E-Government Case Study

Description

Usually when a citizen needs some document from the public sector, he has to go to the appropriate department; often the time spent in queues, and the time spent to reach the right office is very long. E-Government is the process to make information technologies available to the government services in order to improve the relationships between citizens and their governments (public sector could be made open and transparent to the citizens). One of the services made available to the user, is the possibility to submit applications to require some service, and receive replies online. At any time during the day, from their locations citizens can access to the offered services and obtain all the needed information without spending any time in queues. In such a way, e-government is able to improve the efficiency of public sector, avoiding the time spent to reach different offices or waiting in queue, resulting in an improvement of the offered services and a better accessibility and transparency of the public services. Not only citizens may be the the users of the government application, but we can image that all the government agencies of a city could share data about the citizens and have the need to access to the services of the application, in order to make available, at any time, all the needed information. The case study is derived from the EU project NEXOF. In particular, it has been proposed by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica and TIS. We have mapped it into the format proposed for S-Cube, retrieving the business goals and the scenarios needed for our description.

Business Goals and Domain Assumptions

In the following sections will be reported the Business Goals and the Domain Assumptions for the current case study.

Business Goals

Table BG1. Business Goal TIS-BG-1

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-BG-1
Short Name	Statewide provision of online services for citizens, companies, government agencies
Type	Business Goals.
Description	The infrastructure must be able to make services of the public sector available to all the users, such as citizens, companies or government agencies. Each user can access, from somewhere, to the services providing login information; after the login the user can have the possibility to forward requests of some documents or require any service.
Rationale	Essentially the rationale is the capability to make available the services offered by the public sector to citizens, companies and government agencies.
Involved Stakeholders	Users and Public Body
Priority of accomplishment	Should have.

Table BG2. Business Goal TIS-BG-2

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-BG-2
Short Name	Improve speed and efficacy of processes
Type	Business Goals.
Description	The infrastructure must be able to serve quickly the user requests. When a citizen requires a service, replies are received online. Moreover if a fee must be paid, user could access, easily, the e-payment service. At the end of the process, the requested item (authenticated if required) , is available. The online interactions make the process very fast, improving the perceived quality and user satisfaction.
Rationale	The application of information technologies to the government process reduces the time to perform the task improving the efficiency.
Involved Stakeholders	User, Public Boby, Certifier service, E-payment service
Priority of accomplishment	Should have.

Table BG3. Business Goal TIS-BG-3

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-BG-3
Short Name	Provide a 24h per day availability of the services
Type	Business Goals.
Description	User may submit a request at any time and from anywhere, so service availability must be always guaranteed. User can access from anywhere in the world and can have a different time zone.
Rationale	The infrastructure must guarantee a 24x7 availability of the services.
Involved Stakeholders	User and Public Body
Priority of accomplishment	Should have.

Table BG1. Business Goal TIS-BG-4

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-BG-4
Short Name	Offer a good user experience and provide continuous feedbacks to users
Type	Business Goals.
Description	The application must be easy to use, and of quick understanding guaranteeing usability and accessibility. The usability of an application is relatedto the interface, the navigability, the positioning of text and objects. The application should offer an interface highly intuitive; information should be displayed in a directly usable format. The users of the application can have different expertise: some user could be less able than others to interact with the application; moreover disabled users could access the application. Moreover the sequence of the task should be linear, the terminology understandable, time to load pages should not be long and users should be able to easily print their information. E-government application must provide continuous feedback to guide the user during the operations.
Rationale	The e-government application must be easy to use and guide users during his operations.
Involved Stakeholders	User, Public Body
Priority of accomplishment	Should have.

Table BG1. Business Goal TIS-BG-5

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-BG-5
Short Name	Guarantee confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, non-repudiation
Type	Business Goals.
Description	E-government application must guarantee the confidentiality of the information the user provided when a service is requested. Such applications act as an interface for data that is kept in a distributed way. This can occur because of legal restrictions that aim to ensure data privacy. If data is changed, distributed transaction support is needed. Data encryption must be guaranteed for data transfers from the citizen to the public administration, among administrative offices and from a public administration to the citizen. The transfer of this data has to be encrypted to prevent the access of unauthorized persons. Messages can be signed to certify the sender of the message. A citizen can prove that he or she has sent a message through the digital signature. It is possible to prove that the recipient really received the message and that the sender really sent the message. The transmission of a document is logged in a way that it proves that the sender submitted the message and that the receiver received it. Both parties get a confirmation of this.
Rationale	E-government applications frequently have to access, receive, or store data that contains personally identifiable information such as healthcare records, criminal justice investigations and proceedings, residence and geographic records, ethnicity, and so on. The originators of messages from citizens to public offices have to be guaranteed.
Involved Stakeholders	User, Public Body, Certifier service
Priority of accomplishment	Should have.

Table BG1. Business Goal TIS-BG-6

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-BG-6
Short Name	Guarantee that provided information is not used for a scope different than the one required by the user
Type	Business Goals.
Description	E-government application must guarantee the confidentiality of the information user provided when he requested a document. When a user requires a document, all his relevant personal information is needed, moreover if he have to pay a fee due to his request, he have to transmit information such as credit card number . It ’s important to guarantee that transmitted data are not used for different scope than the one required by the user.
Rationale	When user perform a request of a document or a service, confidential data are transmitted; user must be guaranteed that data he communicated in the requests are not used for different scope.
Involved Stakeholders	User, Public Body and e-payment service
Priority of accomplishment	Should have.

Domain Analysis

Strategic Dependency Model and Context Diagram

In the following figure the strategic dependency diagram for the e-Government case study is reported. The diagram reports the dependency between User (a Citizen, a Government Agency or a Company) and Public Body to the satisfaction of the goal Require service; moreover User depends on the Certifier service to gain trust on the obtained output, while the Certifier service is needed by the Public Body to authenticate the service output. Moreover User needs the E-payment service to satisfy the softgoal Charge Fee.

The following figure represent the context diagram of the e-government case study.

In the next figure the domain model of the e-Government is reported.

Scenarios

In the following figure the general use case diagram for the e-Government case study is reported.

Table S1: Scenario TIS-ENG-1

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-ENG-1
Short Name	Request for e-Government service
Related To	TIS-BG-1, TIS-BG-3, TIS-BG-4, TIS-BG-5, TIS-BG-6
Involved Actors	User
Detailed Operational Description	This scenario describes the submission of applications to obtain subsidies from the province of Bolzano, Italy. In the e-government application the process is started by the user that, after the login, chooses the service he needs. So the user inserts the needed data to compile the form for the request (he could decide to compile the form from the scratch or updating preexistent data). Actors involved in the scenario are the users of the application (citizen, companies or government agencies).
Problems and Challenges	When a user requires a document or a service he submits a lot of personal data. The confidentiality of the data must be guaranteed by the application, moreover the user must be assured that provided data are not used outside that transaction.
Additional Material

Table S2: Scenario TIS-ENG-2

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-ENG-2
Short Name	Pay requested service
Related To	TIS-BG-5, TIS-BG-6
Involved Actors	User, E-payment servi
Detailed Operational Description	If the user needs to pay some fee to obtain the requested service, he must interact with the e-payment service. The user inserts the needed data (usually credit card number) and waits for the completion of the process. The e-payment service checks the inserted data for the payment.
Problems and Challenges	A mechanism of encryption of data must be guaranteed to protect the transmission of confidential data by intrusion.
Additional Material

Table S3: Scenario TIS-ENG-3

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-ENG-3
Short Name	Output Authentication
Related To	TIS-BG-5, TIS-BG-6
Involved Actors	User, E-Certifier service
Detailed Operational Description	The user could require an authenticated output, so the application has to provide a mechanism to certify the output.
Problems and Challenges	A mechanism of digital signature must be provided to guarantee the authentication of the output.
Additional Material

Table S4: Scenario TIS-ENG-4

Field	Description
UniqueID	TIS-ENG-4
Short Name	Satisfy Request
Related To	TIS-BG-2
Involved Actors	User, Public Body
Detailed Operational Description	Data submitted by the user when an eGovernment service is requested, are used by the Public Body to satisfy the user requests. At the end of the process the User receives the required output.
Problems and Challenges	A mechanism of digital signature must be provided to guarantee the authentication of the output.
Additional Material