on the Developing e‐Government Interoperability Frameworks: A Case Study
Denisa Popescu, Arabela Sena Aprahamian, Luisita Guanlao and Arthur Riel The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA dpopescu @ worldbank. org aprahamian @ worldbank. org lguanlao @ worldbank. org ajriel @ worldbank. org
Abstract: As governments around the world are increasingly faced with rising demand for openness and transparency in their actions, they give higher priority to the sharing of information and linking their business processes and independent information systems through interoperability frameworks. Implementing interoperability in government is not a simple task and requires more than just the existence of a common technical standard to enable technical integration. Over the past decade, many countries have implemented interoperability and frameworks policies, some with more success than others. The challenges of reaching these objectives, many of which relate to information and business process integration, technical integration, organizational interoperation, and demonstrated support from political leaders remain significant. The literature to date has pointed out a variety of challenges and needed capabilities for improving government interoperability, but has done little in the way of providing practical models on the foundational aspects needed to be in place to support interoperability, such as a common government information strategy and framework. The goal of this paper is to propose a practical architectural framework based on the World Bank’ s own experience with enterprise information integration efforts. Special focus is given to describe a reference architecture to support the foundational aspects of a government‐wide information management policy, protocols and standards, common shared services platforms, and the benefits and implementation issues for shared service governance models. Further, the related issues and challenges that arise in implementing such a framework to support interoperability initiatives are illustrated based on the authors’ experience with ICT initiatives in the Government of Romania.
Keywords: e‐government interoperability, intergovernmental information integration, enterprise information management, enterprise architecture, common shared services
1. Introduction
The elements of effective management of information, secure exchange of information, and active collaboration have increasingly become essential components in the effective and efficient delivery of government services to citizens and business. The availability of high‐quality, authoritative information to decision makers supports the delivery of a comprehensive e‐government services program facilitated by G2C( Government to Citizens), G2B( Government to Business) and G2G Government to Government) initiatives.
According to the World Bank, e‐government refers to the use by government agencies of information technologies that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses and other arms of government. Broadly speaking, e‐government refers to attempts to modernize and streamline the activities and services of public administration by using Information and Communication Technology( ICT). It not only refers to the provision of better services for citizens and businesses through the so‐called“ one‐stop shops”( e. g., birth and marriage certificates, passports, visa, online tax, customs declaration, unemployment benefits, etc.), but also the efforts to streamline public administration processes through process reengineering.
To achieve this, governments give higher priority to the sharing of information and linking their business processes and independent information systems through intergovernmental information integration efforts, where enterprise architectures and interoperability frameworks emerge as a“ tool” of helping government stakeholders to achieve this( Chen, Doumeingts, and Vernadat, 2008:647).
Interoperation in e‐government has been defined as the ability of independent or heterogeneous information systems or their components, controlled by different jurisdictions / administrations or by external partners, to inter‐operate in a predefined and agreed upon fashion( Scholl and Klischewski, 2007: 900). Interoperability is often used to refer to the purely technical aspect of interoperability( Scholl and Klischewski, 2007:901) while constructs such as the intergovernmental information integration refers to the broader aspects of sharing governmental information across distributed information sources and organizational boundaries, taking into
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