In order to realise the key objective of PICTURE, i.e. support of decision makers in identifying the impact of new ICT and developing long-term ICT strategies, a key prerequisite is extensive knowledge about the existing process landscape of a public administration (PA). This knowledge can be structured and analysed using process models. Due to the specific requirements of PAs, the PICTURE methodology targets the distributed, dialogue-oriented capturing of process information by responsible employees. As the PA’s staffs are usually not sufficiently experienced resp. trained in state-of-the-art modelling, and distributed captured models have to be consistently integrated, a technique for standardisation was needed.
In order to provide an overview about existing concepts, initially a state-of-the-art analysis about the diffusion of modelling techniques (Task 1.1) has been conducted including literature analysis of modelling notations, an online survey about the practical use of models in PAs, and the evaluation of existing process models of municipal partners. Main findings (documented in Deliverable 1.1, “Report on Current Practice of Process Modelling Projects & Techniques in European Public Administrations”) are (1) an enormous heterogeneity of modelling techniques and (2) a very limited use of process modelling in PAs due to a lack of easily applicable method and tool support.
Thus, requirements for a methodology and tool that enable PAs to capture processes have been gathered subsequently (Task 1.2) by means of a representative set of processes which has been modelled and analysed by municipal and research partners. In order to picture the current heterogeneity of modelling techniques, different tools (ADOben®, ARIS ® and Microsoft VISIO®) and notations (Business Process Modeling Notation and Event Driven Process Chains) have been used (cp. Deliverable 1.2). The discussions of issues, success factors, model quality and comprehensibility of existing approaches pointed out a number of important requirements for modelling PA processes (cp. Deliverable 1.3, “Requirements Specification for Process Building Blocks”).
A suitable concept which considers these requirements and especially addresses the semantic standardisation of process modelling is the definition of so called Process Building Blocks (PBBs). PBBs are an abstraction of administrational tasks and serve as common elements in many processes within PAs. An example PBB is “Citizens’ advice bureau receives an electronic application form by e-mail” which consists of different components: (1) the core activity (“to receive”), (2) the information object (“application form”), (3) the organisational unit (“citizens’ advice bureau”), (4) the supporting information system (“e-mail”) and (5) further attributes (medium of the information object is “electronic”). Standardised PBBs can be used to realise distributed model processes on common levels of detail and abstraction as well as on standardised semantics. Hence distributed model parts can be consistently plugged together resulting in a comprehensive, integrated, comparable and analysable process model landscape. A list of the extensively evaluated PBBs and their respective attributes are published in Deliverable 1.7 (“Process Building Block Specification”).
Summarising, PBBs represent an independently usable result which standardises and considerably simplifies process modelling. Furthermore, the PBB specification provides the constitutive foundation for (1) the modelling methodology, (2) the ICT impact measurement methodology and (3) the prototypical implementation of the PICTURE tool developed in subsequent WPs of PICTURE.