Engineering a Service-Oriented Architecture in E-Government

Abstract

Service-oriented enterprise architectures have gained considerable attention of politicians and public servants as a solution for designing new applications and leveraging investments in legacy systems. Service-oriented architectures can help to share data and functionality among information systems and provide the flexibility to include existing legacy systems, which cannot be replaced easily and otherwise restrict further development. In this chapter, the design of a service-oriented architecture in public administration is explored. A case study is conducted at the Ministry of Justice, and a service-oriented architecture is designed, implemented, and evaluated. The architecture is evaluated based on a number of quality requirements. This case study shows the feasibility to replace functionality formerly offered by legacy systems and shows limitations of current technology. This chapter should lead to a greater understanding of the concept of service-oriented architectures in e-government.