SDI and processes

• Spatial information will only be valuable if it is used to satisfy the needs of citizens, businesses and governments
• Many government policies and activities are dealing with the use and exchange of spatial information
• To realize the value of spatial data, public administrations should use data and services provided by the SDI for delivering new and better services to citizens, businesses, government and other parties.
• There is a need to integrate spatial data in the work processes of organizations (and improve/re-design these processes)
• Also the development and implementation of SDIs consists of a series of processes and sub-processes

Implementation of policies mainly takes place through processes, in which policy is translated into practice.

In the context of each policy area, several processes are running and each single public administration is involved in a huge number of processes.

A process can be seen as a set of related activities which transform a certain input of resources (e.g. a (spatial) dataset, a register, statistical data) into an output of products or services (e.g. a decision, a completed assignment or an answer). These end-products or services are delivered to citizens, businesses or other administrations.

Typical for public sector: high degree of similarity of processes + interdependencies between process

Many processes involve different organizations, at different administrative levels and/or in different thematic areas.

These processes involve actions of and interactions among different organizations of the government as well as actors outside the government.

Most processes consist of different – intra and inter-organizational – process steps and involve several interactions and exchanges between stakeholders.

Interactions include Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B) & Government-to-Government (G2G) interactions

Each of these interactions can take place in different phases of the process: at the start, at the end or during the process.

Many government processes often start with a G2C or G2B interaction, e.g. a request from a citizen or a company, and also end with a G2C or G2B interaction, e.g. the delivery of a product or permission to a citizen or a company.

But these G2C and G2B interactions can also take place during the process (e.g. public consultations), while also government processes exist without any G2C or G2C interactions

According to Bekkers (2003) a distinction can be made between five types of services

• information services deal with the disclosure of government information
• contact services offer the possibility to contact public administrations, to ask questions or to make a complaint
• transaction services are focused on the intake of certain requests or applications and the completion of these requests.
• participation services provide citizens (and organizations) a channel to get involved in processes of policy formulation and policy evaluation.
• data-transfer are related to the exchange and sharing of information within and between (public) organizations.

• Data & information are one of the basic resources of public administrations (and many interactions deal with the exchange of data and information)
  
  
  • Input: most government activities and processes make use of data & information
  • Output: many government products and services include the provision of data or information to citizens, businesses and other administrations


• Collection, processing, management, use and sharing of information are key tasks of government, which can be supported by the use of information and communication technologies (ICT)

‘Who’: information about citizens, companies, organizations, etc.

‘What’: information about activities, processes and products

‘Where’: geographic or location information

‘When’: time-related information

(Wallace, 2007)

• A lot of information in the public sector has a location component so the use and integration of spatial information is of great importance to the further development and innovation of public administration practices.


• Many of the challenges of contemporary society, such as protecting the environment, increased security, better transport, socially just and sustainable development, risk management and enhanced service delivery to citizens require the integration of spatial information in the processes of public administration.


• What makes spatial information so useful is that the majority of public sector information has a spatial component: a street address, place name, administrative unit, geographic or map coordinates, etc. This spatial component makes it possible to combine and integrate information on different topics and from different sources, which allows the creation and delivery of new products and services and opens new ways of policy development and implementation.

Process: Collection of related events, activities and decisions, that involve a number of actors and resources, and that collectively lead to an outcome that is of value to an organization or its stakeholders

Business process management: Body of principles, methods and tools to design, analyze, execute and monitor business processes, with the ultimate goal of improving them.

Steps in the business process management life cycle:

• Step 1 - Process identification
• Step 2 - Process discovery
• Step 3 - Process analysis
• Step 4 - Process redesign
• Step 5 - Process implementation
• Step 6 – Process monitoring and controlling

What?

1. Identify an organization’s business processes

2. Prioritize their management based on certain criteria

Why?

1.Understand the organization

2. Maximize value of BPM projects

Core processes are end-to-end, cross-functional processes that directly deliver value to external clients or intermediaries. Core processes are often referred to as "primary" processes as they represent the essential activities an organisation performs to achieve its goals and objectives, fulfil its mission and attain its vision.

Support processes are enabling processes designed to assist the value-delivering core processes by providing the resources and infrastructure required by primary processes.

Management processes are designed to plan, measure, monitor and control business activities. They ensure that a core or support process meets operational, financial, regulatory and legal requirements. Management processes do not directly add value to customers, but are necessary in order to ensure the organisation operates effectively and efficiently.

• Value chains: Chains of processes (at a high level).


• Processes: Build up value chains and affect each other (abstract)


• Sub-processes: Build up processes. They are detailed, involve multiple activities and can be layered on different levels of abstraction


• Process tasks: Build up processes and sub-processes. They are atomic and performed by human beings, IT systems or equipment.

Select processes for further discovery, analysis and redesign

1. Importance: Which processes have greatest impact on the organization‘s strategic objectives?

2. Health (or Dysfunction): Which processes are in deepest trouble?

3. Feasibility: Which processes are most susceptible to successful process management?

Business process discovery (BPD) related to business process management and process mining is a set of techniques that manually or automatically construct a representation of an organisations' current business processes and its major process variations.

These techniques use evidence found in the existing organisational methods of work, documentations, and technology systems that run business processes within an organization.

The primary goal of process analysis is to determine the performance of existing processes

It refers to the set of procedures used to conduct a thorough review, in order to obtain a clear understanding of an organization’s business processes.

This analysis - which often builts on mapping of the process - provides insight into the weaknesses of processes and their impact

Key parameters:

Cost: e.g. cost per execution, utilization of resources, waste

Time: e.g. cycle time, waiting time, non-value adding time

Quality: e.g. error rates, SLA violations, customer feedback

Data collection and analysis can be qualitative (e.g. register of iusses, customer feedback) and/or quantitative (allowing simulations and what-if analysis)

The significant reworking of a process that (optimally) yields significant, measurable improvement.

To ensure that the particular set of interconnected activities are performed correctly, and in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

• Government-to-Government (G2G)
  • Exchange of spatial zoning plans
  • Inventory and management of roads and utilities
  • Finding locations for certain facilities (e.g. schools, sports facilities, electricity)


• Government-to-Citizen (G2C)
  • Provision of online information on traffic congestion, safety issues, air quality
  • Granting a building permission
  • Participation of citizens in decision making


• Government-to-Business (G2B)
  • Online information on available sites for businesses
  • Granting agricultural subsidies or environment-related permits
  • Registration of companies

Information services for the disclosure of government information

Points of interest (schools, hospitals, sports facilities), traffic congestions, air quality, water quality, etc.

Contact services to contact public administrations

FixMyStreet, reporting on illegal dumping, mapping of recently flooded areas, mapping of presence of bird species, soil information, etc.

Transaction services for the intake of certain requests or applications and the completion of these requests.

Applying for benefits (e.g. agriculture subsidies), applying for permits (e.g. building permits), fulfillment of legal duties, etc.

Participation services to get involved in processes of policy formulation and policy evaluation.

Spatial and urban planning

• What are the major process steps and what is their sequence (order); What are the major actors? What triggers the process, what ends the process?
• Which existing spatial information and data sets are used, from which sources (organisations/actors)?
• Which new spatial information/data or other outputs are created throughout the process and by whom?
• In which process steps are spatial data used and/or created?
• How is the output distributed or used in other processes and by whom?
• To what extent is the creation/use/exchange of spatial data integrated in the core process?

No or low integration: spatial data not used or only in support i.e. separate from the administrative process (e.g. by a separate GIS unit or in a separate application)

Medium level of integration: spatial data integrated in some process steps, but in most process steps location information is not used or only used in support of the process

Strong integration: spatial data integrated in most process steps, including interactions with citizens, businesses and other administrations

SDI’s provide several components that can be used as building blocks for the development of location enabled processes:

• Spatial data sets on various themes
• Web map services (WMS, WMTS) to visualise and web feature services (WFS) to download data;
• Metadata on data and web services, metadata catalogues and catalogue services to discover, find and understand the data sets and web services;
• Other services to process data (e.g. Web Processing Service of the OGC), to transform data, etc.
• Data sharing arragements (e.g. open licenses) to facilitate the sharing of and access to data

Key criteria:

• Relevance of spatial data: priority might be given to processes, interactions and process steps that strongly rely on or require spatial data;


• Added value of spatial data: priority might be given to processes, interactions and process steps for which the benefits of location enabling them will be high;


• Availability of spatial data: priority might be given to processes, interactions and process steps for which the required spatial data – and other necessary components – already are available.

• Improve supporting processes (such as the provision of SDI components)


• Higher level of standardization or coordination within the process (across involved actors): through the adoption of standards and other agreements


• Higher level of integration of spatial data activities (technologically and organisationally): avoid separate GI steps, functions and systems


• Re-design of process: restructuring the process (steps, sequence, actors)

Parameters of the ‘spatial’ performance of processes:

• Intensity of use
• Efficiency of access
• Degree of data sharing

Both technological and organisational components could have an impact on the performance of the process:

• Level of standardization
• Level of coordination
• Decentralization of spatial data activities
• Fragmentation of tasks within the process

Business processes are increasingly valued as essential assets of an organization (or group of organizations

This significance demands dedicated management of processes

We need ways to extract processes out of the organisational complexity in order to discuss, analyse, improve and automate them

Modelling is at the basis of BP Maturity and Improvement

Drawing a BP diagram

• requires to understand how we work today (as-is)
• enables us to analyse how we work
• enables us to define how we want to work in the future (as-is)
• enables us to simulate/analyse our planned reforms
• enables us to communicate how we work / should work
• enables us to develop automated support
• enables us to do business activity monitoring
• enables us to check/analyse our (real) performance
• enables us to suggest improvements

Activities: Activities are active elements, they consume time and demand a resource, they change the state

Events: Events are passive elements, they represent conditions or circumstances, they are atomic and instantaneous

Business objects (or data): these are organizational artifacts that undergo state changes, the information can be physical or electronical

Actors (or resources): these are the entities that perform process activities and generate events, it can be humans and/or systems

SIPOC is the acronym for what is considered the basic elements of a business process, namely, Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs and Customers. When approaching business processes, the SIPOC analysis and map offers a high level overview of the processes that are later further examined.

The added value of performing a SIPOC is that it allows to identify the main phases of the process, the main inputs and outputs and the main actors involved in the process (suppliers and customers).

Supplier: represents person, department or organisation that provides the input;

Input: is the element that undergoes a transformation or allows it (e.g. a request, an incident, etc.);

Process: set of organisational internal actions to produce the desired result;

Output: products or services that are generated throughout the process (e.g. users authentications, updated information in the system, etc.);

Customer: represents the receiver of the goods or services generated in the process.

Process modelling is used to obtain a visual representation of a process encompassing a sequential flow and specific control logic. A process model will be used to obtain a detailed view of the processes mainly combining: activities, decisions, events, flow and roles.

The final format of the process modelling often will be a swim lane diagram, which encompasses horizontal sections illustrating the activities that are performed by specific roles

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a specification originally developed by the Business Process Modelling Initiative (BMPI, 2017) and it is currently maintained by the Object Management Group (OMG, 2017).

It consists of a set of guidelines for the modelling of business processes. These guidelines establish a common framework for the representation of business processes in a standardised and visual way.

Level 1: Descriptive BPMN

• Limited set of symbols
• Hierarchical, top-down modelling
• Focus on understanding and handling complex real-world processes
• Focus: Business/organization

Level 2 : analytical BPMN

• Full palette of symbols, incorporates Events, Exception Handling
• Emphasises consistency and technical meaning of shapes
• Focus: shared meaning between Business & IT
• Refines level 1 process until sufficient detail is achieved to be useful for IT.

Level 3: executable BPMN

• XML language underneath BPMN

Control Flow Perspective: “what needs to be done and when”

• predecessor/successor relationship among activities and events
• the central information depicted in a process model

Data Perspective: “what do we need to work on”

• input/output data to activities
• complements the control flow

Resource Perspective: “who’s doing the work”

• human participants and systems that perform
• control flow activities and generate events
• complements the control flow

Monitoring and management of excessive water (potentially) causing floods is a process that uses spatial data intensively and is part of the whole integrated water policy cycle

The flood management process in Flanders (Belgium) involves different types of flood mapping sub-processes including: recently flooded areas (ROG) by mapping actually flooded areas and keeping flood history records; delineation of potential flood areas (POG) serving as water buffer areas in case of excessive rainfall; and modelled flood areas (MOG) which define the areas flooded under particular weather and other conditions (e.g. as a result o f infrastructure works). The outputs of these different flood mapping sub-processes are various maps used in other processes, such as the water survey which is a sub-process that is applied as part of the building permit process.

Event: A happening, the arrival of a significant point in time, a change in status of something, or the occurrence of something external that causes the business to react. A BPMN event in a business process diagram refers to something that happens and affects the flow of process.

There are three types of events to use in business process modeling:

• A start event indicates the place where and possibly why a process start. Since start event is used for initiating a process, it does not have any incoming sequence flow.


• As an opposite of start event, end event indicates where a process will end. Since end event is used for terminating a process, it does not have any outgoing sequence flow.


• An intermediate event indicates where something happens in between the start and end event of a process. You can use an intermediate event to show where messages are received or sent, show the necessary delay, perform exception handling and show the need of compensation

Activity: A business process (BPMN) is mainly formed by activities that need to be performed to complete the process.

There are two kinds of activities in business process modeling – task and sub-process.

• You draw a task when the work in the process cannot be broken down to a finer level of detail.
• You use a sub-process when you want to model the internal details of work in a lower-level process diagram.

Gateway: Gateways control token flow in a process. They allow modelling decisions based on data and events as well as fork / join concurrency.

Gateway is a kind of flow objects which is used to direct sequence flows within a process, based on certain condition(s). It acts like a gate that either allows or disallows passage, and possibly control the selection of outgoing flow that pass through the gateway.

Gatewats can be used for merging or splitting

Flow: In business process modeling, there are two types of connectors for modeling flows in a process in a business process diagram – Sequence flow and Message flow.

• A BPMN sequence flow is used to connect flow objects in a process or a choreography to show the flow.


• Message flow is used to show the flow of messages between separate pools/lanes.

Swim lane: A graphical container for partitioning a set of activities from other activities.

• A BPMN pool represents a participant who takes part in a process. It is visually a rectangular box that can contain flow objects like BPMN task and sub-process.
• A BPMN lane is a sub-partition in a BPMN pool. It is often used to represent internal roles or a department under the role represented by pool.