Eva Söderström

Towards a Framework for Comparing Process Modelling Languages

The increasing interest in process engineering and application integration has resulted in the appearance of various new process modelling languages. Understanding and comparing such languages has therefore become a major problem in information systems research and development. We suggest a framework to solve this problem involving several instruments: a general process meta-model with a table, an analysis of the event concept, and a classification of concepts according to the interrogative pronouns: what, how, why, who, when, and where. This framework can be used for several purposes, such as translating between languages or verifying that relevant organisational aspects have been captured. To validate the framework, three different process modelling languages have been compared: Business Modelling Language (BML), Event-driven Process Chains (EPC) and UML State Diagrams.

Exploring user participation approaches in public e-service development

It has been argued that user participation is important when public authorities develop e-services. At the same time there is limited research on the usefulness of existing user participation appro ...

Formulating a General Standards Life Cycle

Standards-related literature within business-to-business (B2B) covers many separate areas. Examples are enabling technology, development processes for standards in formal, semi-formal and informal fora, base standards (XML and EDI) extensions and evolvement, intellectual property rights, etc, etc. In computer science literature, the term life cycle is usually used to denote the previously mentioned phases for a product or process, from ”birth to death”. They are useful for understanding various phenomena and how these relate to their respective environments such as to stakeholders. However, the standards life cycles is only rarely discussed in literature. This paper examines seven existing life cycle models for standards and standardisation, and shows where extensions to the current approaches are needed. The result is a general standards life cycle model, which may serve as the basis for discussion and to identify perspectives for both standards research and standards practice to consider.

Web service security - vulnerabilities and threats within the context of WS-security

A Web Service (WS) can be described as an XML-based interface that can be used by a client application to invoke a computing service distributed in a network via standard Internet protocols. In order for Web Services to become a ubiquitous technique for program to program communication, however, there need to be a solid framework in place for how Web Services that utilizes the public Internet for transport can be properly protected and secured. As the situation appears today, most Web Services are not publicly exposed but are often deployed inside a corporate, private network. This hampers the vision of Web Services that can be publicly published in directories which potential customers can search in order to find a suitable service to satisfy their need.

Towards a roadmap for user involvement in e-government service development

New technology means new ways of both developing, providing and consuming services. In the strive for government organizations to build and maintain relationships with its citizens, e-presence is highly important. E-services are one way to go, and it has been argued that user participation is an important part of developing said services. In this paper we analyze a selection of user participation approaches from a goal perspective to see how they fit in an e-government service development context., In doing so, we identify four challenges that need to be addressed when including users in the development: 1) Identifying the user target segment, 2) Identifying the individual user within each segment, 3) Getting users to participate, and 4) Lacking adequate skills.

Standards for information security and processes in healthcare

Purpose – Regardless of who or where we are and when we get sick, we expect healthcare to make us well and to handle us and our information with care and respect. Today, most healthcare institutions work separately, making the flow of patient information sub‐optimal and the use of common standards practically unheard of. The purpose of this paper is to emphasise the use for standards to improve information security in process‐oriented distributed healthcare.Design/methodology/approach – The paper introduces a real‐life case which is analysed to highlight how and where standards can and should be used in order to improve information security in process‐oriented distributed healthcare.Findings – In total, 11 flaws or problems in information security and process‐orientation are identified. From these, six changes are suggested which address how information is handled, and how organizational routines should be standardized.Research limitations/implications – The case setting is Swedish healthcare, but problem...

Combining Work Process Models to Identify Training Needs in the Prehospital Care Process

The prehospital process is complex and covers a wide range of locations, healthcare personnel, technologies and competences. Enabling high quality holistic training is hence a challenge. Process models are efficient tools for representing reality, but no single modeling approach can cover the complexity of prehospital care. In our research, we have investigated the possibility to combine various process modeling techniques in order to identify training components and as many perspectives of the prehospital process as possible. Results show that combining different approaches and adapting them based on the need at hand is a successful strategy for enabling an of the prehospital care process from multiple perspectives, including identification of holistic, realistic and engaging training components. Future work can utilize our results to build training scenarios that can be implemented in training using for example simulation.

The role of standardisation in inter-organisational business processes

In business co-operation standards are often used to facilitate interactions between companies. In this paper, we discuss and compare seven suggested standardisation efforts in order to answer the question of what role standardisation will play in such co-operations. The comparison shows that standardisation indeed is becoming an important part of business processes, particularly in those that flow across organisational boundaries. Commercial as well as non-profit organisations are joining hands in developing standardisation efforts to smooth, speed up and automate the way in which business is done in various trading communities.In business co-operation standards are often used to facilitate interactions between companies. In this paper, we discuss and compare seven suggested standardisation efforts in order to answer the question of what role standardisation will play in such co-operations. The comparison shows that standardisation indeed is becoming an important part of business processes, particularly in those that flow across organisational boundaries. Commercial as well as non-profit organisations are joining hands in developing standardisation efforts to smooth, speed up and automate the way in which business is done in various trading communities.

Casting the standards play - which are the roles?

Internet technology has brought new opportunities and ways of working for companies all over the world. The number of possible and available business partners in business-2-business (B2B) e-commerce has risen dramatically with the global nature of this new technology. Interoperability of this kind is often realised through standards-based communication. It is therefore not surprising that such standards nowadays are receiving quite a lot of attention from a number of stakeholders. We identify six different roles that all have an interest in B2B standards during their existence. Each role is described, and relationships between them are identified. We argue that all roles must be considered if standards are to be improved. Solely using the development perspective is not enough to achieve standards of high quality and of great use.

Experiences from and Attitudes towards Applying User Participation in Public e-Service Development

It is evident that user participation is a vital component for successful public e-service development. However, it is also apparent that there is little guidance in e-government research about how user participation should be implemented in practice. Some high level guidelines can be found regarding user participation design schools but there is very little guidance in existing research regarding how these design schools can be implemented in practice. In this paper we have explored public administrations’ experience of user participation, both in general systems development and in development of public e-services, in order to identify basic requirements that have to be fulfilled when implementing user participation in public e-service development. Thereafter we have applied these requirements on commonly used techniques to implement user participation in the light of three design schools: Participatory Design, User Centered Design, and User Innovation. Our results show that techniques to implement user participation in public e-service development must be adjusted to limited resources in terms of time and money as well as short development projects.