Publications

A distributed business process organizes activities by several enterprises to fulfill a given business goal. The purpose of this paper is to formalise what it means for such a process to be feasible (possible to carry out given the resources delegated for its execution) and for a feasible process to be correct (satisfying a given business goal), using customer-driven manufacturing as a particular, although broadly defined business area. Possible applications are: formal analysis of business processes, providing formal semantics to process modelling languages, and specification and rigorous development of business-support software.

Business process modelling can have many applications. It can be used to: understand the flow of work in an organisation; monitor and control progress of work; measure and optimise work performance; predict the effects of changes in management and operations; plan for implementation of changes; design interaction patterns between processes running in different organisations; and specify, develop and deploy software to further organisational/business goals, etc. Formal analysis is a particularly good reason to carry out such modelling, as it can disclose problems long before the process is actually deployed in an organisation. This early detection is especially important for processes that cross organisational boundaries where errors, as in all distributed systems, are inherently hard to detect and expensive to correct. One approach to model a business process is to describe its concrete execution in an enterprise, using enterprise resources to produce tangible results like products or services. Typically, such descriptive modelling would be carried out to explore the analogy between business and computing and would concentrate on the mechanics of a process. A prescriptive model, in contrast, aims to express the intended purpose of each process. The challenge for business process modelling is, we believe, finding suitable abstractions that can be applied at both levels. By formally relating such descriptive and prescriptive models, we could verify if a process is correct (satisfies its intended purpose) and further develop an engineering approach to design such processes in a rigorous way. This chapter is set to contribute to this general goal. We consider a particular, although broadly defined, business domain: customer-driven production. Production refers to the process of creating goods – tangible products like cars, phones or shovels. Products are produced by assembly from sub-products, carried out within independent business entities called production cells. Each cell contains the resources to store, manufacture and deliver products to its customers. On a certain level, a cell represents formally what is a manufacturing enterprise with its resources like a warehouse, shop-floor and product stocks. The behaviour of a cell is driven by the orders received from the customers and how such orders are implemented. The customers include other production cells. The implementation of a customer order is described by a production process. The aim of this chapter is to define formally what it means for such a process to be feasible (possible to carry out given the resources delegated for its execution) and correct (satisfying a customer order, if feasible). We adopt the following business model, explained for sequential, concurrent and distributed production: 1. Sequential production (one process, one cell). Each process responds to a customer order which specifies the product to deliver, the number of items and possibly the latest time of delivery. The process operates within a production cell which offers the resources for its execution, in terms of product stocks, storage space, and capacity to carry out manufacturing and transportation. It describes in detail what operations should be performed on the cell and in which sequence. The process is feasible if the cell has enough resources for its execution. A feasible process is correct if its execution satisfies the order: the stocks for the products reach the required volumes within the deadline. 2. Concurrent production (many processes, one cell). A cell may contain several processes, each created in response to a particular customer order and all executed concurrently. In order to resolve conflicts for the shared resources (such as product stocks, manufacturing workstations or a transportation system), processes are assigned priorities to represent their importance. Feasibility means the cell has enough resources for all such processes, executed concurrently. Correctness means all processes satisfy their corresponding customer orders, when executed concurrently under a priority-based scheduler. 3. Distributed production (many processes, many cells). Several processes running in different cells may satisfy an order in a cooperative way. Trying to utilise the resources that one cell lacks and another has available, they form customer-supplier relations dynamically, by receiving customer orders and implementing with their own processes, perhaps sending more orders at the same time. As a result, each cell may be running several processes, each contributing part of the original order. This mechanism leads to the distribution of production activities. Feasibility means each cell has enough resources for its processes executed concurrently. Correctness means a process satisfies its customer order provided all supplier processes satisfy their own. Moreover, when several such processes run in the same cell, they must satisfy their orders concurrently. The rest of this chapter is as follows. Section 7.2 is about product modelling. Section 7.3 presents a descriptive production model, including the concepts like production cells, operations and processes, and defines what it means for a process to be feasible. Section 7.4 presents a corresponding prescriptive model. Section 7.5 defines what it means for a feasible process to be correct, by relating such descriptive and prescriptive models. It starts with sequential production, then introduces concurrency, distribution, and real-time constraints. Section 7.6 describes related work and provides some conclusions.

 There are several well-established surveys on e-government. These surveys employ different assessment models for e-readiness, digital divide and other relevant factors, leading to varying conclusions on the global state of e-government. This paper presents a comparative study of 11 international surveys on e-government between 2001 and 2004. It identifies a common set of 'core indicators' for assessing e-readiness and suggests ways to determine the weights for them. The paper also introduces the concept of a 'target e-ready state' and examines how it may provide a scale for determining the progress of individual countries.

There are several well-established surveys on e-government. These surveys employ different assessment models for e-readiness, digital divide and other relevant factors, leading to varying conclusions on the global state of e-government. This paper presents a comparative study of 11 international surveys on egovernment between 2001 and 2004. It identifies a common set of ‘core indicators’ for assessing e-readiness and suggests ways to determine the weights for them. The paper also introduces the concept of a ‘target eready state’ and examines how it may provide a scale for determining the progress of individual countries.

We present a service-oriented survey for government agencies and its applications to e-government planning. The survey identifies for each agency its mission, structure, resources, on-line presence and perceptions about e-government, and considers all kinds of interactions taking place within the agency (unit-to-unit), within the government (agency-toagency) and between the government and the civil society (government-to-citizen, government-to-businesses, etc.) as services. We explore various uses of this survey such as: identifying key agencies and possible agency alliances, recognizing sharable resources, discovering opportunities for new e-services, formulating common infrastructure and staff training needs, and supporting the drafting of government-wide strategies for e-government. The survey has been applied and tested through the comprehensive analysis of the public administration system in Macao, China.

 We present a service-oriented survey for government agencies and its applications to e-government planning. The survey documents for each agency its mission, structure, resources, on-line presence and perceptions about e-government. It considers all kinds of interactions within the agency (unit-to-unit), within the government (agency-to-agency) and between government and non-government entities (government-to-citizen, government-to-businesses, etc.) as services. We explore various uses of this survey such as: identifying key agencies and possible agency alliances, recognizing sharable resources for e-government, discovering opportunities for new e-services, formulating common infrastructure and staff training needs, and supporting the drafting of government-wide strategies for e-government. The survey has been applied and tested through a comprehensive analysis of the public administration system in Macao, China.

The paper presents a rigorous framework to plan, perform and manage foundational e-government projects. Each project aims to establish a government-wide direction for egovernment and create an initial impetus in this direction within individual agencies. The framework identifies five kinds of tasks – survey, development, training, research and dissemination, and prescribes how they can be planned, performed and managed to achieve the stated objectives. The general focus is on support for strategic planning and capacity development. The technical focus is on middleware infrastructure development. We also outline how the framework was applied to carry out an e-government project in Macao, China.

 The paper presents a rigorous framework to plan, perform and manage foundational e-government projects. Each project aims to establish a government-wide direction for e-government and create an initial impetus in this direction within individual agencies. The framework identifies five kinds of tasks - survey, development, training, research and dissemination, and prescribes how they can be planned, performed and managed to achieve the stated objectives. The general focus is on support for strategic planning and capacity development. The technical focus is on middleware infrastructure development. We also outline how the framework was applied to carry out an e-government project in Macao, China.

 e-Macao is a two-year project to build a foundation for Electronic Government in Macao in terms of readiness assessment, software research and development, and capacity-building for government workforce. The project focused on five main activity areas: (1) survey - a detailed survey of the current state of e-Government practice was carried out, both locally and globally; (2) training - a comprehensive training program was organized for government workforce in technical and management skills for e-Government, promoting collaborative, cross-agency development among government trainees; (3) development - a prototype software infrastructure for e-Government was developed, with example Electronic Public Services delivered to citizens, businesses and government built on top of this infrastructure; (4) research - relevant research was conducted in foundational and applied aspects of e-Government; (5) dissemination - the findings were disseminated inside the project, locally among e-Government stakeholders, and internationally. The project was carried out from July 2004 to June 2006. It was led by UNU-IIST and funded by the Government of Macao SAR through Macao Foundation. UNU-IIST partners on the project were: the Government of Macao SAR, including 44 agencies in all vertical areas of the Government (Administration and Justice, Education and Culture, Finance and Economy, Security, and Transport and Public Works), University of Macau and INESC-Macau. The second phase of the project has been approved by the Government, promoted to a program framework, and extended to last for three more years until end of 2009. The aim of this report is to explain the project, from its aim and objectives, through activities and deliverables, to its organization and evaluation. More information about the e-Macao Project can be found from the project portal at http://www.emacao.gov.mo.

 The UNeGov.net Initiative - Building a Community of Practice for Electronic Governance - was established in order to transfer the experience gained through the e-Macao Project to other parts of the world, particularly to developing countries. The aim is to build a global Community of Practice, comprising experts and practitioners interested in developing, sharing and applying concrete solutions for Electronic Governance. The Initiative established an activity framework comprising: (1) a community portal to document all activities of the community, coordinate its work and maintain a repository of resources relevant to Electronic Governance, (2) a series of network-building workshops around the world, (3) a series of capacity-building schools and courses on various aspects of Electronic Governance, (4) a community-wide practice in collaborative problem-solving based on the common repository of resources, (5) a series of state-of-the-art and state-of-practice reports about Electronic Governance in various countries, (6) a curriculum for training public officials in planning, development and management for Electronic Governance, (7) projects promoting Good Governance through Electronic Governance, and (8) International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance. Within this framework, community actions are carried out in the scope of various thematic areas including: legislation, financing, organization, planning, coordination, human capacity development, e-readiness, e-participation, e-procurement, software infrastructure, public services, interoperability, standards for Electronic Governance, and others. The aim of this report is to explain the UNeGov.net initiative, from its aim and objectives, to concrete deliverables obtained and activities carried out during 2005 and 2006. More information about UNeGov.net can be found at http://www.unegov.net.

 Many governments worldwide are establishing one-stop portals to provide access to various public services based on the needs of citizens or businesses and not the internal structure of the government. A critical support for such one-stop portals is a workflow infrastructure, supporting the matching of the needs against provided services and coordination of the implementing processes, often spanning several government agencies. This paper describes a generic workflow infrastructure for one-stop government - GovWF. GovWF supports the operations of a Virtual Government Organization - a hierarchy of agencies providing collectively a set of public services, while offering a uniform one-agency view to its customers. Conceptual and formal models are provided to rigorously describe the operations of GovWF. We describe how GovWF is implemented and also present a case study for illustration.

 Electronic Government offers a great potential for improving performance, increasing quality of services and reducing costs in the public sector. In order to gain these benefits, organizational changes and re-engineering of administrative processes within and between public agencies has to take place. This, in turn, requires strong government leadership. Countries considered the worldwide leaders in e-government have all created central coordination offices to lead, manage and promote e-government initiatives. In this paper, we present the experiences of Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Singapore and the United States in e-government coordination, as well as discuss the best practices in organizational structures for managing e-government. We also present some recommendations for establishing a central coordination office for Macao.

 This survey examines the current state of South-South Cooperation in Software Technology. Results from the survey show that there has been a surge in South-South Cooperation in Software Technology (SSC-ST) in general since 2003, with significant increase in regional, in addition to bilateral cooperation. A significant increase has also occurred in the contributions of UN organizations (e.g. UNCTAD, UNDP and UNU-IIST) as well as donor OECD countries (particularly Japan, South Korea and a few EU countries) to both the development of software technology capacities and their applications in the areas like agriculture, e-governance, transportation and the Information Society in general. SSC-ST in the areas of e-governance and e-learning is particularly high. However, there is a pronounced divide even among the countries of the South in the area of software technology, with India, China and a few South-East Asian countries providing almost all capacities of the South. So far, not much inter-regional cooperation was documented. SSC-ST cooperation in the area of Open Source Software (OSS) has been growing rapidly in the past three to five years. This has been strongly supported by UN organizations primarily as a means to affordable access, catalyst for capacity acquisition, and a possible solution to reducing the scale of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) problem.

The availability of Electronic Public Services (EPS) is essential for achieving meaningful e-Government. As governments deliver many services to citizens, businesses and other customers, making all these services available online requires a systematic and rigorous approach. A crucial element in this approach is the availability of an Infrastructure to enable rapid EPS development. This demo presents an Electronic Licensing (e-Licensing) Service developed upon a prototype Software Infrastructure for EPS. The Infrastructure comprises: (1) frameworks for design of Front-Office and Back-Office applications, (2) services for workflow management and cross-agency messaging, and (3) an Infrastructure Management Service. The demo shows the process of developing an EPS upon the EPS Infrastructure and demonstrates the various use cases of the e-Licensing application rapidly developed upon the Infrastructure. This work was done in the context of the e-Macao Project, funded by the Government of Macao SAR to build a foundation for e-Government in Macao.

This paper presents a software infrastructure to support the execution and rapid development of Electronic Public Services (EPS). The infrastructure provides frameworks, components, services and tools to aid analysis, design, implementation and deployment of EPS in cross-agency environments. In its current version, the infrastructure include: two frameworks - Front-Office and Back-Office, three services - Workflow, Messaging and Infrastructure Management, and two components - Tracking and Notification. The paper presents the requirements, architecture and elements of this infrastructure. It also presents a software process for developing EPS based on the infrastructure. This work was done as part of e-Macao Project, funded by the Government of Macao SAR, to build a foundation for e-Government in Macao.

The availability of domain frameworks to enable rapid development of Electronic Public Services (EPS) is essential to meet the increasing demand for mature EPS by various government stakeholders. This paper presents a composite domain framework comprising frameworks to build the Front-Office and Back-Office parts of an EPS. The framework supports a set of domain requirements obtained through a detailed analysis of over 30 concrete public services. After presenting these requirements, the framework is described in four stages - architecture, design, implementation and instantiation - all using UML to capture the artifacts built during development. We also illustrate the application of the framework through a case study in developing an Electronic Licensing Service by means of framework instantiation. We conclude with some comments on the complexity, flexibility and performance of the framework. This work was carried out as part of the e-Macao Project to build a foundation for e-Government in Macao, funded by the Government of Macao SAR.

 The availability of domain frameworks to enable rapid development of Electronic Public Services (EPS) is essential to meet the increasing demand for mature EPS by various government stakeholders. This paper presents a composite domain framework comprising frameworks to build the Front-Office and Back-Office parts of an EPS. The framework supports a set of domain requirements obtained through a detailed analysis of over 30 concrete public services. After presenting these requirements, the framework is described in four stages - architecture, design, implementation and instantiation - all using UML to capture the artifacts built during development. We also illustrate the application of the framework through a case study in developing an Electronic Licensing Service by means of framework instantiation. We conclude with some comments on the complexity, flexibility and performance of the framework. This work was carried out as part of the e-Macao Project to build a foundation for e-Government in Macao, funded by the Government of Macao SAR.

Software Technology is increasingly gaining prominence in national Information Technology (IT) development strategies due to its huge potential for socio-economic development, particularly through income generation from digital services and products, support for the delivery of public services and engagement of citizens. In recent years we have seen developing countries like India, Chile, Philippines, Brazil, China and Indonesia as increasingly important global players in the offshore software services industry, with India and China clearly leading in this industry. There has also been a surge in South-South Cooperation in Software Technology (SSC-ST) in general since 2003, with significant increase in bilateral, regional and contributions of UN organizations (e.g. UNCTAD, UNDP and UNU-IIST) as well as donor OECD countries (particularly Japan, South Korea and a few EU countries) to both the development of software technology capacities and their applications in the areas like agriculture, e-governance, transportation and the information society in general.