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

Issues of design and implementation of e-government
between the hierarchical layers of the typical organisational “silos” of government,
while horizontal integration suggests a connection between organisational “silos”
facilitating the creation of compound services, involving multiple service providers
from different parts of government. E-government integration is defined as…
the forming of a larger unit of government entities, temporary or permanent, for the
purpose of merging processes and/or sharing information.
Scholl and Klischewski (2007).
Information integration or process integration are approaches for integration that can be
taken depending on the strategic goals and contextual need for cross-organisational
collaboration (Klischewski, 2004):
- Information integration aims at facilitating information flow, i.e. providing access
to structured informational resources across technical and organisational borders in
order to enable new services based on a virtually shared information environment.
- Process integration centres around interrelating steps and stages of process
performance across technical and organisational borders in order to enable new
services based on an overarching monitoring and control of process flow.
While process integration based on a stable group of partnering agencies provides a
rewarding setting for the integration of core cross-agency processes, process integration
based on global partnerships usually does not pay off. In a global setting it is advised to
approach process integration through establishing open process interfaces and applying
global standards for process descriptions (Klischewski, 2004).
Interoperability, being a broader term, reflects the ability of a system to operate with
parts of another system. It is common to distinguish between three main types of
interoperability with scopes related to the organisation, semantics, and technical issues,
and alternative classifications are normally found within these. IDABC (2004) describes
the types as:
- Organisational interoperability is concerned with aligned strategic goals – defining
business goals, modelling business processes, and bringing about the collaboration
of administrations that wish to exchange information and may have different
internal structures and processes.
- Semantic interoperability is concerned with a shared understanding of concepts –
ensuring that the precise meaning of exchanged information is understandable by
any other application that was not initially developed for this purpose. Semantic
interoperability enables systems to aggregate and reuse information in a meaningful
manner.
- Technical interoperability covers the technical issues of linking computer systems
and services. It includes key aspects such as open interfaces, electronic
intermediaries, data integration, accessibility, and shared services.
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