Architectural Principles for Orchestration of Cross-Organizational Service Delivery: Case Studies from the Netherlands

One of the main challenges for e-government is to create coherent services for citizens and businesses. Realizing Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) requires government agencies to collaborate across their organizational boundaries. The coordination of processes across multiple organizations to realize ISD is called orchestration. One way of achieving orchestration is to formalize processes using architecture. In this chapter we identify architectural principles for orchestration by looking at three case studies of cross-organizational service delivery chain formation in the Netherlands. In total, six generic principles were formulated and subsequently validated in two workshops with experts. These principles are: (i) build an intelligent front office, (ii) give processes a clear starting point and end, (iii) build a central workflow application keeping track of the process, (iv) differentiate between simple and complex processes, (v) ensure that the decision-making responsibility and the overview of the process are not performed by the same process role, and (vi) create a central point where risk profiles are maintained. Further research should focus on how organizations can adapt these principles to their own situation.

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