=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1372/paper17
|storemode=property
|title=De-Materializing Local Public Administration Processes
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1372/paper17.pdf
|volume=Vol-1372
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/apn/BallaucoCDFZ15
}}
==De-Materializing Local Public Administration Processes==
<pdf width="1500px">https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1372/paper17.pdf</pdf>
<pre>
  De-Materializing Local Public Administration
                    Processes

 Giancarlo Ballauco1 , Paolo Ceravolo2 , Ernesto Damiani3 , Fulvio Frati2 , and
                            Francesco Zavatarelli2
                               1
                                 I-Conn, Trento, Italy
                      giancarlo.ballauco@nitidaimmagine.it
      2
        Computer Science Department, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
      {paolo.ceravolo, fulvio.frati, francesco.zavatarelli}@unimi.it
 3
   Etisalat British Telecom Innovation Center/Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE
                          ernesto.damiani@kustar.ac.ae



      Abstract. We describe a framework for the de-materialization of local
      public administration processes that provides remote assistance by hu-
      man operators when needed. Our framework is in an advanced state of
      development and will be tested in several municipalities of the province
      of Trento (Italy).




Like many European countries, Italy is merging little municipalities into districts
in order to streamline local services, re-organize staff, and reduce indirect costs
[4]. As local services get relocated to municipalities chosen as district leaders,
citizens face longer trips and increased inconvenience in accessing services. This
situation has triggered research [1, 2] on technologies able to de-materialize Local
Public Administration (LPA) processes, providing remote access to them via
smartphones or special-purpose access points located in schools, shopping malls,
and shops. Experience has shown that citizens used to face-to-face interactions
find hard to access LPA processes via Web sites. Whenever processes involve
choices that may generate a penalty (for instance, paying a local tax) users
require the assistance of a human [3, 4].
    Our solution relies on a platform that executes all LPA process steps re-
motely, calling in a human operator when necessary. The level of assistance is
context-dependent, i.e. takes into account the task at hand, the logistics of the
point of access, the age, hearing and eyesight capabilities of the user as well
as the current state of the Internet connection and access devices. If the user
looks uncertain or confused, the remote assistance gets activated automatically
without waiting for the specific request.
    In our system, LPA processes are described using BPMN. The standard
BPMN palette has been extended with specific elements associate to proprietary
scripts capable to detect and activate the right assistance level and send direct
commands to I/O devices (printer, scanner, . . . ). We defined a set of heuris-
tic rules [5] that evaluate the context (for instance ConnectionQualityLevel
312    PNSE’15 – Petri Nets and Software Engineering



> 3) and decide the action to deal with it, e.g. StartAudioCall. Our rules are
written as annotations to the BPMN diagram. Fig. 1 shows an extended BPMN
diagram, where icons in the upper left corner of each activity determine the type
of rule implemented in the activity.




                    Fig. 1. Example of enriched BPMN diagram.




Conclusions and Future Work
Our solution for de-materializing LPA processes preserves human assistance to
users. Our BPMN extension expresses the interaction types that can be activated
for each activity.

References
1. S. Armenia, D. Canini, and N. Casalino. A System Dynamics Approach to the Paper
   Dematerialization Process in the Italian Public Administration. Interdisciplinary
   Aspects of Information Systems Studies, Springer, 2008.
2. N. Mirabella, L. Rigamonti, and S. Scalbi. Life cycle assessment of Information and
   Communication Technology application: a case study of dematerialization in the
   Italian Public Administration. Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 44, pp. 115-122,
   2013.
3. J. Becker, B. Niehaves, P. Bergener, and M. Raeckers. Digital Divide in eGovern-
   ment: The eInclusion Gap Model. Electronic Government Lecture Notes in Com-
   puter Science, vol. 5184, pp. 231-242, 2008.
4. M.J. Goldsmith, E.C. Page, eds. Changing Government Relations in Europe. From
   Localism to Intergovernmentalism. Oxon, Routledge, 2010.
5. Y. Sakurai, K. Takada, M. Anisetti, V. Bellandi, P. Ceravolo, E. Damiani, and S.
   Tsuruta. Toward sensor-based context aware systems. Sensors 12:1, pp. 632-649,
   2012.

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