Integrated Services & Portals: Implementation Issues
February 8, 2000
Who is in charge? Who is providing the vision and overall direction? What level of executive sponsorship, at an enterprise-wide level, exists? These questions, while important for any information technology project, become especially important when trying to integrate services across multiple agencies, or across levels of government. Often there will need to be several executive sponsors, from several different government organizations, and some form of committee or council structure or organization may be needed to effectively manage the effort. While this type of cooperation may happen frequently within a single government organization, for example the regular coordination that happens across agencies within state government, it may not exist today for integrating services across levels of government. How will agencies be motivated to adopt an integrated services or enterprise-wide perspective?
A clear understanding among all participating entities as to the scope of the project and level of integration of services will be required. What applications, services, or processes will be included in the scope of the project? What new services or capabilities are being added that did not exist before? What business processes need to be evaluated and possibly changed? Often organizations make the mistake of developing a web site first and identifying how this new "channel" for information interactivity changes their business processes later. There are also issues relative to project management– how much of the work will be done internally and how much will be outsourced? If part of the work is to be outsourced, will the contractor(s) be managed by a single coordinating body or entity, or by individual agencies? Often different agencies have different vendors or contractors they are familiar with and trust and have experience with. How do we not only get agencies to work together on a project to deliver integrated services, but if necessary, get vendors to "play together" to make an enterprise approach or integrated services approach really work?
Identifying funding is often a challenge in government, but even more so when attempting to develop portals or services that reach across multiple agencies or levels of government. Will the project by funded by a lump sum appropriation to a single coordinating entity or "lead" agency? Will it be funded by individual appropriations to agency line item budgets which will then be pooled? Are grant monies available from the state or federal level? Is fund-raising or donations from the private sector a possibility? What level of "self-funding" is possible via partnerships with the private sector, web advertising, or through new revenues generated by the portal or service? Given the fact that funding is often appropriate by independent legislatures or funding bodies which may not share the same goals or priorities, coordinating the timing of funding for projects which stretch across multiple levels of government can be a particular challenge. Even within a single government entity, such as state government, the fact that agencies are often appropriated money as a "vertical silo" may make them reluctant to share those resources with other agencies for projects which attempt to integrate services at a higher level. Another important aspect of funding will be measuring or tracking the improvements to processes and services, and an understanding of the "return on investment" from the project.
What type of authorization is needed for the project– will multiple government organizations need to give appropriate authorization to governance structures for the project? What type of statutory changes or legislative action is needed to move forward with the project? Does current authority allow the project move forward? What role will rule-making play in establishing appropriate governance structures? What specific authorization is needed to implement the funding models identified as optimal?
What method is used to allocate scarce resources among those agencies or government organizations who may be cooperating on an enterprise-wide project to integrate services? How are different pieces of the development effort prioritized as to importance and timing? If various agencies are each contributing pieces to the whole, are they each viewing the priority of the project or project components in a consistent way? What dependencies exist between components of the project, and how will those dependencies, either in terms of timing or resource use, be managed? Should the needs or desires of citizens or constituents be taken into account when determining priorities, and how will that input be obtained? Is it better to use a strategy of completing the easiest applications first, thereby generating enthusiasm and support for the project, or is better to tackle the thorny problems that more complex applications pose up front? How much should an application’s ability to generate revenue be taken into account when prioritizing projects for the portal or integrated services?
What is the way to integrate the network architecture with legacy system and with early web interfaces? How can bandwidth be optimized? What tools can be used to access legacy systems? The issue is that there will be a wide variety of agency level systems that will all eventually require web access. While each system will have ways to provide a web interface, it would not be effective to have a unique solution for each system. On the other hand, a single "one size fits all" solution may not be practical. Another issue is how to establish the necessary technical infrastructure to handle electronic payments. Where is the information for electronic payments captured? What security exists to protect this information once it is entered into the system? What connectivity and software or services are needed to interact with online payment processors and financial institutions?
Who owns the data? Who is responsible for maintaining the accuracy and relevancy of the data? If the data is being presented in an integrated way to the external world, but is being stored and maintained by many separate databases and applications in agencies on the backend, what processes need to be in place to ensure the data is communicated accurately back and forth, and that changes made to the information are reflected in all agency repositories? Will a new, single, integrated data warehouse be required? What scrubbing, cleansing, or merging of data is necessary up front in order to provide a useful set of integrated information? Often times one agency will not trust another agency to "get the information right", and will even implement redundant processes or data storage strategies because of that skepticism. What type of information taxonomy is required to produce a usable integrated service on the front end, allowing users to navigate the available data and information in the easiest possible way? What changes will have to be made in existing data structures and formats to accommodate the integration of services? What unique identifiers are used by the different data sets, are they consistent, and how do they map to each other? What protocols and processes need to be adapted to ensure the integrity and consistency of data being presented in an integrated way? Different agencies or government organizations may have different views on what data elements are the most critical, what type of access is appropriate, and how the data should be organized and presented to users– how will decisions be made to resolve these differences of opinion in the design and development process?
Especially key to an effort to develop integrated services or a portal will be the design that customers or users see and interact with. The whole point of integrating services is to provide an easier, more efficient, and more intuitive way for users to interact with government. If the project fails to accomplish this, it fails entirely. What processes will be established to test user interface designs with prospective users? What terminology should be used in the wording of instructions or categorization of services? What emerging web standards should be employed? What forms of rich content or multimedia content should be engaged (streaming video, audio clips, still photos, etc.), and performance constraints are there in using this type of content? What will be done to ensure accessibility to these services for the disabled or disadvantaged communities of constituents? What concepts will be employed to simplify the access to government servies– channels? Life events, such as birth, marriage, going to college, getting a driver’s license? Can natural language inquiries and searches be supported? How will the design ensure that individuals, after navigating a page or two on the web, are not dropped back into a bureaucratically organized structure of information or services, with no way back out? What mechanisms will help reinforce the notion of "one-stop shopping" in the design for services?
Keeping all of the players, agencies, and stakeholders regularly informed of progress and issues to be resolved can be a significant challenge. Clearly understood processes for communicating information and progress to all stakeholders will be important. Some of this can be handled electronically. Do the stakeholders have the ability to communicate with each other via e-mail, fax, or other electronic means? Can designs and development prototypes be quickly reviewed or shared among stakeholders? Once the integrated services are deployed, it will be important to "market" them appropriately to prospective users. Who will have the responsibility for crafting a marketing plan and strategy, and for implementing it? Agencies often have their own styles of marketing, own "brands" that are familiar to their users, and have their own public information officers or press relations people. What processes need to be in place to ensure that press events or marketing messages are coordinated and consistent?
A critical success factor for these types of projects will be the quality of customer service available to users, either through online inquiries, phone support, or written aids. The type of customer service experience offered by the integrated services or portal will reflect, either positively or negatively, on all of the agencies cooperating in the project. Since some agencies traditionally have focused on a higher level of customer service than others, this could lead to challenges and disagreements in providing the kind of back-end support and attention needed to ensure consistent quality of service. What technologies will need to be employed to provide customer service and help? What processes will be needed to gather feedback from customers, and how will this information be relayed to the various agencies and government organizations involved? If a customer has a serious problem, which agency or entity is ultimately responsible for solving the problem? Cooperative efforts are notorious for producing finger-pointing when problems arise– how will this be mitigated so the customer experience is not impacted negatively? The fact that services are being offered in an integrated way will be a change for end users– how will they react to this change? Will there be push back from constituents who would prefer to do business the old way, or with a single agency or entity that they already trust? What auditing or performance measurement practices will be put into place to ensure compliance with service levels expected by stakeholders or mandated by statute?
For purposes of this paper security is defined as ensuring that all parties in any transaction are positively identified. Privacy is defined as ensuring that all parties only have access to information that is permitted either by statute or regulation. The biggest issue is having security and privacy solutions need to be scalable. Solutions are required for simple basic levels of identification such as requesting a single driving record, all the way to very high levels where large sums are transferred, such as a progress payment on a large construction project, or highly sensitive data such as tax records are being made available.