Electronic commerce offers intermediaries new opportunities for facilitating the transfer of information, goods and services between business customers and suppliers. Designing exchanges is a complex undertaking because of the many design options on the one hand and the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, interests of customers, suppliers and the intermediary to be considered on the other. Our research provides constructive support for balancing interests beyond simple prescriptions like ‘creating win‐win situations.’ We developed an exchange design model and patterns focusing on trade‐offs for electronic intermediaries based upon four in‐depth case studies. The design model offers a systematic insight into themes that are relevant to the interests of customers, suppliers, and the intermediary itself: the role of the intermediary, the linkages between intermediary and customers and suppliers, transparency for customers and suppliers, and the novelty of the intermediary. The patterns discuss specific trade...

A big challenge for governments all over the world is to deliver secure, reliable, transparent and accountable services to their citizens and businesses. Effective and efficient service delivery requires the orchestration of business processes going beyond the border of single agencies. Little is known about how to orchestrate these cross-agency service-delivery processes, and consequently governmental decision-makers are looking for support in designing such processes. This paper investigates the applicability of two existing reference models, the Workflow Reference Model and the extended SOA reference model, to guide the development of cross-agency process orchestration. Although these reference models contain important elements, we found that these models they do not provide support for issues like ensuring correct and in-time service-delivery processes, secure information sharing and transparent and accountable processes.

Governments worldwide are increasingly using Web-based business models to enhance their service delivery. Yet the concept of the business model is unexplored within the context of e-government. Drawing upon the literature on e-commerce, we develop a taxonomy for analyzing Web-based business models for e-government. Based on a systematic survey of 59 e-government Web sites in the Netherlands, our findings indicate that most of the Web sites use the content provider or direct-to-customer business models, while only a few are using novel business models. Overall, the concept of business model is appealing and useful in the public sector. Specifically it compliments research on Web site quality by analyzing and describing Web sites using atomic e-government business models and suggesting improvements by using combinations of business models.

Intermediaries have introduced electronic services with varying success. One of the problems an intermediary faces is deciding what kind of exchange service it should offer to its customers and suppliers. For example, should it only provide a catalogue or should it also enable customers to order products? Developing the right exchange design is a complex undertaking because of the many design options on the one hand and the interests of multiple actors to be considered on the other. This is far more difficult than simple prescriptions like ‘creating a win-win situation’ suggest. We address this problem by developing design patterns for the exchanges between customers, intermediary, and suppliers related to role, linkage, transparency, and ovelty choices. For developing these design patterns, we studied four distinct electronic intermediaries and dentified exchange design choices that require trade-offs relating to the interests of customers, intermediary, and suppliers. The exchange design patterns contribute to the development of design theory for electronic intermediaries by filling a gap between basic business models and detailed business process designs.

Many e-government research and policy-making activities focus on the short or mid term. Yet the question remains how e-government will look like in 2020 and what kind of research is needed to ensure that desired futures are realized and unwanted futures can be avoided. In this paper we will look at this long time horizon and describe the results of two workshops conducted with experts from governments, information and communication technology industry and academia. The first workshop was aimed at developing scenarios for e-government in 2020 and second workshop aimed at developing a research road map aimed at accomplishing desired scenarios and avoiding unwanted ones.

In e-Government public agencies can act as service providers by making their information and functionality available using web services. New systems can be designed by composing the web services provided by the service providers. As such public agencies are looking for support to create new compositions. Several composition approaches can be found and are evaluated in literature, however, none of these evaluations take into account the e-Government specific requirement originating from the involvement of multiple parties having different interests. The composition approaches can be characterized as representational formalisms. In this paper we present a composition evaluation approach which extends the existing evaluation approaches by including the multi-actor dimension. We illustrate this method using an example. Further research is aimed at executing the proposed approach and comparing semantic and multi-actor-based compositions methods.

E-government research is currently at a stage of consolidation and new orientation. Smaller steps of government modernization have in part been successfully implemented; larger ones still lie ahead of us. Within an EC funded project, a roadmap for e-government is being defined. Thereby, scenario building about the future is being used to grasp pictures of the future. From these future scenarios, research actions shall be derived. In this paper we present the results of the scenario building workshops in four regions for e-government in the year 2020. In total 15 scenarios were developed shaping aspects of different dimensions of alternative futures. A wide range of topics were addressed, varying from interoperability, division of power, corruption, cyber war to changing democratic systems, religious activities, participations and the role of individualisms in society. Next steps are to assess the scenario results in respect to the current EC agenda and to derive from there actions of research in order to ensure that desired futures will come true and that unwanted futures are being avoided

In this article, we propose a consent decision-making mechanism, ShEM, which allows users to exert automatic and manual control over their private information. An enhanced fuzzy logic approach was developed for the automatic decision-making process. The proposed mechanism has been prototyped and integrated in a UMTS location-based services testbed on a university campus. Users have experienced the services in real time. A survey of users’ responses on the privacy functionality has been carried out and analyzed as well. Users’ response on the privacy functionality was positive. Additionally, results obtained showed that a combination of both manual and automatic privacy control modes in one approa

Many European Union (EU) Member States have revised their strategies for public sector modernization and transformation of e-government to meet the objectives of the EU. Yet these strategies and activities often focus on the short or mid-term and there is no clear on the future of e-government. The eGovRTD2020 project aims at sketching e-government in 2020 and identifying future strategic research fields. In this project views on the future of e-government were derived by applying the scenario building technique. This is a technique aimed at stimulating different perspectives and images on the future. In our research we define scenarios as internally consistent, mutually different and plausible stories about a possible future. In total 29 scenarios were developed in 7 regional workshops. These were analyzed to derive a final set of 8 scenarios describing e-government in 2020.

Users’ privacy preferences are needed in order to get users privacy demands and to give them control capabilities of how they want their information to be dealt with. In context aware systems, users’ privacy preferences are expected to be influenced by their changing context. Consequently, new ways of describing privacy preferences are required to handle users’ context dynamics. In this paper, we propose architecture for users’ privacy preferences description and evaluation in context aware systems. A simulation tool is being also developed which introduces the architecture functionalities.

Abstract Public managers are looking for ways to fully exploit the advantages of Web services and Web services orchestration technology for improving service delivery. This article analyzes the quest toward the creation of citizen-centric, cross-agency processes using Web service orchestration technology. Based on pilot projects in the Netherlands, the authors find that the use of Web service orchestration technology requires the introduction of new process orchestration roles and an evolution from hierarchical to agreement-driven relationships. Eight process orchestration roles and a stage model developed by the authors are presented.

This issue is composed of a special section on ‘‘Ontology-based E-Catalog in e-Commerce’’ and two relevant papers accepted through regular submission and review procedure. The papers from special section is guest edited by Junho Shim (Sookmyung Women’s University, Korea) and Simon S.Y. Shim (San Jose State University, USA) from the International Workshop on Data Engineering in E-Commerce (DEEC 2005) which was held in April 2005 at Tokyo Japan. For the introduction of special section, refer to the guest editor’s introduction. We would like to thank to the dedicated effort of guest editors. The papers selected for the special section concern about the ontology management for large scale e-Commerce applications, building operational product ontology system, and ontology-based e-Commerce negotiation to resolve the semantic heterogeneity problem. These issues are related with e-Catalog system. For the e-catalog, the search has been inherent problem, so an evaluation and optimization of the catalog search process of e-procurement is selected. The last paper deals with the Web Service decomposition problem and proposed a high performance cache management scheme.

Existing and new services can potentially be shared among governmental organizations to achieve economies of scale and scope. In designing shared services in public administration various views need to be integrated in order to make well-sounded trade-offs. In this respect, it is often argued that there is insufficient support for structural reorientation and transformation of public organizations.The overall objective of this ongoing research is to support the planned change and transformation of public administration through the implementation and deployment of shared services. In this poster presentation we will demonstrate how flow-oriented, discrete-event simulation can be used to model and unravel shared services by capturing the organizational, business process, and application views. In this way simulation can support the diverse stakeholders that are involved in the structural reorientation of public administration. Moreover, we will show using case study how simulation can support decision-making and facilitate the making of trade-offs through what-if analyses.

The growing tendency to inter-weaving infrastructures makes them more complex, less manageable, and more vulnerable to random system failures. Several information systems are usually added to manage and control such infrastructures. However, in this internet era these information infrastructures have increasingly become the targets of sophisticated (denial of service) attacks, which cause random failures. Common technologies designed to improve the resilience of critical nodes in such information infrastructures are based on costly, dedicated, and limited redundant hardware systems. This paper explores the possibility to apply self-organisation and resource sharing techniques between the security nodes to increase the infrastructure resilience. It is possible then to achieve perpetual availability without dedicated redundant systems.

Component-based information systems focus on building information systems by combining and matching predeveloped components and leveraging the investments in legacy systems. Although component-based systems have many advantages, most organizations are reluctant to adopt them. Many companies do not understand the opportunities and advantages of component-based systems and lack sufficient insight into how to identify components and align them with business processes.Business engineering approaches are crucial for aligning information systems within their organizations' context, assessing the value of information systems, and communicating implications to stakeholders. The business engineering approach aims at defining business processes, mapping processes to components, evaluating the pros and cons of component-based systems, and helping stakeholders to create a shared understanding. This chapter presents a business engineering approach aimed at formulating, specifying, and evaluating organizational and technological aspects of component-based systems within a particular organizational context.The approach is described, applied, and tested in a case study. A simulation is used to demonstrate visually how a component-based architecture could allow for more flexible, customer-driven service provisioning as opposed to the current situation. The case study highlights (1) the need for identifying components based on existing and future business processes and interdependencies between tasks in business processes, and (2) the need for modeling and visualizing technical infrastructure, applications, components, and business processes along with their interdependencies.

Governments are seeking ways to improve the service provisioning to their citizens by using the Internet, whilst at the same time reducing the operational costs in their back-office and IT. The implementation of shared service centers is claimed to be a valuable organizational redesign that will lead to less redundancy in operations, less staff and more concentrated knowledge accumulation. However, the decision making and subsequent implementation is a complex task full of risks on failure. This is partly due to migration of legacy IT systems, but diverse expectations and interests among the actors involved appear to be most decisive. Triggered by the failure of P-Direct, a major shared service center for HRM within the Dutch central government, this paper discusses the risks involved and the dilemma's one faces in design and implementation of shared service centers. There are various scenarios one can think of for decision-making and implementation, that lie in the spectrum from central top-down steering to bottom-up emergent process growth. The authors propose a framework for strategic choice that may guide in the search for a successful implementation strategy, and that may help future empirical research in developing "best practices".

A big challenge for governments all over the world is to improve the service provisioning to their clients, citizens and businesses. One way of improving service-provisioning is by means of a a one-stop-shop that integrates services that are performed by different semi autonomous agencies. This requires the coordination of service-delivery processes that run across different agencies. This is also called process orchestration. As little is known about process orchestrators, governmental decision-makers need support in designing them. This paper investigates the applicability of existing reference models from domains that are closely related to process orchestration, the Workflow Reference Model and the extended SOA reference model, to governmental decision-makers for implementing process orchestration in e-government, and identifies several main requirements for a reference mode for process orchestration, based on a case study performed at a business counter.