Guidelines for the Specification of New Administrative Processes

Abstract

This chapter presents some guidelines on how to specify a new administrative process (composite external service in the terminology of Chap. 10) in the eG4M methodology on the assumption of using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and related engineering approaches, techniques, and tools. In particular, the guidelines address the case in which an external service has been identified as target of the project (cf. Chap. 9) and the realization of such a service requires the coordination of different PAs, which have to offer (or already offer) inter-PA internal services (cf. Chap. 10) to be coordinated. Before moving to the effective realization of the project (out of the scope of this book), a final step of operational planning is needed to analyze and conceptually model the new services and the coordinating process, which serve as technical input for possible tenders aimed at effective realization. Section 11.1 presents the overall description of the guidelines, by introducing the steps to be realized in order to automate the process. Then Sect. 11.2 outlines the modeling tools, i.e., the techniques and the possible software tools that we suggest to use in order to support the managers and system/software engineers during the specification of the process at design-time. Section 11.3 gives some highlights on the important issue of managing legacy systems. Finally, Sect. 11.4 outlines, through a specific case study, how to specify an entire process. This chapter assumes the reference architecture and the eGovernment cooperative support system as presented in Chap. 10, as they are the target deployment environment for the artifacts produced by the guidelines presented here.

This chapter is authored by Massimo Mecella.