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

corporate knowledge and users build and manage their own work environment through modelgenerated
workplaces. The work includes an overview of challenges structured into the following
areas: society and community cooperation, collaborative business networking, interoperable enterprise
cooperation, innovation and holistic design, knowledge and data representation and workplace
regeneration and adaptability.
5 LIMITATIONS
Regarding the limitations of our work, there are some aspects of the model and scenarios that should
be discussed. First of all, the model does not consider the inner workings of the elements of the model.
It only identifies the main relations between the elements and how they affect each other. This means
that any use of the model with respect to actual cases will have to be detailed to the given context. The
missing depth is particularly important for the legislation process and its underlying politics. One can
probably say that political direction is additionally affected from within, but internal processes of the
elements are at this point outside the scope of our work.
An outcome of some political decisions is path dependency. This is not directly expressed in the
model but is still an important factor to its understanding. The model incorporates short and longrunning
loops and the consequences of path dependency are a lock-in not easily to get out of.
Nevertheless, seemingly unexpected occurrences take place, which can be the result of long-running
processes one has previously been unaware of. Disruptive technology is also a key factor, as new
technology affordances can change behaviour and introduce a process of change that allow a current
service, infrastructure and organisational configuration to evolve. The scenarios we discuss are,
however, based on the assumption that the transition to the infrastructure that supports
transformational government has already taken place.
With this, the scenarios describe a technical goal-oriented rationality, which is in general not realistic
for most large-scale government structures and organisations. Our focus for the scenarios is on the
technical, business process, process modelling aspects and methods to coordinate these. That being
said, it is important to understand that the gap between the described scenarios and current situation is
not only technical. From the current situation to a complete transformational government, massive
cultural and organisational changes are anticipated, if not required. We believe that by describing the
scenarios based on the assumptions of an infrastructure and culture that supports the dynamics of a
transformational government, these limitations can be made explicit. This can further make ground for
reconsidering any over-optimism one might have on this matter.
Inter-agency cooperation is wrought with challenges, as the difficulty of adoption of universal best
practices and the establishment of interoperability standards in e-government will attest. If it is not
difficult enough to find and maintain a best practice within organisations, inter-agency standards for
process work will have to be on a minimal level to allow individual flexibility and access to shared
data. This is probably one of the main issues of the next-generation government infrastructures. The
scenarios described, suggests that there should not be one best practice for all, but rather local best
practices on the process level, based on infrastructure components that allow flexibility and coevolution
of virtual organisations that share the idea of best practice, even within the collaboration
space of autonomies.
There is also a potential over-optimism related to our description of the role of the lead user, both from
the provider’s and citizen’s point of view. In general, the scenarios take the position of the educated
user. This position is basically based on the cultural leap anticipated prior to a true transformational
government and from topics within e-inclusion and e-participation. We do not expect that all users
have access, nor the competence to operate the adaptable parts of the interfaces of the scenarios
described. This is neither required. Different groups can be responsible for developing functional
modules and making them available within the active models. Process changes can be collective
decisions of peers, and innovations occur at the point where suggested changes are adopted.
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