Interoperability of e-government services Valbona DHJAKU Nevila XOXA Klodi BERBERI Credins Bank Albanian Academy of Science Tirana Bank Tirana Tirana kberberi@gmail.com vdhjaku@gmail.com nevila.xoxa@akad.gov.al Abstract offering an unsatisfying service and in the meantime the society is facing a lot of staff costs and administrative The aim of this paper is to present a high-level expenses. operational model for a solution that can improve The databases of these units: register of civilians, significantly public services in Albania. The addressers, driving licenses, auto school data, police solution will increase the efficiency of public clearance and court clearance, medical test results can offer administration, quality of their offered service and us the chance of building an interoperability solution. This saves a lot of time to people that today have to wait solution can offer online application for driving license in queues. The paper brings an evaluation of applicants and offer the possibility of exchanging the data problems that may be solved, critically analyze the between institutions. This way is quicker, safer in the point implications and propose solutions. The core of of originality of data and cost saving in terms of the solution is to build an interoperable platform administrative expenses. Going further, the model of that will allow government units to exchange data service can be used for other public services as well. by using networks. By using an interoperable Making it more common reduces the costs of platform, the institutions can exchange data for interoperability interfaces. Concretely, the civil register their internal needs and for people applying for interface will be in the core of these services and applying services. Having IOP platform running, a portal a charge on every request for info can make it profitable. can be built over it to offer different online services at one single entry for public. In a single entry we can offer to public a standard view of 2. Driving license service for public online services and reduce in maximum the It is important to state that the issue in discussion is very security risks. wide and complex and cannot be fully covered in just a coursework but this paper will be an attempt to treat it 1. Implementation of interoperability bringing some concepts on how it can be done. The paper solution for public services in Albania will try to briefly design a solution that may help public services in general and will stand analyzing more in detail The public services that can be in focus of this analyze one of the services; driving licenses issuing. In this paper are numerous, but to illustrate the case it will be used just will be presented several problem stating today in public one of them. A personal experience of time consuming and services in Albania and it will be done some analyses on bureaucratic story trying to renew the Driving license how these problems can be solved in the current status of leaded to controversial thoughts about the concrete process telecommunication technologies. and not only. In this process there are many problems that In order to properly evaluate the case it have considered: can be solved through an internetworking solution. The o All my knowledge and experience in those process requires going in several offices to complete it: services completing paper forms and applying to driving license o Research on available public materials office, retrieving certificates of clearance from police and court offices, a paper from municipality about living o Interviewing friends and colleges that have similar address and medical test. experiences This is a common problem that can be faced from o Interviewing people working in the unit that everyone when applying for a new driver license, renewing manages Driving Licenses (DPSHTRR) or replacing a lost or stolen one. People are wasting a lot of All public services in Albania are offered today time going in different state offices as those are not separately in offices responsible for that service. On communicating to each other. The public administration is government web sites are offered only information and only in very few cases you can find forms and instruction how information that is required by the applicant of the driving those have to be filled. The only way for submitting request license. The portal will be developed to work over a for services and getting services is by visiting offices. In standardized national interoperable platform. Currently in most of the cases when you submit a request for a service Albania there is not anything like that up and running but you need to present several other documents issued by other as Albania is ambitious to join the EU we are always offices. Since the offices are working independently the looking to advance in compatibility with EU. Studding the applicant need to visit all other offices in order to collect case we find that EU countries have already built the required documents. For example in Driving License government IOP platforms and standardized case that is the service we will see more in details, together multifunctional portals. Those portals are called with the form of application we need to visit: eGovernment (short for electronic government) and are o A photo shop to prepare several personal photos as provided to improve government services, interactions and per the required standard transactions with citizens, businesses, and other entities of o Civil status offices to get Certificates of birth government. o Court offices to retrieve certificates of clearance All European countries are working and presenting o Prosecution office retrieve certificates of eGovernment initiatives, mainly related to the improvement clearance of governance at the national level. Significant o School to get confirmation of completed school eGovernment activities are taking place at European o Municipality office for getting confirmation about Commission level visible in Action Plans and reflected in living address an extensive list of e-Government Fact Sheets produced by o Medical clinic to do medical tests. the European Commission. On those days the European All those steps have significant costs financially and Commission is supporting actively eGovernment services. socially. The financial cost are coming as we are spending According to the European Commission the “eGovernment our valuable time and expenses for public administrative is the use of Information & Communication Technologies offices. The social cost is coming as many people are (ICTs) to make public administrations more efficient and wasting their time on those processes meantime they could effective, promoting growth by cutting red tape. This is use it for doing better things in society. something which anyone who has spent hours waiting in line in a government building can appreciate [ECW11].” 3. E-Government services The e-Government can be implemented both at the national level and in supranational level. European Commission has The proposed solution to improve the situation is a web assigned responsible persons in high level of administrate portal to public having behind interoperable services to prepare the strategies of egovernment services. Other platform. The figure 1 present what is my concept those structures are responsible to implement the strategies services. We can find on it that we benefit the facility of through several programs and activities. getting the services online when possible and also exchange Two of the most important initiatives are the IDABC and of information electronically between institutions avoiding ISA programs. The European’s Commission says that: the need to visit office by office and ensuring better the “IDABC stands for Interoperable Delivery of European originality of data. eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Business and Citizens. It takes advantage of the opportunities offered by information and communication technologies: to encourage and support the delivery of cross-border public sector services to citizens and enterprises in Europe to improve efficiency and collaboration between European public administrations to contribute to making Europe an attractive place to live, work and invest [ECW09]”. ISA – Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations – is a European Commission program that sets out to improve electronic cooperation among public administrations in EU Member States [ECW16]. The program facilitates electronic cross-border and cross-sector interaction, enabling the delivery of electronic public services and ensuring the availability of common solutions. As a conclusion we find that e-Government services are well known and in EU and we do not need to invent Figure 1: Services everything on them but we have to start working from current state of them [Nov08]. A valuable detail is also that For building the e-service related to driving license European Commission is funding also projects in this area services it is required to start with creation of national and it can give a financial help to Albania too. multifunctional portal for Albania which contains all the 4. Interoperable Platforms - IOP assignment. Development of these elements is a precondition to start the e-services. Assuming that the IOP Up to now we have presented the front view of e- is up and running, we are going to analyze implementation Government services. What stays on the core of of this service in this interoperable platform and offered to eGovernment services is the Interoperable Platform that we public through public gateway of e-Government. will refer as IOP. As it is shown in figure 1 in my Let go and see some of the main issues that comes out in understanding IOP is like a highway where all services will this project: go throw to meet each other. Even this is a very simplified view we find that Interoperability is a very complex issue 5.1 Feasibility, are we in the proper technology and related to technical aspects such as data network social environment stage that we can implement such a infrastructure and data exchange formats, but also related solution? with data contents issues [Abu05]. Having in consideration this complicity we will have a quick view on it as concerned This evaluation has three areas, Albanian government to our object. The IOP has to be built as national wide ICT development, and social development in technological platform and considering the international standards on area to use those services and service by self. Albanian ICT. Building of the Interoperability chain is one of the first government is putting high priority on investment in ICT things to be done and on it has to be thought about current area. Several significant points can be listed for those infrastructure and what is expected to be in the future. The investments and developments on e-Government services use of IOP can be for between institutions and within them to consider them valuable. E-Services can offer a better too. For building a better and more efficient IOP service to public, are very helpful in the anti-corruption involvement of stakeholders in the process is very strategy of government, we are going online with EU important [Ala05]. Some of keywords to be in mind in IOP Administration developments strategy and we can get design are: Interoperability, Standards, Openness, Security, benefits of EU funds. Privacy, Accessibility, Availability, Scalability, Regarding the users of this service, considering that Maintenance, Market Support etc. internet usage is massively used today we find that the To further extend studying the case on figure 2 is service can be offered everywhere. presented an IOP design idea and concerns that have to be The answer for the third issue will be taken at the end of considered. Again as part of e-Government services even our analyses as we check all the issues. the IOP are specific per country a lot of experience can be The analyses will start with the current paper based used from EU for Albanian implementation. Currently in workflow of the driving License application and verifying the new articles and seminaries from EU we are looking to the problems and concerns. As described at beginning of improve semantic interoperability in European this session the Driving license renewal starts with visiting eGovernment systems. The objective is achieving better seven other offices to collect necessary document for collaboration between European public administrations application: A photo, Certificates of birth, certificates of relating to the meaning of the information. As Albania is an clearance (Court office), certificates of clearance aspirant country to join EU it is crucial to follow the EU on (Prosecution office), completed school diploma, living their implementations. address and medical tests. Easily can be noted a lot of efforts to collects all these documents, time consuming and financial cost as all of them are given as per specific fee-s. In following picture (figure 3) are presented the workflow processes as those are running now in Government offices. The improving of those processes is one of our considerations too. Figure 2: An IOP design idea and concerns 5. Driving License e-Services Let’s come back to our practical issue with driving licenses eservices. The e-services will use elements of the e-government infrastructure specified above in this 5.3 Who can benefit This is a common service for many people in Albania and we find currently over 100 thousand people have a driving license. Many people are required to utilize time to time services related to driving license as new DL, renewing DL, lost DL, damaged DL, theft DL, address or other info changes etc. 5.4 Security issues This is an important issue but interesting to be mentioned also. As we have noted the e-Service will be offered together with other e-Government service through a single entry port. It will allow us to use eSignature. Much like one signs a document with a pen in the offline world, electronic signatures deliver a way to sign documents in the online world. But without seeing a person sign the document, how can you prove it is the right person? This is where the Electronic Signature Directive comes in. In the past only hand-written signatures were legally valid but now the low accepts electronic signatures in Albania. A system of electronic signatures that work across Albania delivers the electronic signatures of public services to businesses and Figure 3: The workflow processes in Government citizens. offices 5.5 Future vision, possible future developments What is proposed in this paper is just for starting a new 5.2 Proposed solution, problems it will solve concept of Public Services in Albania using information and communication technologies [Bru05]. The vision of The proposed e-Service solution will allow the applicant this service is to simplify the public services in lower cost to apply directly to online service without the need to visit and contribute in quick growth of country. Although the all offices. Using the Interoperable platform as shown in vision is clear and many public services can be found there figure 1 the Driving license authority will be able to are some the path is not easy. The e-services will be communicate with other government offices and retrieve successful if we are able to simplify the processes and get civil status, living address, clearance status and completed participations [Bet05] . To go at these results we need to do schools. Also this service gives a lot of possibilities for a change in the public sector to consider the data and improving appointment scheduling and notification on knowledge management, social-economic environment, processing status saving time in unnecessary visits or add value to services and built reliable and secure systems. queues of people. 5.6 Financial aspect In the presented idea is not possible to make a good evaluate of the financial benefits or losses but some benefits we can find on it: a lot of valuable working time saved to applicants, less administrative costs as less office staff will be required, less offices and office expenses. IOP will remove the need certificates and paper exchange between offices as the commission can be collected anyway. A real example of an e-Service that can show the financial benefits published in European commission internet site: In Denmark, electronic (or ‘e’) invoicing saves taxpayers €150 million and businesses €50 million a year. If introduced all over the EU, annual savings could add up to over €50 billion. In Italy, e-procurement solutions cut over €3 billion in costs. Full take up of electronic invoicing and procurement (purchasing) in Europe is predicted to have a huge impact in Europe, saving some €300 billion a year. Figure 4 5.7 Risks and assumptions, potential drawbacks expertise and in some cases maybe it will be required the help of international experts. It was enjoyable to write for The project needs to go through several difficult the case as it can really be a solution in avant-garde and can processes and decisions. Evaluating the details of current improve the life of many people. services and the proposed services we can identify the following concerns: o Clear and applicable change management process References o Changing and adopting the Driving license system [ECW11] European Commission Website. Europe’s with new needed requirement Information Society. Available: o New instances of database and data input might http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/tl/soccul/ be needed; New outputs too egov/index_en.htm o Restructuring of the workflow o Other institutions in cooperation are required to [ECW09] European Commission Website. IDABC. (2009) follow the new workflow Available: o Changing other systems in order to be adopted to http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/chapter/3.html new processes from manual management to electronic signalization [ECW16] European Commission Website. Interoperability o The necessary modifications to legislation should Solutions for European Public Administrations. be done before launching the new service Available: http://ec.europa.eu/isa/ready-to- o Etc. use-solutions/index_en.htm 5.8 Legal background [Nov08] S.Novaretti. European Interoperability As we have to use new type of documents, signatures, Framework. 2008 verification and implement changes in workflow legal changes are required. [Abu05] Aichholzer, G, Burkert, H (eds) (2005) “Public sector information in the digital age: between 5.9 Supporting IT systems markets, public management and citizens’ rights”, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK Clearly the most important thing on the solution to be provided is the IT systems and networking to be used. We [Ala05] Alabau, A. (2004) “The European Union and its are getting the initial values of driving license e-services eGovernment Development Policy” from the e-Government platform that it will be put. As better it is developed more easy it will be for configuring [Bru05] Bruel, J.D. (2005) “Bringing government closer to our service on that platform, more simple will be for users citizens” and better it will interoperable with other services under eGovernment. [Bet05] Betz, F (2005) “eGovernment: Democratic re- enforcement vs. increased economic efficiency?” 5.10 Other concerns: Definition of roles and processes of this service; involved stakeholders, actors; Administrative procedures etc. 6. Conclusions Having a Public e-Service up and running to process issues related to driving license may facilitate the life of many people. It can be seen in all steps as a very efficient solution and in time for developing and having it welcome in Albania. The proposal was mostly in high level but clearly presents that the challenge of implementing an eService like the one described is achievable. Working for the proposal was difficult and enjoyable at the same time. It was difficult as it covers a complex and big problem that involves a lot of people, institutions and requires expertise from different fields. This must be considered when implementing the solution. The team must be wide