E-Frameworks to Optimize Public Administration Services

Introduction

E-government and public administration orientation towards the use of electronic services represents shifts in business doctrine that change traditional organizational models, business processes, relationships and operational models that have dominated the public sector in the past. Electronic government is no longer just an option but a necessity for countries aiming for better governance (Gupta and Jana, 2003). E-government requires organizations to integrate and synchronize their strategic vision and tactical delivery of their services with the information technology and service infrastructure needed to meet that vision and process execution. In the next few years, successful countries will restructure their public sector, process and technology infrastructure to ensure the successful realization of e-government.

This chapter presents the role, models, and technologies designed for assisting with the automation and implementation of e-Business and e-Government solutions on large scales. We present both theoretic and practical approaches in developing e-Services and e-Government solutions, presenting real experiences in developing two successful projects that has a potential to improve complex Government procedures in the Romanian context. We present details related to their implementation, focusing on the presentation of specific concepts and requirements, techniques, models and related standardization activities.

The “Points of Single Contact” (PSC) are important because they will make contact with public administration considerably easier. The Point of Single Contact is proposed by the EU Services Directive. Each member state must have its own PSC, which should be a reliable source of electronic processing of information that should facilitate the interaction of citizens with the public administration. Bringing together ideas from western and eastern parts of Europe and their respective requirements have the potential to lead to a versatile result which can be easily adapted to other countries and markets. Using this framework the governments can offer online services to its citizens as well as the possibility to interact with various public govern-level services, without the need to directly interact with the involved institutions. An example of such an electronic service would be the possibility to open a business using a simple web browser.

The framework is generic, allowing the integration in the electronic environment of various scenarios, such as opening or closing a business. It thus facilitates the interaction between public administration and citizens. The framework implements the „one-stop paradigm” and the „one-stop government”. The „one-stop paradigm”, coming from the business sector, refers to the fact that the costumer should not have to seek information from different contacts, but from a single central point. This point provides capabilities to be accessed by various means: telephone, email, etc. The „one-stop government” concept is the mapping of the paradigm on the public sector, the idea being that administrative services should be offered from one source. The starting point for developing the presented solution was the analysis of the current business processes in Romanian market. The analysis of the business environment highlighted the functionality needed to be integrated so that to obtain a generic framework, capable to cope with various possible scenarios.

The main parts of the PSC framework are the front-end and the back-end. The PSC is benefic since it will integrate the existing front-office and back-office applications from the public administrative sector. The front-office is the interface for the citizen and its purpose is to keep the citizen satisfied with the services. The back-office represents the medium for the document and operation flow of administrative operations. We also designed and present a prototype system that implements the PSC for the current process of registering a company in Romania.