European Development towards Online One-stop Government: The egov Project

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1 European Development towards Online One-stop Government: The egov Project Maria A. Wimmer Institute of Applied Computer Science, Johannes Kepler University of Linz Altenbergerstr. 69, A-4040 Linz, Austria Tel , Fax , Abstract E-Government reflects the ultimate visions for public administrations to undergo a huge modernization and reorganization. To speed up innovative developments, the European Commission has provided substantial funding. egov is such an EC-funded project that aims at developing an integrated platform for realizing online one-stop Government. Key innovations of egov are: a global access point to enter different governmental services and information at distinct levels of public administration and with different devices; the development of one-stop Government process models implemented in local Service Repositories; and a Governmental Markup Language as an open standard for data exchange and communication within the platform. Keywords: e-government; one-stop Government; egov; integrated platform; Governmental Markup Language; E-Government: ultimate visions for the public sector The striking success of electronic Commerce within the last few years strongly influenced the public sector. Electronic Government (e-government) has become the catchword covering many activities and attempts to innovate and modernize the field of public administration. Currently, e-government is the terminus framing and shaping public administration s way into the "Information Society". Used by politicians, strategic management and concrete implementation, e-government can be considered from different abstraction layers thereby implying aspects of distinct detail (cf. [9], [21]). Figure 1 gives an impression of such distinct interpretations of e-government: Within a political and strategic dimension, key strategies, modernization ideas and visions are developed and decided. Supporting concepts in this respect are Business Process Reengineering [7] and New Public Management [8] approaches. Examples of such strategic decisions may be: - the exploitation of modern IT; - implementing new ways of doing governmental business through e.g. public-private partnerships, outsourcing of administrative work, multifunctional service shops, etc.; - providing better services for the citizens and businesses through e.g. one-stop shops, usable and easy-to-use services, availability at any time from everywhere and for everybody, etc. Implementing strategic visions in initiatives and further in projects still reflects a conceptual view. Yet, on this layer, e-government is concerned with a re-engineering and adaptation of concrete organizational structures, business processes and object models to fit them to the new challenge of the public sector s electronic services. From an operative perspective, e-government is concerned with an intense usage of electronic media such as the Internet and other telecommunication facilities in order to facilitate and support a virtual administration. Political & Strategic Dimension Political go/mgo decision Implementation Operation F e e d b a c k Vision Strategies Initiatives Projects Applications Reference models for general strategies (NPM, BPR) Reference models for: engineering system architectures processes data & information Figure 1 - E-Government application layers E-Government services imply an improvement of the services for citizens and businesses such as offering services 24 hours a day accessible from anywhere and via different media. Further, e-government stresses an active

2 participation of the citizens and customers in Government and Democracy. Thereby, modern telecommunication infrastructures (IT) provide the basic means for co-operation over time and distance between citizens, businesses and public administrations. It is important that the customer or citizen may decide upon up to which level s/he wants to use electronic media to perform a specific process, i.e. if s/he only wants to inform herself on a certain service, if s/he wants to get in contact with the respective authority or if s/he even wants to apply for and consume the service via electronic media (transaction) cf. [1]. The adaptation of new technological advancements requires a careful investigation in the philosophy, structure and productive processes of the public organizations participating in e-government. In this respect, many projects have emerged and also the European Commission (EC) has established several initiatives to encourage developments in the field of e-government (e.g. the eeurope initiative [3] or the 5 th Framework Program of the EC [5]). With the latter, the EC provides huge funding to stimulate the creation of the next generation of user-friendly, cost-effective and interoperable public services and systems for the different user groups of public administrations (citizens, businesses and administrations themselves). One of the key issues in this program is to meet the user demands for flexible access, for everybody, from anywhere and at any time. In this contribution, an EC funded project (egov) is introduced, which tries to meet these key issues. In the next section, general aspects and specific requirements for integrated one-stop Government are introduced. Then, the egov project, its overall system architecture and its development approach are introduced. In the following sections, aspects of legal issues and social implications are brought into relation with the egov development. Some indications on a holistic development approach to be used in egov conclude this contribution. Towards Integrated one-stop Government Recent studies (cf. [4], [6], [18]) on portals of international public administrations show that e-government is still at its infant steps. Many countries already provide information and access points to their administrations. In most cases, though, the concept is realized via simple, static HTML web sites. The strategy of most countries seems to be present on the world wide web. Only a few nations (mainly within the EU, Australia and USA, only a few in Asia [18]) provide more advanced services and functionality. A global entry point to different services and information on local and national institutions is rather rare (it is also dependent on the form of Government of the respective country). The visions of e-government go, however, far beyond of what has been realized up to now. Such a rather holistic view is reflected in the German Memorandum "Electronic Government as pivotal vision to modernize Governance and Government" [2], which has been presented to the German public about one year ago. Yet, one year after the Memorandum, Germany s public administrations are still seeking for integrated developments. What has been recognized since then is a huge demand for integrated approaches going far beyond technical developments. A current trend of innovative developments is one-stop Government. One-stop Government refers to a single point of access to electronic services and information offered by different public authorities. Online one-stop Government requires that all public authorities are interconnected and that the customer (citizen, private enterprise or other public administration) is able to access public services by a single point even if these services are provided by different public authorities or private service providers. It further requires that the customer is able to access these services in a well structured and well understandable manner meeting his/her perspectives and needs. A key issue of presenting and structuring information and services in one-stop Government is that the customer does not need specific knowledge of the functional fragmentation of the public sector. Further requirements that have to be fulfilled in an integrated one-stop Government platform are: a smooth adaptation of traditional processes to modern technology; possibility to access public services via a single entry point even if these services are actually provided by different departments or authorities; access should be possible via different media channels and devices; guaranteeing the necessary level of security, authenticity and privacy in communication and transactions via the Internet especially for highly sensitive and personal data and information; adaptation of internal (workflow, databases, intranets etc.) and external (information and communication services to the citizens and customers, transactions of goods and services via the Internet) change requests for public activity; smooth co-ordination of internal and external public activity to facilitate cross-border operation (i.e. seamless Government); customers should be able to access public services in terms of life-events or business situations and without knowledge of the functional fragmentation of the respective public authorities; customers may approach and monitor different stages within a life-event or business-event; providing customer pre-information at various stages and in various depths; providing help in filling in forms etc. clarifying and updating underlying legal issues, laws and prescriptions; "translating" the demand for a service (a license, etc.) from the citizen's/businesses world to legaladministrative jargon and vice versa; matching of the demand with the jurisdictional structure (competencies in the legal sense), routing the citizen demand to the relevant back office

3 (which may also be a completely automated process) keeping track of the process, handling "freedom of information" requests and other "due process" requirements. The services offered in a one-stop shop should be easily understandable for any citizen or business partner. Such an approach (i.e. life-events and business events) has been developed by the Austrian initiative towards an e- Government portal ( [23]) and became a metaphor for structuring citizen and business information as well as administrative processes in a user-friendly way. Structuring according to life-events represents one core design issue. Any life- or business-event may further be structured into four principal stages, where the customer/citizen should decide upon how far to use electronic media. These stages correspond to (cf. [1], [10]): simple what-is, what-is-required and where-to-go information on the service; possibility to contact people and to get further information (communication); downloading and handing in forms for applications of public services (interaction or contracting); handling a complete service (transaction). Fulfilling these requirements will come close to the realization of an integrated online one-stop Government concept. Current developments and initiatives are, however, still far away from such next generation virtual administrations reachable with a few simple mouse-clicks. This may be due to many aspects that still need clarification [21]: setting up the appropriate legal grounding, adjusting the access rights and access mode to highly sensitive data (which is not just a matter of security, but also of public-private and publicpublic partnerships, of the current laws, of the heterogeneity of systems and data formats, etc.), justifying red tape problems, etc. Process Models for one-stop Government Developing an integrated online one-stop Government platform requires a deep investigation of the business concepts and process models of the public sector. Lenk and Traunmüller [13], [20] suggest a differentiation of four perspectives to understand concepts and processes of public administrations: citizens and customers, process (reorganization), (tele)cooperation and knowledge. For future developments towards online one-stop Government, this distinction will be a fundamental basis. The following discussion digs deeper into the customer and process perspectives. Business process types in the public sector The striking success of business process modeling in the commercial domain of electronic business insinuates to adapt the concepts and models developed for e-commerce right away for the field of e-government. For some process types, this may be possible and sensible without any adaptation [11]. However, as several works of Lenk, and Traunmüller point out (e.g. [12], [14], [21], [22]), this is not always feasible and possible, especially not for some types of administrative processes which are specific to the public sector. In general, governmental processes may be classified into the following four types (cf.[13]): 1. Routine processes and well structured standard processes are recurrent and well structured. They can be treated similar to business processes and are extensively formalizable (e.g. applying for a passport). Some of them can even be completely automated. 2. Individualized case processing covers the situations, where standard cases cannot be treated as such, because of the special circumstances the customer is in (e.g. application for social benefit of a deep in dept citizen who is raising his/her child alone, or enrolling a child in school before the date of legal enrollment). It requires much interaction with the customer and high sensitiveness of the administrator in charge for the specific situation the applicant is in. This type of processes characterizes one of the core businesses of public administrations, where a high amount of non-instrumental rationality is important and a where secure and organized social welfare has to be established for the applicant. 3. Negotiation processes are characterized by a high amount of interaction and many parties involved with partially contrary positions. Complex investigations of the circumstances and disagreements on the interpretation of their results are as well typical for this type of processes. Examples are the application for asylum or for a building permit. 4. Weakly structured processes in the field of policymaking and democratic deliberation. Many business processes in e-commerce are well structured and highly foreseeable, which only confers to routine processes such as applying for a driving license, a passport or registering a car. Yet, the core business of the public sector is characterized by a high amount of non-instrumental rationality, a certain degree of discretionary power of the administrator in charge and many parties involved in the process. The categorization in four basic process types of Government and Governance demonstrates that for some processes, no (complete) process model and/or workflow may be defined in advance (especially not for process types two till four). To exploit the full potential of online one-stop Government, the big challenge is to effectively map the different types of Government processes to an integrated platform and to support collaborative processes via electronic media. Different user groups in one-stop Government Public administration is a huge unit serving with some kind of monopolistic position individuals and collective (private and public) customers. To meet the peculiar requirements of the different clients in one-stop Government, a careful investigation of their needs is required. Considering many of the current approaches to modern Government, these are mainly directed towards citizen

4 services. Yet, is this really the user group with the highest potential for an improvement and added-value when implementing one-stop Government? Of course, public administration has to serve every citizen. This is an obligatory responsibility of authorities and public service points. Yet, who are the users benefiting most from online one-stop Government? In the EC project introduced below, a distinction of three different user groups is made: citizens, businesses and public administrations themselves. Obviously, businesses have more frequent contact with public authorities (at least once a month) than ordinary citizens. Further, citizens still may prefer to go to a public service point, where a public servant helps them through the administrative tasks s/he has to complete. This is not just due to the fact that e.g. currently, only about 50 % of the European (in the northern part of Europe, the ratio is higher than the mean, whereas in the southern regions this is lower) population has access to Internet. Based on psychological reasons, citizens will continue to personally show up at the service counter or citizen office in order to consume a public service. Hence it follows that much of the burden of work will lay on the front-office workers that interact with their customers to support them in performing a contact to an authority or that act on the citizen s behalf to consume a service. So, one important user-group for online one-stop Government applications will be such front-office workers. Summing up, online one-stop Government platforms have to meet the particular needs of citizens, business partners as well as public administration staff in distinct ways. egov: an Integrated Platform for One-Stop Government egov (An Integrated Platform for Realising Online One- Stop Government) is a two-years EC-funded RTD project within the 5 th Framework Program of the EC (Key Action I: Systems and Services for the Citizen [5]) that started in June The consortium consists of 10 partners coming from Austria, Finland, Germany, Greece and Switzerland reflecting different forms of Government and public administrations throughout Europe. Further, the partners represent a balanced mixture of public and private research institutions, local and global public administrations as well as technology providers. For more information see The egov objectives and platform architecture The main objective of the project is to specify, develop, deploy and evaluate an integrated platform for realizing online one-stop Government [19]. The egov platform will allow the public sector to provide citizens, business partners and administrative staff with information that is based on life-events and business situations hence increasing its effectiveness, efficiency and quality of services. This platform will be deployed and evaluated in Austria, Greece and Switzerland. The technical objectives of the egov project include the specification and development of: 1. the next generation of online one-stop governmental portals and the supporting network architecture. The portal will feature a number of advanced characteristics e.g. access from different devices including WAPenabled devices, personalization, customization, multilinguality, support of push services and digital signatures, etc. 2. the service repository (SR) and the service creation environment (SCE). The SR will be the source containing the interpretations of online services in terms of data and information (structured around the life-events and according to the respective governmental processes), while the SCE will be a framework (a collection of tools) that will serve as the front-end to the SR. These two components will be designed and implemented upon the life-event metaphor in order to support the citizen centered approach of egov. 3. a Governmental Mark-up Language which will be the connecting "glue" of the portal and of all public repositories. It will be implemented as an XML derivative that should become an open standard for data exchange and information sharing among horizontally (e.g. municipality and provincial authority) and vertically (e.g. local municipalities) dispersed public administrations.! š œ žÿ9 š. Ÿ9! š ª 'µ ' ª «' =ª D ¹ ' ª «ª ± 'ª D '²³ ',.-!/0 1!2 34!#"%$'& (#)* !/98 -:;/9-!26<938=2=>? b=cd e'f ghdi jdk d h l h'm c'n k o c i p ghdi jdk d h qi h e o k c r s'r jk i cdr't h r o T'UV'WX9YZ[9X \ V ]6Z^_!U` \ ^ ABDCE'A EF=F=GH=HIBDJ KLM B N F JL JO=G'KH P C'QH J KGH=H G'HEKR E'QL SBDN J L J GH º.º.º ƒ = ' ˆ 'Š Œ 'Ž Œ Š ˆ 'Š Œ Š Œ ' DŒ Š D ' udv9wdxy!z{ 9y } w ~6{!v } Figure 2 - General system architecture of the egov online one-stop Government platform Figure 2 depicts a first draft of the one-stop Government system architecture where the portal represents the global entrance point to many different local service repositories of the distinct public service providers. As the figure indicates, users such as citizens, businesses as well as public authorities can access the offers of the (local, regional, national and even supra-national) public services via the Internet or even on the move (via devices such as mobile phones, handhelds (PDA), etc.). The technical development of the egov components (portal, service repository and service creating environment) will be accompanied with a study of process models. Further, it will be coupled with an investigation of social aspects to assess the impact of using modern information

5 and communication technologies for online one-stop Government. A second non-technical issue will be to adapt process reengineering methods for modernizing the bureaucratic structures of Government and public administration and to make them more efficient and effective. The ultimate project goal is to promote the egov developments as the next generation platforms for online onestop Government. One global access point with different devices As indicated in Figure 2, within egov, the vision is that the customer decides on what kind of device to use for accessing a certain public service or information. On one hand, this access may happen through the Internet from home, from public kiosks, from service centers or service points spread over populated areas. Here, the global access point is approached via a desktop PC, portable PC or notebook that is connected to the Internet. In some cases, access may even be provided on the move where a portable PC is connected to the Internet through wireless communication facilities (GPRS, UMTS, etc.). On the other hand, certain information, communication or parts of complex services may be accessible on the move independently from space and time. The devices to enter such information and services might be any kind of handhelds (PDAs, mobile phones, etc.) Here, wireless application protocols (WAP) will be the connecting glue to link the customer to the local services and information through the global access point. A core issue of the European e-government visions is to provide better public services to citizens, businesses and public clients [5]. With advanced mobile technology, public administrations and governments are heading towards this vision. Many new services will grow up in this field. The aim of the egov project is to investigate the potential behind such future applications. In the following, two ideas are presented that will be exploited in this respect: personalized push services. Many of the potential push services in the different fields of public administration could be realized via mobile communication such as informing a citizen that his/her vaccination for protecting against ticks is overdue and that the next occasion is just around the corner at that time; or informing the customer about the deadline for his/her next tax declaration. point-to-point communication. Many of the requests of customers regarding where-to-go information, opening hours, fixing a meeting date, required documents etc. may be provided and handled through mobile communication. Even if a complex transaction is running, certain input or information may be communicated via mobile devices e.g.: an administrator sends an information request to the customer that he/she needs an updated version of a specific document; the client may query the status of his/her application; etc. egov development approach The development of the one-stop Government portal is divided into three major phases: 1) analysis and specification; 2) design and implementation; 3) evaluation and rollout. In the analysis phase, different user groups will be interviewed. Three different questionnaires (for citizens, for businesses, and for public administrations) and structured interviews will be used to investigate the current situation, weaknesses and potential ideas for improvements on existing services and portals, process models and technical issues. Within each user group, a further clustering is done: age, gender, experience with Internet, size of business, business branch, hierarchical level of authority and role within the department or organizational structure. The analysis is carried out in three different countries (Greece, Austria and Switzerland) and it should provide a qualitative study of the user needs and requirements for the portal. Based on these experiences and insights and together with the expert knowledge within the egov consortium, the requirements for the egov platform will be specified. As the egov platform should reflect the next generation of governmental one-stop shop platforms, a further input will be the state-of-the-art studies on processes, technologies, services and current platforms. In the second phase, the technical components of the egov platform as described above will be realized, i.e. the onestop Government portal, the national and local Service Repositories as well as the Service Creation Environment will be implemented. Despite of that, the Governmental Markup Language, which represents the basic medium and standard for electronic communication in the egov portal, will be concretized and formulated. In parallel to the implementation of the technical components and the GovML standard, process models for onestop Government processes will be investigated and developed. These process models will be the basis for the following testing and evaluation phase. They will be inserted in the egov SRs and they also represent the basis for the scenarios to be developed for the evaluation. In the third phase, the evaluation of the implemented platform and process models will be carried out. This evaluation will mainly be performed by the users that have been involved in the analysis phase. Legal Issues Framing Governmental Processes A specific aspect of the public sector has to do with the role of law. The traditional way of implementing political decisions and at the same time - of observing standards of Rechtsstaat (rule of law) and public safety is legislation. Especially in continental Europe, public administrations are highly regulated by legislation which is enacted on national, regional and local levels. There are several points where legal competence may impact the development and implementation of e-government processes, and is specific the developments in egov. Legal interpretation is an activity that has to precede any attempt to automate the sequence of steps. Further, it is an activity that is invoked when the boundaries of automation are reached. Moreover, judicial decrees have to be persistent for a given administrative field. Therefore, collaboration becomes a pivot of public administration, too.

6 The legal structuring of administrative work has several functions. It can be seen both as a restricting and as a guiding force. In the concept of the Rechtsstaat, norms serve to protect basic freedoms of the citizenry from public interference. At the same time, legal norms are a standard vehicle of communication between Government and executive agencies. Legal norms may be strict and clear, leaving no leeway for interpretation. This is not the rule, however. Contrary to what many observers of European public administration believe, the binding force of many legal provisions is not very strong. Some legal texts do hardly more than communicate goals, which within the scope of the legal order as a whole may be attained through policies which the executive agencies are free to develop. Norms may also serve as guidelines, indicating aspects which have to be considered in discretionary decision-making. It goes without saying that many micro-political aspects of administrative behavior contribute to determining the outcome of complex processes of decision-making. Neither the procedural nor the material law fully determine outcomes. Laws, judicial decrees and governance decisions are to be considered as knowledge repositories. Though, it is not just the knowledge collection that makes public administration, justice and governance work. Indeed, it would be very reductive to see laws and public administration only as specific collections of knowledge. Even well-defined administrative processes are strongly biased by their context and by the informal practices and experiences of the people involved in the process. The interpretation of the norms and influencing co-ordination play a crucial role for the specific situations urging for collaboration. However, successfully balancing formal and interpretative forces in e-government represents a challenge per se. So, when developing administrative business processes, specific attention has to be dedicated to underlying laws. In the European field of e-government developments, there is a huge need to carefully investigate legal aspects, because of the type of constitutions that exist within Europe. Many developments will have to be re-considered under the perspective of legal consistency and many new judicial decrees and laws will grow up. egov will provide some investigations and insights on the matter. Reflections on Social Impacts E-Government has become an important domain, where modern telecommunication facilities provide a new way of doing governmental obligations and tasks more easily and simply. However, many demarcating issues exist where public administration has to provide equal treatise of cases and access to information (matter and purpose of public administration and governance, high degree of legal structuring of administrative work, higher amount of noninstrumental rationality, many people and institutions involved in a case, etc.) and hence, has to provide traditional ways of doing a citizen's obligations and business with pubic administration. In the context of electronic Government, the public sector - both, at national and Community level - may become a partner for the economic growth. In addition to cost savings, an important consequence relates to the opportunity to change the relationship between the citizen, business partners and the state. Closer and faster access diminish the perceived distance between citizens and businesses and the state and may enhance citizens and businesses participation to democratic processes. However, some risks of e-government systems not matching the purposes of public administrations may also end up in an increase of bureaucracy and dependence on technology (evidence suggest that IT can increase the amount of paperwork). Even if bureaucratic constraints represent a major obstacle to a competitive development, the specific responsibilities (guaranteeing a well-structured, safe life in society, protecting the environment, regulating society, caring for the citizens, etc.) of Government must not be hampered for the sake of process optimization. So, there is also a latent risk of adopting process models and concepts from the private sector without adaptation for the needs of public administrations. The egov project aims at developing an integrated platform for realizing online one-stop Government with one single access point accessible from anywhere at any time and even with different devices. As a matter of fact, the impact that such modern Government infrastructures and new process models might have on citizens, business partners and authorities will have to be investigated properly. Some of the questions to be answered are: Will it be possible to transform an unwieldy public sector into an effective networked global Government? What will be the economic impacts in terms of increased efficiency, decreased costs and standardized administrative processes? What will be the resulting social and cultural implications of such changes? What will be the improvements/losses of such a transformation in terms of security, quality of life, social environment, welfare, etc.? Some further questions to be answered will be whether the egov project is in line with the European social and political identity and what the risks of digital divide within the public sector are about. Another socially oriented investigation has to elicit the main expectations of both, the different users of public services (citizen, customer or public administrations) and the producer thereof, i.e. administrative staff: On the side of the user (end-user of the Government portal), the level of general knowledge required by the use of one-line communication with public administration as well as the social attitude and fears of citizen facing the egov process models (authentication, personalization, multi-linguality and security) have to be determined and evaluated. On the side of the producer (administrative staff), the changes in distribution of knowledge, required qualification and individual responsibility induced

7 by the new process models as well as the consequences of these changes upon the organization structure and hierarchy of public administration have to be elicited. Some Indications for Innovative Developments towards Virtual Administrations E-Government not only points to concrete implementation of projects, but it also has a political dimension, where strategies are worked out and where some of them are concretized and packed into initiatives and projects. The many and complex facets of e-government call for a holistic development, where processes, communication and information resources, cultural and social issues, organizational strategies, technical solutions, security issues etc. have to be investigated and integrated. It requires that the whole fan of electronically mediated communication is put together and that external and internal processes are brought together in a smooth manner. Taking a holistic view means to consequently consider public administration as a socio-technical system and, as such, as a unit of: individual citizens, employees of authorities and governments, groups and society, technical and information systems, norms and laws, social and cultural practices, morale and ethics, and natural environment issues. New ways of Government need to be analyzed and designed in a comprehensive way whereby processes and people are at the center of interest. In this respect, a process is understood as having a specific goal, being performed by a combination of people and artifacts (formal rules, IT, physical artifacts) and acting on specific objects (physical and abstract ones). In a wider organizational context, laws and constraints framing the system are also considered. Accordingly, a holistic approach claims as well for a strong focus on people s role and cognitive needs within a onestop Government system. In digging deeper into this argument, an active user participation is stressed, where citizens, employees, managers and members of firms (which all participate in the processes of the e-government system) contribute with their specific knowledge and requirements to develop a system that fits their needs and not to develop one, where people have to adopt to the technical system. A holistic approach has, therefore, to integrate the following perspectives throughout the whole development phases: organizational view (new organizational structure, New Public Management strategies) process view and co-operation (workflow, group processes, collaboration etc.) view on people (implicit knowledge, specific domain knowledge, user interfaces) interaction (integrating process models with people and system components) view on distributed knowledge (knowledge is distributed among people and artifacts according to the distributed cognition view) view on data and information (information systems, databases etc.) view on technical infrastructure (network, collaborative platforms such as Groupware) view on context and environment (constraints, frames etc.) In Figure 3, a holistic general reference framework is depicted that combines these different perspectives and that shows the approach for egov. It is based on three current approaches to electronic business (Business Media Reference Model [17], Information Architecture [16]) and electronic Government (e-government reference model [10]). What can be learned from these approaches is the multidimensional consideration (from the strategic layer to the technical layer) of distinct aspects (organizational, judicial, security, process modeling, access, services, workflow,...) and the core phases of an electronic process (from information to transaction and settlement - including an aftercare phase). information and intention building contact, contract negotiation, contract performance of service and payment Strategic Frame: (Policy, General Roles, Strategic Decisions & Constraints) Process Models (routine, individual case processing, negotiation, policy formulation) Interaction among different system resources: concrete performance of processes Technical Infrastructure: Databases, Communication and Transaction Technical issues aftercare User Perspective Legal Issues Social, political factors Figure 3 - A holistic reference framework for egov The holistic development approach supports considerations on distinct levels of abstraction and from different targets. What is important is a smooth integration of these distinct aspects and their mutual interdependencies. For example, technical developments of the egov integrated platform have to be accompanied with process investigations and developments of one-stop Government services. Acknowledgments egov (An Integrated Platform for Realising Online One- Stop Government, Grant IST ) is a two-years EC-funded RTD project with the following partners: Siemens Austria, PSE, Vienna (A); Archetypon S.A., Athens (EL); TietoEnator Corporation, (FIN); IKV ++ GmbH Informations - und Kommunikationstechnologie, Berlin (D); Institute of Applied Computer Science at the JK University of Linz (A); National Centre For Scientific Research (NCSR) "Demokritos", Athens (EL); Hellenic Ministry of Interior Public Administration and Decentralization, Athens (EL); Municipal Technology Company of Amaroussion (EL); Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP), University of Lausanne (CH); Austrian Federal Ministry of Public Service and Sports, Vienna (A).

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