The aim of this study is to identify ‘Fundamental Services’ in the context of SOA approaches to the provision of eGovernment services. The key questions which arise are: At which level of granularity can ‘Fundamental Services’ be defined? And where is the highest potential for reuse? Following a review of existing service definitions and categorisations, a service taxonomy was therefore developed, which provides both for the establishment of a certain level of granularity and for investigation of the potential for reuse. It is based on the service categorisation provided by Josuttis (2007) and is defined as follows:
Process Services which represent actual workflows (macro flow), combining other (basic and/or composed) services through service orchestration in a long-running flow of activities (or services) which can be interrupted by human intervention. Process services are therefore stateful meaning that they can preserve certain state across multiple calls of the service;
Composed Services are based on other services which are orchestrated into a new composed service. Conceptually composed services are stateless and short-term running. They represent a micro flow comprising a short-running flow of activities (which are services) as part of a business process;
Basic Services implement basic business functionality and which it does not make sense to split into multiple services. Basic services are also stateless and can be subdivided into two types:
Basic Data Services read or write data from or to one backend system. These services typically each represent a fundamental business operation of the back-end.
Basic services encapsulate platform-specific aspects and implementation details from the outside world, so that the consumer can request a service without knowing how it is implemented. These services should provide some minimal business functionality.
Basic Logic Services represent fundamental business rules. These services usually process some input data and return corresponding results.
An advantage of this service taxonomy is that it distinguishes between ‘stateful’ and ‘stateless’
services. These are important when investigating reusability, as discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.
30 Similarly, the taxonomy specifies a high level of granularity, which implies a hierarchy of services.
SOA enables developers to reuse or combine existing functionality at different levels to create new applications based on existing services. Josuttis (2007) illustrates this idea by introducing three stages of SOA expansion. In the 1st stage, Fundamental SOA, basic services ‘wrap a backend or problem domain so that consumers (and higher-level services) can access the backend by using the common SOA infrastructure.’ ‘Backend’ refers to any ‘authentic source’, for example a database, which is accessed through the basic services, hiding the complexity to service consumers. In the 2nd stage of SOA expansion, Federated SOA, a layer of composed services is introduced, which makes use of other services via service reuse. In the 3rd stage, Process-enabled SOA, a layer of process services is added which enable processes to be managed from different front-ends and can be interrupted by human intervention.
Implementation of the methodology in three Member States revealed that the majority of public services identified are Basic Services at the Fundamental SOA level. 239 services were found in total, 118 of which are Basic Data Services and 54 are Basic Logic Services. This highlights the fact that public administrations regularly deal with the registration of data related to businesses and citizens and therefore have ownership of specific information stored in backend systems to support the delivery of public services. The Basic Logic Services, on the other hand, all contain a degree of logic derived from the legislation. Many of these services are therefore ‘verfication’ services, which verify compliance with a certain established law or rule. The totals are illustrated by Table 2 below. Many of these services are similar in scope across the Member States investigated, i.e. they provide a similar functionality (e.g. to register a new business in the business registry), although details of each service may differ due to different legal environments and requirements for data input and output.
Table 2 – Total Identified Services in three Member States Country Process Public
Given the fact that both data and rules (Basic Data and Basic Logic Services) are clearly essential to the delivery of public services for businesses and apparent in different public administrations across three Member States, it is at the basic level that ‘Fundamental Services’ should be defined.
In Josuttis (2007), Allen (2006) defines ‘an optimum level of granularity for a lowest level service:’
It should be possible to describe the service in terms of function, information, goals, and rules, but not in terms of groups of other services.
The function set of a service should operate as a family unit that offers business capability.
A single role should take responsibility for the service.
The service should be as self-contained as possible. Ideally, it should be autonomous.
Based on this and Josuttis’ (2007) contention that Basic Services should conform to the ‘ACID’
properties: Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable, ‘Fundamental services’ can be defined as:
A ‘Fundamental Service’ is a Basic public service (both Basic Data and Basic Logic Services) that is autonomous and that is provided by a single responsible role, and receives as input only the output from Basic Data Services, documents or objects produced by citizens, businesses or administrations.
Figure 22 below situates ‘Fundamental Services’ within the service taxonomy used in this study. This definition also dovetails with the recommendation of the EIF for public administrations to use “a common [service] taxonomy of basic public services” and proposes an initial definition for this taxonomy of basic public services as fundamental services.
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Figure 22 – Service Taxonomy with Fundamental Services
According to this formulation, the study has identified a total of 172 ‘Fundamental Services’ across the Member States within a selected set of public services provided within the life-cycle of a business.
Table 3 provides an overview of the ‘Fundamental Services’ (Basic Data and Basic Logic Services) identified by applying the service decomposition methodology in the ‘Starting Up’ Life Event.
At the level of Basic Logic Services, a number of similarities can be identified across the three Member States. The setup of the company is, for example, verified in all countries, whether it is based on an official deed of incorporation by a notary or another document (such as a memorandum or business start-up notice). In addition, a verification of the professional skills, or for some professions the authorisation to perform the activity (certificates/authorisations/licences), is performed. At the level of the Basic Data Services, clear similarities can also be identified in Belgium, Italy and Sweden. In order to start up, for example, businesses are required to register, file a deed of incorporation and notify the commencement of activities (albeit via different methods) in with the Business Registry. A comparable registration process takes place with the tax administration, for both direct and indirect taxes.
Table 3 – Identified Fundamental Services – Starting Up
Starting Up Belgium Italy Sweden
Basic Data Services
Tax Register business for Register business for Register company for Fundamental services
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Table 4 provides an overview of the ‘Fundamental Services’ (Basic Data and Basic Logic Services) identified by applying the service decomposition methodology in the ‘Managing’ Life Event.
Similar Basic Services are identified, which are related to the legal obligations faced by businesses to submit annual accounts, process tax declarations, acquire building permits and buy and sell property.
At the level of Basic Logic Services, the relevant public administrations verify annual accounts. In the tax domain, comparable verifications of declarations related to indirect and direct taxes take place. In this context, the importance of national laws and practice in determining public service provision can also be observed. Only in Sweden, for example, are annual comparisons and benchmarks of tax declarations performed. For the acquisition of a building permit and buying and selling of a property, similar verification processes can again be seen, despite the fact that many take place at the municipal level. For Basic Data Services, clear similarities can also be identified in Belgium, Italy and Sweden.
Businesses must for example, file annual accounts, register tax declarations and carry out comparable registrations with the Land Registry or Agency when building or buying/selling a property.
Table 4 – Identified Fundamental Services – Managing
Managing Belgium Italy Sweden
Basic Data Services
Accounts File annual account N/A File annual account /
report
Land and - Register building Register building plot
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- Register ownership Register ownership
Basic Logic Services
Accounts Verify annual account N/A Verify annual account / report
property - Verify buyer /seller Verify owner / seller
Land and property
Verify clearance (fire department)
Verify Clearance
(Public Health) Verify building plot Land and
property Verify dossier Verify Clearance
(Fire) -
property - Determine value per
unit Estimate total value
Land and
property - Verify destination of
use Verify building usage
Land and
property - Verify property files Verify sales price
A full list of ‘Fundamental Services’ identified, which also take into account the ‘Expanding,’
Responsible Business,’ ‘EU Market’ and ‘Exit Strategy’ Life Events can be found in Annex II.
34 Generally, it can be said that in the field of public service provision for businesses, there is much scope for services to be reused by public administrations and third parties, both within Member States and potentially between Member States. This is particularly apparent in the field of ‘Starting Up,’ in which, based on application of the service taxonomy and service decomposition model, clear parallels can be drawn between the building blocks of public services identified. In comparison with the tax domain, which is very task-specific for example, these high level services are likely to have a high level of reusability, as discussed below. It can also be expected that the potential impact of offering these services in an open and interoperable way will be significant. Their exposure via SOA-style architecture outside the different silos of government in which they are traditionally offered will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery. This is further investigated in Chapter 4, which explores the possibilities for the design and impact of a ‘cloud of public services’.