This paper discusses the application of the crossmedia concept to government services. We present some advantages of this approach, as well as the challenges to using this new interaction paradigm. A framework is proposed to provide a technological foundation that assists the development of crossmedia governmental applications and maintains the consistency expected in government services.
This paper is organized as follows.
In section 2, we discuss current implementations of
egovernment in multiple media. In Section 3, this paper
presents a brief conceptual approach to crossmedia and
xgov. Section 4 is devoted to the discussion of the
challenges and opportunities of this interaction concept. In
Section 5, we show an architecture that has been designed
to meet the proposed challenges. Finally, section 6
discusses the proofs-of-concepts which have been
developed to assess the architecture feasibility.
2. E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES AND MULTIPLE MEDIA
E-government (or shortly, e-gov) has been defined as “the
use by government agencies of information technologies
(such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile
computing) that have the ability to transform relations with
citizens, businesses, and other arms of government” [
Devices like PDAs, laptops, cell phones and tablet PCs
have brought the mobility concept to government services.
M-government (or shortly, m-gov), as defined by Trimi and
Sheng [
Internet-based e-gov, m-gov and t-gov are solutions that have been conceived and implemented to broaden citizens´ access to services. They are usually developed as independent solutions for an isolated medium-user interaction.
In the next section, we show that integrating these alternatives in the crossmedia paradigm can be a better approach for enhancing G2C interactivity. 3. CROSSMEDIA AND X-GOV Crossmedia systems are applications that deliver content by orchestrating multiple media, in such a way that the user interaction is directed to different communication channels, fully exploring the potential of each one.
According to Boumans [
On the referred report, Boumans listed five characteristics
of crossmedia. They are: (1) Crossmedia should involve
more than one medium; (2) Crossmedia aims at an
integrated production; (3) Content is delivered on multiple
devices: PCs, mobiles, TV, iTV; (4) More than one
medium is needed to support one message/story/goal; (5)
The common message/story/goal is spread on the different
platforms and the supporting interaction can take place on
these different platforms. Besides Boumans, other authors
such as Dena [
The crossmedia concept is founded on three important elements: -a set of media, each one contributing with its own particularities in terms of preferred formats, languages, target public and interactiveness; - the content, that is associated to the message that will be delivered; the content is the main narrative and all its 2 http://www.ecitizen.gov.sg/mobile/index.html 3 http://www.digitv.gov.uk complements. Content may have to be adapted to the medium; - the transitions, that are the means by which users are directed from one medium to the other in order to follow the narrative path. Transitions are composed by a call-toaction (which is equivalent to the label in link) and an associated technological mechanism that performs the exchange (which is equivalent to the HTTP fetching a new page).
Hayes [
Based on the crossmedia concept, x-gov is defined as the delivery of public services across multiple media, in which G2C communication is supported by several media alternatives, each one directing the citizen to the next step in the interaction process and to the more suitable media for that step.
While the e-, m- and t-gov services support the one-userone-medium paradigm, a crossmedia service reaches citizens through multiple media, providing a richer experience through the variety of content formats and relationships. In this research, we restrict applications to G2C, even though we acknowledge the potential for crossmedia in G2B and G2G applications.
Regarding the three elements of crossmedia applications: - media: governments already use several communication channels to send their messages to citizens: the internet, in desktop or mobile versions; telephone, SMS, fax, banners, outdoors, newspapers, magazines, TV and many others. All of them can be used to deliver part of a government service. - content in government services is usually informative, such as announcements on government decisions, facts and accomplishments as well as numbers that demonstrate a country situation. Content can be transactional, that is, exchanged between citizens and government. - transitions are almost inexistent in present applications, except for call-to-actions that imply manual accomplishment of the change (for instance, an outdoor announces the telephone number of a service)
X-gov applications are different from other crossmedia applications in some aspects, which implies in special requirements. In this section, we explore some opportunities and challenges of x-gov applications. When compared to e-gov, x-gov presents many advantages. The first one is the potential to reach citizens. In a developing country like Brazil, the Internet approach has the disadvantage of depending on computers which are not possessed by the population, despite of the increasing efforts by governments and the civil society to provide computer in schools and other public locations. Providing for delivering content in alternative media can be more interesting than independently offering services in one single media, because of increased coverage. Also, users can reach government anywhere, anytime.
A second benefit is the possibility of moving electronic interaction beyond the point where it gets interrupted today: electronic transactions give place to person-to-person interaction when the main medium is unable to handle the message– for instance, a paper document is needed or a payment must be made and the citizen´s bank is not integrated to the government network. In both cases, crossmedia could help citizens providing an alternative means of communication, including the fax, for instance.
Third is benefiting a diversity of users: people with some kinds of disabilities could communicate with government using the most suitable channel, according to personal preferences or skills. In this case, content can be deployed in different formats in alternative media – while interacting with a computer, the deaf user can have additional explanations in sign language in his or her TV set; blind users who are not skilled with screen readers and keyboards may prefer accessing a service by telephone instead of using a computer.
Fourth, modern life presses on cross-media language: we
send an e-mail at the same time we talk on the phone and
check news; we download internet music while watching
the show on TV. Why shouldn’t we file an electronic form
with a cell phone, following instructions and options
presented on the television?
Fifth, the x-gov approach may help promoting the
government services. A former field study [
Finally, x-gov has a distinctive characteristic from other crossmedia applications. Although a deep planning study is needed to decide what content should be on which medium, unlike communication industry, government content has persistence and do not need to be renewed frequently. This makes costs of crossmedia production more palatable for governments than for private companies.
Despite the many advantages, there are points of concern too. We present them in three groups. The first group contains challenges that refer to crossmedia technologies, which are still incipient. The second group collects challenges respective to the government domain issues. The third group discusses challenges respective to x-gov users. 4.1 Crossmedia technology challenges Content management. Two crossmedia content elements can keep three different relationships: corroborative, if both elements represent one single message, that may be different in format but the same in meaning. In this case, they can be distributed in different media; each one will confirm the message delivered by the other. Content elements can be complementary, when both are needed to deliver the full message. Finally, two elements can be concomitant of they are needed at the same time to deliver the meaning. Crossmedia content management is an important issue, because content elements can easily become redundant and contradictory, if spread over multiple platforms, destroying the message that would be conveyed.
The patchwork effect. An unplanned development of government applications using crossmedia will lead to several interaction models, as each different application may develop its own. For instance, one service may allow payment using the cell phone, and another one will require a faxed receipt to complete the payment task. Inconsistent interaction models will be seen by citizens as confusing patchwork, from which they will not be able to develop a mental model.
Seamless transitions. A crossmedia service must integrate media and offers transition possibilities to make a media or device handover. X-gov applications require simple and efficient media transitions. While transitions are not a big issue in games and entertainment applications, in e-gov applications one can expect a difference in user motivation and mood, easy to understand if one compares a citizen that is asked to change media, for instance to pay a tax or communicate a problem, to someone else having fun while responding to an advertisement. Some of the call-toactions, that send the citizen from one media to the other, will require a special handling, because the user will be expected to continue the dialogue. However, crossmediaspecific technology is still not available. 4.2 Government challenges Cost-effectiveness. Services are delivered at a certain cost. Internet-based government is anchored in a cost distribution that considers that if the user does not possess the computer, he or she will have access from digital inclusion centers, schools or work. Adding communication channels to this scenario means to add new players to this equation.
Conversion rates. Crossmedia antagonists argue that
crossmedia applications are not effective in terms of
conversion rates because it is not possible to follow users in
their movements. In internet applications, the server that
provides the application can manage conversion rates.
Expertise. A crossmedia project needs a multidisciplinary
team that develops systems for multiple platforms. Given
the need of expertise in those different platforms, it may be
hard for the government analyst to keep up-to-date
knowledge about every different technology and device
that can be used for interaction. Government teams usually
have little time to learn new concepts and applications;
innovation is often compromised by the need to deliver
reliable applications in the shortest time, at the lowest cost.
Interoperability Government services usually connect
different public departments and levels. Frequently, each
instance of government has its own technological platform.
In order to deliver crossmedia services, an interoperability
standard must be defined. Brazilian government has a
federal initiative to standardize the operation between
online services [
Cost distribution Usually, in cross-media applications, costs are usually shifted from the sender to the receiver. This should not be the case of a public service. If the user needs a fax to send his piece of documentation, fax service should be available for all citizens. A business model must be defined so that using a crossmedia application is economically feasible for the population.
These points of concern have been addressed by the proposal of a framework for crossmedia applications, in which reusable components can be aggregated to deliver a family of x-gov applications. Next section presents this solution. 5. THE X-GOV FRAMEWORK The x-gov framework is a technological infrastructure that aggregates reusable components for cross media interaction to support government services.
A framework can be defined as “a skeleton of an
application that can be customized by an application
developer” [
The X-Gov Framework has many architectural decisions that support the crossmedia and electronic government domain. It intends to offer managers and developers a tool for overcoming some of the challenges described in the previous section, making easier the description and implementation of x-gov services.
In this section, we first present a quick view of the architecture and how it is used. In sequence, we present the architectural decisions, in the light of the challenges we want to address.
The X-Gov application can be described as an orchestration of components performed by a server that is capable of handling a crossmedia session. The Service Manager is this server, which distributes the narrative by media components, according to the prescribed service sequence, and performs the transitions from one medium to the other. The Service Manager has also the capability of dealing with crossmedia content and interfacing with legacy government systems. Figure 1 depicts in a quick view the skeleton of an X-Gov application. As in any framework, reusability is consequence of a domain analysis. For X-Gov, we have analyzed both the crossmedia domain and the G2C services domain. Our analysis of the crossmedia domain has been focused on understanding what makes crossmedia different from other multimedia applications and these are the crossmedia transitions. We have investigated practical examples of crossmedia applications to obtain characteristics of transitions and their technological infrastructure. The set of crossmedia transitions has been implemented in a corresponding set of components, which can be customized for the X-Gov application. This architecture implements crossmedia in Hayes’ level 3, by providing planned bridges, which are the crossmedia transitions. Level 4, in which citizens can contribute in providing content and new bridges, is planned as an evolution of this work.
On the other hand, the analysis of e-gov domain has been
focused in looking for common elements that could express
the G2C communication. We have represented the result as
a set of 18 task patterns. They express information retrieval
tasks, citizen-government relationship tasks,
documentation-related tasks and transaction tasks. X-Gov
task patterns are listed in Figure 2 and have been described
in a previous work [
Each task requires specific information to be accomplished. The task pattern “Pay fee/tax” requires, for example, information on the specific tax, the contributor identification, tax value and due dates. This information must be served by the government service legacy system, which is interfaced with the crossmedia layer by a set of web services. The bottom layer is representative of government existing service implementation, or technological infrastructure that is able to execute the service requirements.
Other crossmedia content that may be needed by task components, such as audio descriptions, movies and text are stored locally within the application and handled by the crossmedia content manager.
The crossmedia application development process has some distinctive activities that must be included in the usual software development process.
In order to make easier the task of building X-Gov
applications, the X-Gov framework offers building tools.
The application skeleton is produced from the description
of the government service using a two-step application
builder and can be later customized by the developer, as
Figure 3 shows.
The crossmedia application development starts with the
government process modeling, using the description tools.
This first step is supported by the X-Planner tool. Its user is
the Government Service Analyst, a person who knows the
government service and is able to describe it as a business
process. The Government Service Analyst may not be able
to write code; however, she can specify which activities
will have to be performed by the citizen, which activities
will have to be executed by the government legacy systems
and in between, which are the activities executed by the
crossmedia application. She uses the X-Planner graphical
tool to sequence task components and crossmedia
transitions, as well as custom activities, using a modified
Business Process Model Notation. Given the interactive
profile of each conversational step, a crossmedia planning
algorithm [
The resulting application can be modified by the Government Application Developer, who is able to program the framework hotspots. This means writing any complementary code needed to customize the resulting application: setting technical parameters as servers and database locations, writing specific rules and defining interface design style so that the crossmedia application is compatible with the government agency visual identity, such as colors, background, logo and font styles. The application configures itself as a crossmedia interaction layer to the government services. It is responsibility of the government legacy systems to execute the transactions. Thus, next step is the infrastructure configuration. The government legacy systems are connected to the framework by the development of a set of web services that will provide and request necessary information to the crossmedia layer. The SOA approach gives flexibility to connect the crossmedia service to any technologic platform.
Section 4 has presented some challenges for x-gov applications. In this section, we discuss how the X-Gov Framework can help address these challenges.
Because of complex relationships that may occur between crossmedia between content elements, it is interesting that crossmedia content is represented as components. The XGov framework considers that a content element may have alternative format and aliases and that it may be related to other content elements by the corroboration, complementation and concomitance relationships. Thus, when the Government Analyst associate content to a task component, X-Builder places the content and its metadata in the Crossmedia Content Repository and orchestrates a service to retrieve it when needed. When the X-Gov service is executed, the suitable component element is retrieved by Content Manager and presented in the most suitable format.
The X-Gov framework is based on components which have been derived from task patterns. Each task pattern embeds its interaction model, in terms of its signs and features. We expect that the level of reuse provided by task patterns and components seduce government analysts to keep customization in the parameter level, preserving the interaction model. This would reduce the patchwork effect in a family of applications. In maintenance, inconsistency is avoided because updating the component result in updating all derived services.
The framework is flexible to allow changes in components; consequently, the interaction model can be adapted if needed.
De Hass has expressed the concern about the need of
seamless device switching [
Transitions can be performed manually, when the user inserts the address of the service in the next medium (for instance, the user reads in a magazine that he may find more information about the e-gov service in a certain website; he opens his browser and keys in the URL). This kind of transitions does not need to be supported by the framework.
In some cases, the citizen can use some technological aid to
switch from one medium to the other. One example is the
automatic phone call that could be started by a click at web
page or TV interactive application. This mechanism is
named click to dial or click to call [
Some transitions between media do not count yet with technological solutions. We are presently working on implementing new components for transitions from voice portals to web and from iTV to cell phones.
The X-Gov framework has addressed the question of conversion rates in the X-Session manager. This element of the architecture is responsible for handling the user session, regardless of the media in use. Thus, it makes possible to track citizens’ transitions from one medium to the other, as well as any other session parameters.
The X-Gov framework must require the minimum programming effort possible; must be easy to learn and operate. It has been conceived to reduce the effort in crossmedia application development process. The use of a graphical tool in X-Planner and the opportunity of describing components orchestration using a DSL are examples of effort reduction in the service description level of application development.
Reusable components accelerate the writing of code. In particular, reusability and maintainability is reinforced by the configuration parameters. The Component Manager is responsible for dynamically providing parameters for each component instantiation, either for tasks or transitions. For example, suppose a task component that implements the citizen’s need to follow up a certain issue, given a tracking number (this is the TrackAProcess task pattern). Suppose the tracking number is composed by six numeric digits. This is stored as a configuration parameter. Modifications of business rules could change the tracking number format to one alphabetic character and seven digits. This customization will imply only in changing the component input parameters instead of source code.
The X-Gov framework is a service-oriented architecture.
Service oriented architecture (SOA) represents a model for
distributed computing. Its advantage is the loose coupling
between elements. SOA was selected also because it has
been the choice of many governments to interoperability. In
particular, web service technology is viewed as an
appropriate solution to the needs of interoperability in an
environment of heterogeneous platforms, in which reading
and writing messages in XML format to allow flexibility
for the exchange of messages between different
subsystems.
e-GIF (e-Government Interoperability Framework) is one
of the major references of interoperability standards for
egov. The British government framework, already in its
sixth edition, can be used for exchange and management of
data and metadata [
The X-Gov Framework has been implemented in a service oriented approach in two layers. The communication between the x-gov application and the legacy government services and databases is standardized by a set of web services which are responsible for data exchange. WSDL interfaces provided in the framework description reduces the effort of interfacing existing systems to the crossmedia interaction layer.
The second case is the internal communication, within media components. Because each medium has its own technological platform, web services are suitable for flexible integration. This decision intended to increase flexibility in case of adding new components to the framework. RESTful web services have been chosen instead of SOAP web services because the data transmission can use lightweight message formats, e.g., the JavaScript Object Notation which reduces the processing overload.
Watson’s and his colleagues’ uniqueness concept in
ubiquitous marketing [
Besides the need of identifying the citizen in authentication procedures, user identity recognition is needed because automatic transitions must push data on user’s devices. User identification is provided by the X-Session manager in the X-Gov framework. The X-id is the user identification in this system and is an extension of the v-card concept. X-id incorporates governmental personal identification such as social security numbers or, in Brazil, the CPF or RG identification. X-id holds information about how to reach a given citizen: his mobile telephone number, iTV set identification, e-mail and surface address besides personal preferences such as favorite format or media.
The framework can reduce the development cost but does not address operation and delivery costs. In our work, we still have not defined a cost model. New players in a crossmedia service are the telephone operators and iTV distributors. Because these players are looking for prospective markets, crossmedia government services may bring up their interests. 6. PROOFS-OF-CONCEPT The X-Gov framework has been developed by an iterative process based on proofs-of-concept (POC). Each POC has been preceded by a SWOT analysis in which we identified the relevant research questions to be addressed in that cycle. So far, three POCs have been developed.
POC #1 intended to clear the concept of crossmedia and to
improve the team’s expertise in technologies involved in
developing applications for mobile computing and iDTV.
We departed from the crossmedia planning algorithm in
[
POC #2 was intended to explore the concept of task patterns and crossmedia transitions. The same service of children enrollment was thus refactored, this time using components which implemented the task patterns for each medium and transition components.
POC #3 intended to identify the best architecture to orchestrate several components and at the same time, to allow for coupling the framework with legacy government systems. The target service for POC #3 was a hospital facility for image exams, involving the citizen’s appointment and result delivery. This POC implemented the SOA approach to the architecture. Another important achievement has been the definition of Service Manager, like X-Session and Component Manager, that allowed seamless transitions of the user from one media to another. Finally, the DSL CroMeL and the graphical modeling tool have been added to the X-Planner application toolkit. POC #4 is under specification to date and is addressing the content manager and legacy government systems interface. CONCLUSION This paper has presented x-gov, the concept of crossmedia in government services, extending the concept of e-gov framework for x-gov applications. We advocate that crossmedia, being a new interaction paradigm, based on the coordinated usage of multiple media, can enhance G2C communication.
We have proposed the X-Gov framework as a technological solution to promote the development of crossmedia applications and benefit of many opportunities. We claim that the reusability capability of the framework can stimulate the usage of crossmedia in government services. X-Gov reusability has been based on architectural elements: the task patterns have captured common behavior in citizens’ use of government; crossmedia transitions implement seamless exchange of media; a SOA approach guarantees that the framework can be connected easily with e-gov legacy systems, besides providing an expansible architecture.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work has been funded by FAPESP and Microsoft Research under grants no 07.54488-3 and 2008/50414-8.