Multi-channel provisioning of public services - Department of ...

Discussion and evaluation
service development, while methods and guidelines will focus on supporting the
development of information systems that can take advantage of the core components
offering. The success of this approach depends on the network effect and the number of
connected service providers, as well as the access and acceptance from the software
industry. This direction for development is in line with the current vision for the Altinn
II project in Norway, as described in P6.
3) The third possible direction of development is one of two revolutionary approaches. It
is based on observations made during the course of this study on a trend towards
providing tools that cannot be complex to users that cannot be experts. This counts both
for the service provider and receiver. It is further expected that public organisations
innovate and transform from within, and there is a certain amount of pressure for this to
occur. But from looking at the resources available, a development in the direction of
these expectations is not likely. This suggested development is based on the
commoditisation of the supporting IT services. The technology function of public
service provisioning is entirely moved out of the local governments and public agencies,
and uniform services are provided centrally and configured locally on top of a shared
service infrastructure. Strict central governance replaces the autonomy of local
governments on IT-matters. This approach is an opposite from the first approach, as in
this case the methodological infrastructure support is marginalised. This is based on the
service infrastructure being under central control together with a predefined flexibility
of both services and capabilities for extending the boundaries of the system.
4) The fourth possible direction of development is one closest to the proposed design
artefact. The possibility of a service web suggests a distributed process layer on top of
the current Internet, where public and private actors can build services, and collaborate
using domain specific modelling approaches. Citizens are separate electronic entities
supported by their governments and can partake in role-based service collaboration with
private and public actors. The service web is a commodity provided to the public
analogous to public roads, and this direction is similar to the World Wide Web we have
today. Instead of building a public service infrastructure that is closed, a global and
open e-service infrastructure is provided and maintained by the public. Having an open
architecture, the methodological infrastructure support is an important tool for actors
contributing to the development of new physical infrastructure components.
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