=Paper= {{Paper |id=Vol-1985/BPM17industry04 |storemode=property |title=Declarative Process Models in Government Centric Case and Document Management |pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1985/BPM17industry04.pdf |volume=Vol-1985 |authors=Lasse Hende Norgaard,Jesper Birch Andreasen,Morten Marquard,Soren Debois,Frans Saxbeck Larsen,Vagn Jeppesen |dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/bpm/NorgaardAMDLJ17 }} ==Declarative Process Models in Government Centric Case and Document Management== https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1985/BPM17industry04.pdf 
Declarative Process Models in Government Centric Case
              and Document Management

Lasse Hende Nørgaard1, Jesper Birch Andreasen1, Morten Marquard2, Søren Debois3,
                  Frans Saxbeck Larsen1 and Vagn Jeppesen1
                 1KMD A/S, Lautrupparken 40-42, 2750 Ballerup, Denmark
          2Exformatics, Dag Hammarskjölds Allé 13, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
     3IT-University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark



    len@kmd.dk, jpa@kmd.dk, debois@itu.dk, mmq@exformatics.com,
                       fsl@kmd.dk, vje@kmd.dk



       Abstract. In 2016 KMD, a leading supplier of mission critical software, solutions
       and IT services to Denmark’s public sector, recognized the need for expert end-
       user process modelling and customization features in the next iteration of its
       WorkZone offering. KMD contracted with Danish Adaptive Case Management
       vendor Exformatics A/S, developer of declarative process modelling and simu-
       lation tools, who has solutions based on Dynamic Condition Response Graphs,
       DCR, developed together with the IT University of Copenhagen. This paper de-
       scribes the integration of Exformatics’ DCR Graphs Engine product as a compo-
       nent of KMD WorkZone, an integration which has (a) solved hard otherwise un-
       surmountable problems of maintainability of models, and (b) enabled end-user
       modelling. This paper should be of interest equally for audiences interested in the
       application of declarative process modelling technologies in particular and pro-
       cess modelling technologies in general.


       Keywords: DCR, Government, Adaptive Case Management


1      Introduction

This paper is based in the area of government centric Document and Case management
as delivered by a leading standard software vendor in the Danish public sector. The
paper is focused on the challenges in finding a good model for implementing adaptive
case management on government sector business processes using various process mod-
els and tools.




M. Brambilla, T. Hildebrandt (Eds.): BPMN 2017 Industrial Track Proceedings,
CEUR-WS.org, 2017. Copyright © 2017 for the individual papers by the papers' au-
thors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. This volume is published
and copyrighted by its editors.
Lasse Hende Nørgaard1, Jesper Birch Andreasen1, Morten Marquard2, Søren Debois3,
                  Frans Saxbeck Larsen1 and Vagn Jeppesen1


1.1    KMD – IT with insight
KMD's position as one of Denmark's leading IT and software companies is based on
insight. This insight derives from and is rooted in the Danish public sector, but today is
also available to the business community.
KMD is among Denmark's largest IT companies, with branches in Copenhagen, Aar-
hus, Odense and Aalborg. Most of KMD's business originates from our own software
development and we develop, deliver and operate IT solutions for municipalities and
the State, and for private companies and organizations.

KMD – previously Kommunedata – was established in 1972 and up to 2009 was owned
by the Danish public sector. Today, KMD is a private IT Group owned by Advent In-
ternational and Sampension. KMD's annual revenue exceeds DKK 5 billion.


1.2    KMD in the Danish public sector
For more than 40 years, KMD has played a vital role in the digitization of the Danish
welfare society, and the company has helped to ensure that the Danish public sector is
one of the best run, most effective, digital and modern public sectors in the world.
KMD has developed and today operates 400 IT systems that support Denmark's welfare
society and follow Danes throughout their lives. Every year, KMD's systems handle
triple-digit billion-kroner amounts equivalent to over 20 per cent of Denmark's GDP.
KMD's systems help to ensure that Danes receive key social security payments such as
child benefits, maternity/paternity benefits, unemployment benefits and old-age pen-
sions. KMD's systems are also used for registration for places in nurseries, nursery
schools and lower secondary schools. KMD is also a key player when elections are held
in Denmark.
The public sector faces some considerable challenges: fewer hands need to help more
citizens and budgets need to be stretched even further. KMD considers welfare tech-
nology and digitization to be the response to the question of how society can at one and
the same time improve the service to its citizens and release resources for the public
sector.
KMD is in close dialog with municipal, regional and State customers to create new
digital solutions, for the benefit of Danish society. In close cooperation with customers,
KMD develops IT solutions that, for example, improve teaching in schools, allow the
elderly to receive better care, and ensure a more effective healthcare sector.
The "KMD in several markets" strategy means that today – besides municipalities –
KMD also cooperates with Danish regions, the Danish State and a large number of
Denmark's many private companies. KMD is also reaching out beyond Denmark's bor-
ders, primarily to Norway and Sweden.
In order to develop our offering to our customers in both the solution and expertise
areas, in recent years KMD has acquired a number of exciting enterprises. These are all
companies that are helping to boost our activities and the Group's growth opportunities.
Declarative Process Models in Government Centric Case and Document Management


Today, KMD is Denmark's largest IT company measured by number of employees. The
KMD Group has over 3,000 employees in Denmark, at offices on Zealand and Funen,
and in Jutland. In total, the KMD Group has around 3,500 employees, including our
subsidiaries in Norway, Sweden and Poland. KMD has around 1,000 employees work-
ing on our proprietary software development.



1.3    KMD WorkZone

In 2014 Scanjour A/S a leading Software company in the Danish State and University
sector for Case and Document Management solutions was acquired by KMD. The pur-
pose was to extend KMD’s market share in the Danish State and University sector and
potentially use the product suite today known as KMD WorkZone in some of the other
KMD business verticals.
In its market segments KMD WorkZone has approx. 40.000 seats, which makes it the
leading Case and Document management suite in the Danish State sector. Major cus-
tomers are e.g. The Danish Tax Authority and The Danish Defense and in the Univer-
sity sector the 3 universities in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg.
The suite facilitates the case work for knowledge workers, managers and top-level man-
agement in these sectors. This is done providing clients suiting the needs of various
roles being rich web clients, MS office integrations, File explorer integration and tailor
made mobile apps. The platform offers relevant business logic and open interfaces for
third party integrations.
The suite includes a traditional process suite WorkZone Process. The product includes
standard business process for e.g. approval, submission and hearings and allows the
customer to make custom processes. Core to the product is support of Ministerial pro-
cesses in Ministerial Agencies and Departments. The generic process types supported
are phases process, workflows and service workflows. As of late 2016 KMD partnered
with Exformatics to introduce their declarative process modelling technology DCR to
extend the existing process offerings.


2      Danish Governmental IT Challenges

The Danish Government sector has over the past decade been through a huge digital
transformation. In 2004 the Danish Government sector defined a set of shared require-
ments known as FESD (Shared public sector requirements for Electronic Case and Doc-
ument management). Scanjour was one of three companies winning the tender on
FESD, ending up having a market share of 70% in the State sector.
Even though based on the shared FESD requirements, many customers spend a lot of
effort and money in implementing deep business specific requirements on top of the
standard FESD platforms. This locked a lot of customers on specific platform versions
with major costs in maintenance and adapting for new legislations. Learning from this
the trend over the past 5-6 years has been moving to less customization into more con-
figurable and maintainable models.
Lasse Hende Nørgaard1, Jesper Birch Andreasen1, Morten Marquard2, Søren Debois3,
                  Frans Saxbeck Larsen1 and Vagn Jeppesen1




3      The WorkZone approach for business processes

Looking at business process the trend has been going from very strictly defined pro-
cesses to more flexible and simple to maintain process models. However in a market
where the laws under which the state institutions operate are dense, complex, and
changes substantially every 6-12 months, it has been difficult to support this require-
ment in the traditional workflow solutions. KMD found that to gain competitive ad-
vantage in that space, their offering had to encompass end user specification of pro-
cesses, in the interest of allowing domain experts to define and update core workflows.


3.1    Implementing a phase based process model

The first approach was to introduce “Phase processes” to model the overall business
process phases, milestones and rules. Keeping it simple allowing for flexibility to the
knowledge worker while keeping track of milestones and allowing a toolbox of reusa-
ble workflows to be used when more strict business rules where required. These being
approval flows, distributions or hearings. But also more complex workflows where pos-
sible. The general idea was value driven, as a business process with a frequency of 10
might not be as relevant to fully digitize as a process with a frequency of 2000. (Fig 1)
Declarative Process Models in Government Centric Case and Document Management




             Fig. 1. The three process types supported prior to implementation.


However pragmatic and simple the approach was lacking something in between phases
and workflows providing better assistance to the knowledge worker. Phase workflows
was simple to configure and use while workflows was expensive to implement and
maintain.


4      Adding a declarative model

In 2016 KMD recognized the need for expert end user process modelling and custom-
ization features in the next iteration of its highly anticipated KMD WorkZone offering.
KMD contracted with Danish Adaptive Case Management vendor Exformatics A/S,
who has developed the declarative process modelling and simulation tools Dynamic
Condition Response Graphs, DCR, with IT University of Copenhagen.


4.1    Implementing a third party DCR engine
KMD approached Exformatics A/S, a Danish vendor of adaptive case management sys-
tems whom,through its extensive collaboration with Thomas Hildebrandt’s Models
group at the IT University of Copenhagen, is at the forefront of implementation of de-
clarative process modelling and execution tools. In collaboration with Exformatics,
Lasse Hende Nørgaard1, Jesper Birch Andreasen1, Morten Marquard2, Søren Debois3,
                  Frans Saxbeck Larsen1 and Vagn Jeppesen1


KMD embedded Exformatics’ DCR Process Engine in its WorkZone offering, while at
the same time making its DCR Process Modelling and Simulation portal, dcrgraphs.net
available to both KMD developers and state government domain experts. Thus, KMD
and Exformatics together solve the dual problems of allowing domain experts to specify
declarative workflows in sufficient detail that the resulting workflows can be executed
by machines during actual case handling. (Fig 2)




        Fig. 2. The supported process types including the new DCR graph capability.

Due to the nature of the DCR engine it was a fairly easy to integrate the engine to
WorkZone.
The DCR process model was added as a new process type side by side with the existing
process types phases and workflows. The existing WorkZone Process engine was up-
dated to use the DLL version of the DCR engine from Exformatics when interpreting
DCR graphs. Instantiating the graph on actions and persisting the resulting graphs and
changes in the WorkZone Process datamodel, only requiring smaller adjustments. (Fig
3)
Declarative Process Models in Government Centric Case and Document Management




Fig. 3. Right side showing the changes done in the WorkZone stack to include the DCR capabil-
ity.


The existing WorkZone forms model and rest interfaces was reused thus making it easy
to add display of DCR graph capabilities inside WorkZone’s clients (fig.4) below).




       Fig. 4. Screen shot from WorkZone Client. Showing DCR activities on the right.


4.1    Enabling third party Adaptive Case Management system to lever-
       age DCR
   In order to enable third systems to leverage DCR graphs Exformatics have created a
standard API to manipulate graphs and execute events. The API can be accessed as a
Lasse Hende Nørgaard1, Jesper Birch Andreasen1, Morten Marquard2, Søren Debois3,
                  Frans Saxbeck Larsen1 and Vagn Jeppesen1


RESTful API, or as a DLL that can be embedded into the system such as KMD
WorkZone.

The API offer the following four functions, which is all that is needed to support busi-
ness processes leveraging DCR graphs:
    a) Initialize()  
    b) ExecuteEvent(,[,])  
    c) GetEnabledOrPending()  
    d) AdvanceTime(,