IDENTIFYING RELEVANT NATIONAL E-GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTATIONS FOR AN EMERGING COUNTRY: A SELECTIVE SURVEY

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1 Page 1 IDENTIFYING RELEVANT NATIONAL E-GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTATIONS FOR AN EMERGING COUNTRY: A SELECTIVE SURVEY Gonzalo Valdes 1, Marcelo Iribarren 1, Gastón Concha 1, Mauricio Solar 1, Marcello Visconti 1, Hernán Astudillo 1, María T. Villarroel 2, Patricio Gutiérrez 2, Álvaro Vásquez 2 Abstract E-government initiatives are being carried out by countries all around the world, to provide better services to citizens and business. Chile is not an exception in this trend and its e-government implementation strategy is considering international best practices. This paper presents the main findings of a survey conducted over a sample of ten countries; the purpose was to study their approaches concerning national interoperability frameworks, enterprise architectures frameworks and reference models. The survey identified two main goals behind their initiatives: (1) enable interoperability for public agencies and (2) improve management of the government IT investment portfolio; and revealed two main underlying strategies to achieve such goals, namely: (1) Business-first, which prioritizes enterprise architectures at an early stage, and (2) Technologyfirst, which prioritizes interoperability frameworks first. 1. Introduction A survey over a sample of ten countries was conducted, to identify international best practices related to interoperability frameworks, enterprise architectures frameworks and reference models. For sampling purposes, five groups of countries were defined: foundational experiences, leading Europeans, leading non-europeans, countries comparable to Chile (in economy and population), and South-American neighbors. To study countries that have succeeded in their e-government initiatives implementation, the best ranked according to international indexes (such as the UN s e-government readiness index [4]) were selected. The final sample was composed by UK, USA, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Ireland, New Zealand and Brazil. This paper presents the survey findings and a comparative analysis of the countries experiences. Section 2 describes the countries selection methodology; section 3 presents the survey main findings by country; section 4 discusses two identified e-government implementation strategies; and section 5 presents the final conclusions of this work. This work was supported by the Government of Chile and the Inter-American Development Bank under the project Multiphase Program to Strengthen the Digital Strategy CH-L1001 (available in 1 Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (UTFSM), Av. España 1680, Valparaíso, Chile, {gvaldes, miribarren, gconcha, msolar, visconti, hernan}@inf.utfsm.cl, 2 Executive Secretariat of Digital Strategy, Ministry of Economy, Government of Chile, Agustinas 1291, Santiago, Chile, {mtvillarroel, pgutierrez, avasquez}@economia.cl

2 Page 2 Identifying Relevant National e-government Implementations 2. Countries Sample Selection Methodology Sample countries were chosen using four international e-government indexes: the e-readiness rankings from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which evaluates the technological, economic, political and social assets of the world s largest economies [21]; the e-government Readiness index from United Nations (UN), which provides an assessment of the e- government readiness of each UN s member [4]; the Networked Readiness Index from the World Economic Forum (WEF), which measures the preparedness of nations to participate in and benefit from IT developments [22]; and the Customer Service Maturity rankings from Accenture [1] (herein labeled Acc.), which main focus is on providing information about how well countries are carrying along their engagement with citizens. All of the indexes have changed their methodology in time, so strict comparison is not possible. Nevertheless, looking into ranking evolution allows a qualitative analysis of the countries that have a positive or negative trend respect to each other. Table 1 shows a brief summary of the analyzed indexes; selected countries are marked with *, and Diff. is the position variation of a country in a given index. Due to time and resource constraints, only ten countries could be surveyed in depth; the final selection of ten countries was divided in the following five groups: (a) Foundational Experiences: during the 90s USA and UK were the first countries which faced the challenge of building an e-government; they also have never abandoned the top ten positions in the international rankings. (b) Leading European Countries: countries that in the last five years have been placed within the top ten and have shown a consistent positive trend; Denmark and Sweden are the best ranked in this group. (c) Leading non-european Countries: this group was created because of the strong presence of European countries among the top positions, to avoid an European-polarized survey; Australia, Canada and South Korea are the overall best ranked here (Singapore was discarded due to its small demographics compared to Chile). (d) Countries comparable to Chile (economically): according to international studies (e.g., [9]) several countries belong to this group, New Zealand and Ireland are the best ranked (over Spain). (d) South-American Countries: Brazil is the overall best ranked neighbor of Chile. Table 1. International rankings for the countries sample. Index Country EIU EIU Diff. UN UN Diff. WEF WEF Diff EIU UN WEF b(*) Denmark a(*) USA b(*) Sweden b Switzerland / c Singapore a(*) UK c(*) Australia c(*) Canada d(*) New Zealand / c(*) South Korea / c Japan d(*) Ireland d Spain e(*) Brazil e Argentina / Acc. 2007

3 Identifying Relevant National e-government Implementations Page 3 3. Survey Findings by Country Following [7], an Interoperability Framework (IF) is a set of policies, technical standards, specifications and guidelines, which are used as a tool for achieving basic interoperability among organizations (e.g., the public sector); and an Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a comprehensive description of all key elements and relationships that make up an enterprise (e.g., public agencies). An EA is a tool for taking that basic interoperability further to the organizational-wide level, achieving IT and business alignment. EAs are complemented with frameworks and methodologies that help to build them (e.g., [23], [13]), and with reference models that provide a common vocabulary to describe them and help to identify reuse and collaboration opportunities (lastly they enable IT investment optimization, e.g., [12]). UK. Since 2001 the e-gif (Government Interoperability Framework) [5] establishes policies, standards and technical specifications to achieve interoperability and consistency of IT in the public sector (where is mandatory). Its architecture is composite by five major elements 3 : the Technical Standards Catalogue (TSC), which defines the concrete technical specifications for the policies established in the e-gif; the XML Schemas library, with schemas developed by specialist groups (representing interested parties) and subject to public consultation for approval; the Government Data Standards Catalogue (GDSC), which contains an agreed set of standardized data that is used for developing the XML schemas; the e-government Metadata Standard (e-gms), which contains the standardized items to be used when creating metadata for information resources (based on Dublin Core 4 ); and the Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV) and several category lists 5, the IPSV is a controlled vocabulary for the Subject element of the e-gms, aimed to facilitate information resources searching, also other controlled vocabulary lists are being developed for local governments. UK is also implementing a national EA program called the cross-government Enterprise Architecture (xgea) 6, which is expected to help in aligning existing and emerging technical architectures across the government. USA. In 1999 the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) [6] was published to provide federal agencies with a common EA builder; it includes various approaches, models and definitions to develop and document EAs, but it does not define their contents. FEAF presents a logical structure for classifying and organizing architectural descriptions based on the Zachman Framework [23], and uses Spewak s Enterprise Architecture Planning (EAP) methodology [13] to align them to the business. In 2002 a new reference architecture was established, the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) (last updated 2007 [12]), and government efforts were redirected to it. FEA consists of five interrelated reference models which provide a common vocabulary and framework to describe EAs; its purpose is to facilitate cross-agency analysis, and identification of duplicated investments and opportunities for collaboration. The models of FEA are: the Business Reference Model (BRM), which provides a standardized taxonomy of all government s services and operations, agencies must describe their business tier with BRM, and any service that an IT project aims to provide must be mapped onto the services defined by BRM; the Performance Reference Model (PRM), which establishes a common language 3 Visit 4 Visit 5 Visit 6 Visit

4 Page 4 Identifying Relevant National e-government Implementations through which and agency s EA can describe its result s measurements, allowing the government to decide about resource assignment based on comparative analysis of which organizations are more effective and efficient; the Service Component Reference Model (SRM), which provides a link between the technical view and the business view of an EA, is based on the idea of service-components that connect IT-services with business-services, each agency must identify which service-components support the business-services it wishes to implement; the Technical Reference Model (TRM), which provides a standardized taxonomy of specifications, standards and technologies, allowing federal agencies to benefit from best solutions and technologies re-use; and the Data Reference Model (DRM), whose purpose is to facilitate the exchange and reuse of information through the use of agreed standards for describing and discovering data, it is intended to mature these agreements in an iterative fashion through Communities of Interest (COIs, collaborative groups of agencies who require a shared vocabulary to exchange information). In USA, agencies develop their own EAs (alone or collaborating within a COI); they must map them to FEA (mandatory) and might use FEAF as guidance. Australia. The Australian Government Architecture (AGA), an adaptation of USA s FEA (version 1.0 released in 2007 [2]), contains the SRM, DRM and TRM models. It is expected that PRM and BRM will be released gradually in future versions. In Australia there is also a high-level IF named The Australian Government Interoperability Framework (AGIF) 7, which aims to ensure that standards and protocols developed in one agency or network of agencies do not impede future connections with other networks. AGIF comprises: the Business Process Interoperability Framework, which provides a methodology for identifying common business processes among agencies (uses AGA as a standardized taxonomy), the Information Interoperability Framework, which provides guidance to improve agency s information management capacity in support of information exchange; and the Technical Interoperability Framework, which sets out a common language, conceptual model and standards that agencies can employ as a basis for interoperating, its scope does not affect the technologies deployed within each agency. Canada. The Federated Architecture [18] was published in 2000 to guide the development of the government s common IT infrastructure. It does not specify technologies or standards, but anticipates that some pieces of infrastructure will be common to all agencies and provides a high level vision of them; also some components will be specific to agencies subgroups which share similar IT needs. From that experience, they concluded that technical interoperability should not drive business interoperability; governments have to know why they want to be interoperable and agree on which business goals interoperability should support, before they can hope to be successful. So focus was redirected to the business layer, and the Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP) was launched in 2002 [19], it comprises: the Transformation Roadmap, which allows agencies to locate where they are on a maturity curve towards business transformation; the Transformation Framework (based on the Zachman Framework), a strategic design and planning methodology; and the Government of Canada Strategic Reference Model (GSRM), which prescribes a common language used to describe public sector services from several perspectives, so agencies can more clearly describe themselves and thus map common services and business processes, also offers generic process patterns 7 Visit

5 Identifying Relevant National e-government Implementations Page 5 for each service type, this allows identification and standardization of services by factoring out a common process and elevating it to the level of a shared business service. The GRSM is combined with the government s Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) definition [20] for decomposing government programs into business services and business processes. Lastly, the technical standards for the federal government are embodied in the Treasury Board Information or Technology Standards (TBITS) 8. South Korea. In 2003 the government-wide ITA (Information Technology Architecture) development and application was mandated as one of the 31 e-government Initiatives [10], and the first version of the Government-wide Enterprise Architecture Framework (GEAF) was developed. GEAF is a logical structure for sorting and classifying components and their relationships to develop an EA (it uses variations of the Zachman Framework and the Spewak s EAP). In 2004 the technical standards became the Information Systems Technical Guidelines version 1.0, which is a set of technical standards and policies mandatory for the public sector (much like UK s e-gif) [8]. Interoperability strategy is also accompanied by Government-wide Reference Models (GwRMs), which eventually will comprise the five classical models (PRM, BRM, SRM, TRM and DRM). Denmark. The Danish e-government Interoperability Framework (Danish e-gif) was developed in 2004 (latest update in 2006) 9. The Danish e-gif is intended as a guideline to public agencies as they develop IT plans and projects. In 2003 a national white paper on EA [11] was published; it encourages the government to create a joint EA framework for government IT systems and recommended SOA adoption. In 2004 the government published the OIO Enterprise Architecture Framework 10, which describes an approach to develop EAs in the public sector, considerations to make in the planning steps, and give examples on which methods to use. Sweden. The Government elink (GeL or SHS in Swedish) project was launched in 1997 [16]. SHS, the national infrastructure for data dissemination, was developed for the secure exchange of information among agencies and with their customers. It comprises a set of specifications defining generic services which can be used to achieve interoperability upon bilateral agreements. It enables seamless and secure interoperation between agencies while leaving them full autonomy regarding their own services deployment, and is currently operationalized through the Infra-services technological platform. The Swedish e-government follows a decentralized approach with a limited number of obligatory elements; nevertheless, they are studying the EA subject to configure a high level architecture that fits with this approach [17]. Ireland. The Public Services Broker (PSB) is a technological platform that provides interoperability services in Ireland 11. The Reach Interoperability Guidelines (RIGs) 12 define a set of technical policies and standards for the public sector; describes how an agency can connect to the PSB, how to interact with it, and how to interact with other agencies. The services that adhere to RIGs can be shared and reused by the PSB community. In Ireland there are no restrictions on what technologies and standards are to be used by agencies behind their 8 Visit 9 Visit 10 Visit 11 Usable through 12 Visit

6 Page 6 Identifying Relevant National e-government Implementations own individual service boundaries. Also this research did not find any evidence of a national EA program taking course. New Zealand. Technical policies, standards and guidelines are embodied in the New Zealand e-government Interoperability Framework (NZ e-gif), which was first issued in 2002 and is based on UK s e-gif (last update published in 2007 [15] is a substantial rewrite of the original e-gif). NZ e-gif is mandatory for all public services agencies and some other central government bodies (e.g., the New Zealand Police); it is suggested for local governments and open for every other jurisdiction (like the business community). The 2003 e- government strategy recognized the need for public sector IT architecture, and a national EA program was considered in the e-government strategy published in 2006 [14]; the Federated Enterprise Architecture 13 is under construction and is conceived for accompanying the NZ e- GIF in ensuring agencies and their partners can work together. The jurisdiction of this EA is mainly in the inter-agency space where connectivity and interoperability are needed, and recognizes agencies architectures autonomy. Brazil. The interoperability framework, called e-ping (Padrões de Interoperabilidade de Governo Eletrônico), is based on UK s e-gif (last version in 2007 [3]). e-ping is mandatory for the Executive Branch of the Brazilian Federal Government. The implementation plan for subscribing to e-ping is executed gradually, and considers the situation of each agency caseby-case; other Federal Branches (outside the Executive Branch) and local governments are encouraged to subscribe to e-ping whenever significant infrastructure updates are made. This research did not find any evidence of a national EA program taking course. 4. Survey Discussion: Two Alternative Strategies UK represents the international paradigm for IFs and USA for EAs. Their initiatives have subsequently been adapted by other countries (with their own particularities and nuances). Sweden and Ireland give great freedom to their agencies; their main focus is on standardizing interoperability and in providing platforms that provide interoperability services without going inside agencies boundaries, also we suppose they will enter into EA soon (Sweden is already studying the issue) to improve agencies collaboration and optimize IT investment. New Zealand and Brazil are the clearest examples of UK s e-gif adaptations. New Zealand also is already constructing its national EA. South Korea s strategy have mixed practices of USA (FEA and FEAF) and UK (e-gif). Denmark has already passed the stage of basic national interoperability infrastructure and is carrying out its national EA program. Canada has gone further in the business layer granularity, even providing process patterns for it. Also, federal governments do not define a national-wide IF: USA leaves such discussions to each COI, Brazil s IF is meant only for the Federal Executive Branch, and the IFs of Australia and Canada are for the Federal Government; and each State has autonomy to carry out their own e-government initiatives. Instead, centralized IF does fit with non-federal, more centralized and unitary governments (the remaining countries). Table 2 presents a summary of the elements these countries have developed. A careful comparison of the surveyed countries approaches shows two main underlying implementation strategies: 13 Visit

7 Identifying Relevant National e-government Implementations Page 7 Technology-first Strategy: It prioritizes building national-wide IFs first (foundational stage) to provide interoperability basic infrastructure, and then goes on to define EA frameworks and architecture reference models to tackle organizational interoperability and optimize IT investments (advanced stage). Business-first Strategy: It prioritizes building EA frameworks and architecture reference models first, initially implementing data, infrastructure and services layers (foundational stage), this enable groups of agencies (e.g., federal agencies) to develop their own interoperability infrastructure; and then goes on to implement models and methodologies for improving business layers (advanced stage). The Technology-first Strategy has been followed by Ireland (currently at the foundational stage), UK, New Zealand, Sweden and Denmark (all of them at different sublevels of the advanced stage). The Business-first Strategy has been followed by Australia (currently at the foundational stage), USA and Canada (currently at the advanced stage). South Korea seems to have taken a mixed approach. Brazil is out of both strategies, because it has built an IF but is not at national-wide scope and has no national EA program. Table 2. Initiatives by country. Initiative Country Interoperability Frameworks Enterprise Architecture Frameworks and Reference Models UK e-gif xgea USA No at national level. Initiatives are FEA, FEAF carried out by COIs. Australia AGIF (high level). AGA Canada TBITS (Federal Government). Federated Architecture. BTEP South Korea Information Systems Technical Guidelines. GwRF GEAF Denmark Danish e-gif OIO Enterprise Architecture Framework. Sweden GeL (SHS) No national EA program yet (they are studying the issue). Ireland RIGs This study found no national EA program. New Zealand NZ e-gif Federated Enterprise Architecture. Brazil e-ping (Federal Executive Branch). This study found no national EA program. 5. Conclusions The authors of this article are developing an e-government implementation strategy for the Chilean government; this article presents their research findings concerning national IFs, EA frameworks and reference models. IFs and EAs implementations vary from country to country, from centralized approaches to approaches were agencies have great freedom. This may be explained by several factors such as political structure (federal vs. unitary governments), e-government development level and central government enforcement. Two main implementation approaches were identified, namely: Business-first and Technology-first. Since Chile has a centralized government and is at the very initial stage of its e-government development, a Technology-first Strategy applied in a gradual way is more appropriate than the Business-first Strategy; also, it has been followed by the comparable countries (New Zealand and Ireland) and by all non-federal governments (excepting Brazil). Every country within this sample has considered the foundational experiences (UK and USA) and has made adaptations and innovations according to their needs. Chile should consider these elements too, according to its own reality, in the process the national notion of IFs and

8 Page 8 Identifying Relevant National e-government Implementations EAs will emerge naturally. Considering such elements in a gradual way, will allow achieving public sector interoperability first, then better management of the government IT investment portfolio and more efficient/effective management of the national e-government, and finally will result in better services to citizens and business. References [1] Accenture: Leadership in Customer Service, Delivering on the Promise. Government Executive Series (2007). [2] Australian Government Information Management Office: Australian Government Architecture Reference Models v1.0. Australia (2007). [3] Comitê Executivo de Governo Eletrônico: e-ping, Padrões de Interoperabilidade de Governo Eletrônico v3.0. Brazil (2007). [4] Department of Economic and Social Affairs: UN e-government Survey 2008, From e-government to Connected Governance. United Nations, New York (2008). [5] e-government Unit: e-government Interoperability Framework v6.1. Cabinet Office, UK (2005). [6] Federal CIO Council: Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework v1.1. USA (1999). [7] Guijarro, L.: Interoperability Frameworks and Enterprise Architectures in e-government Initiatives in Europe and the US. Government Information Quarterly 24, (2007). [8] Lee, S.: Korea e-government and Interoperability Efforts. Presentation at the OASIS e-gov TC Meeting 27 July Washington D.C., USA (2004). [9] Lopez-Claros, A.: Chile: The Next Stage of Development. In: Porter, M.E., et al (eds.) The Global Competitiveness Report , WEF, pp Palgrave Macmillan (2004). [10] Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs: 2005 Annual Report for E-Government. South Korea (2005). [11] Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation: White Paper on EA. Denmark (2003). [12] Office of Management and Budget: FEA Consolidated Reference Model v2.2. USA (2007) [13] Spewak, S.H.: Enterprise Architecture Planning, Developing a Blueprint for Data, Applications and Technology. Wiley and Sons, New York (1992). [14] State Services Commission: Enabling transformation, A Strategy for e-gov New Zealand (2006). [15] State Services Commission: New Zealand E-government Interoperability Framework, v3.2. New Zealand (2007). [16] Statskontoret: SHS Documentation Overview. Sweden (2003). [17] Statskontoret: IT-Architecture, The art of communicating visions for IT-related change processes. Sweden (2005). [18] Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat: Federated Architecture Iteration One. Canada (2000). [19] Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat: Business Transformation Enablement Program, Service Reference Patterns for the Governments of Canada Strategic Reference Model. Canada (2004). [20] Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat: Service Oriented Architecture Strategy. Canada (2006). [21] The Economist Intelligence Unit: The 2007 e-readiness Rankings, Raising the Bar. White paper written in co-operation with The IBM Institute for Business Value (2007). [22] World Economic Forum: The Global Information Technology Report , Connecting to the Networked Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, USA (2007). [23] Zachman, J.A.: A Framework for Information Systems Architecture. IBM Systems Journal 26, pp (1987).