Presentation of the paper "What is This Thing Called e-Service?" at the IFIP WG 8.5 eGov and ePart conference in Thessaloniki

1. 1
What is This Thing Called e-Service?
Interoperability Challenges in e-Service Modelling
Svein Ølnes
Western Norway Research Institute, Sogndal, Norway
sol@vestforsk.no
Arild Jansen
University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
arildj@jus.uio.no

2. The background – Motivation
 e-Service, or digital service, is currently used for almost all
types of electronic communication between citizens and
government
 The concept e-Service has different meaning in different
domains
 The distinction between digital and physical services, or the
different parts of a service, are often confusing or non-
existing
 How can we define ontologies that can help achieve better
interoperability between different systems?
NOKOBIT Arild Jansen SERI /AFIN 2

3. Research approach and methodology
The research objectives of this paper are
 to provide a better understanding of the e-service
concept by analysing the relation between physical
and digital parts of a service
 propose a model for describing (e-)services
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4. Research method
 A conceptual and exploratory, aiming to develop a model
for describing public electronic services
 Rooted in the e-Government research field, but borrows
from computer science, specifically semantic technologies
and ontology development
 Builds on an earlier paper, extending the literature
review
 Includes a case study approach and a study of the Los
case as an example of interoperability problems
 Based on Lee (2010), and also Goldkuhl (2007), Wimmer
(2002) and others

5. What is an e-Service?
Not feasible to provide a precise definition:
 How to distinguish e-services from ordinary electronic interactions?
 The difference between services and e-service- The role of ICT in
(physical ) services delivery , e.g. schools, health care,…
 Goldkuhl: In eGovernment, the citizen is often seen as an
information provider and not as someone to serve
 Rowley: ‘e-services’ as “…deeds, efforts or performances whose
delivery is mediated by information technology
 Alter : Service systems and e-Services
 Baida : strict technological point of view,
 (e-)services are web-delivered software functionality, often
described as “web services”
This definition reflects the three main components involved:
service provider, service receiver, and the media/channel (s)
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6. The Los case
 A controlled vocabulary for public services
 For cross-sector exchange of information
 The role of ICT in (physical/digital) service delivery
Physical Digital

7. The Los case (2)
 For some services the physical part cannot be
overlooked
DigitalPhysical

8. A simplified service model based on CPSV

9. Class description

10. Conclusions and further research
 e-Service is a fundamental part of the eGovernment field,
but is poorly understood
 The interoperability issues need to be taken seriously
 Goldkuhl: e-services to be split in “service descriptions”,
“service interfaces”, and “service representations”
 The relation between digital and physical parts of a service
needs to be modelled
 Similarly the need to model different parts of a compound
service
 ………………..

11. Thank you for listening!
 Svein Ølnes, Western Norway Research Institute
sol@vestforsk.no
 Arild Jansen, University of Oslo
arildj@jus.uio.no