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Based on the conceptual model, it is possible to identify three scenarios of possible future service delivery, which highlight the many opportunities provided by a ‘cloud of public services’. It should be noted that the opportunities depend on the specific context in which a new service is provided. In addition, the possible future scenarios are limited only to the actual functionality provided by the available services and the creativity of service providers in combining these services to serve a specific purpose in a new context. For the purposes of this study, the scenarios provide examples, which allow a number of potential high level opportunities to be explored. These include:

Public Value Services: an example of open and interoperable service delivery based on a single platform can be found in Belgium. The eHealth platform allows different actors to interact and provide related services based on the existing platform. The availability of the services and information contained in this platform could also be combined to provide a Flu Prediction service which could be used to predict the spread of a flu pandemic, thus increasing the efficiency of public health-related services;

Competitive Advantage: an example of third party involvement in service delivery identified during the study is the ‘one stop shop’ (‘ondernemingsloketten’) for company registration in Belgium, in which third parties (non-profit organisations authorised by the government to implement public services) are involved in providing services for business start-up. A scenario could be foreseen in which other third parties, such as banks, could also provide such services based on available public services thus providing a better, more integrated service to their clients.

43 New Business Models: specific licenses are often required for businesses to undertake

activities, such as building premises (building permit), production (environmental permits) and specific economic activities (licenses or authorisations for certain professions). Obtaining the correct licenses can be time-consuming and complicated, often involving different public administrations. In the future, it could be possible for a single service provider to be authorised to carry out all activities and coordination necessary to acquire the necessary permits, thus providing a new and innovative service for end-users;

These scenarios are analysed in the following sections and illustrated using the conceptual model.

The scenarios depart from the ‘as is’ situation, by building on existing initiatives to illustrate the new opportunities, which can be derived from providing services in an open and interoperable way.

4.3.1 Public Value Services

Based on the services provided by the existing eHealth platform, additional services, including the sharing of x-ray images, electronic prescription and electronic birth registrations, have been implemented in Belgium. It is possible to suggest that the efficiency of public health-related services could be further increased by reusing and broadening the scope of the existing services provided by the platform to create, for example, an application which allows for the prediction of the spread of a flu pandemic. This scenario is elaborated below.

Real life example: The eHealth platform

The eHealth platform digitizes the exchange of medical information between healthcare actors in Belgium. This exchange of information has traditionally taken place in paper form.

The goals of the eHealth project are:

To manage and coordinate the IT related aspects of data exchange in relation to electronic patient records and electronic medical prescriptions

To act as an independent, trusted third party for the coding and anonymizing of personal healthcare data for certain organisations, listed by law to support scientific research and policy The eHealth platform enables different actors, such as doctors to retrieve and exchange information electronically. All of a patient’s relevant medical information is accessible from separate databases provided by different actors via a single platform. This ‘cloud’ is shown in Figure 28 below.

eHealth

Figure 28 - eHealth Platform

The platform began with only a few services but now offers more than 20, including registration for vaccinations, central management of service hours for doctors and dentists and the electronic exchange of invoices for insurance purposes. In the example of registering the birth of child, previously, the father or mother of a new born child needed to register the birth of their child in person at the town hall. With eHealth it is now possible to register the child’s birth via an online form.

The eHealth platform can be illustrated using the analytical model. This is shown in Figure 29.

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Figure 29 - Conceptual Model of the eHealth platform

The basic services which provide access to the authentic sources, such as the registry of healthcare providers, social security and registry of physical persons, are represented by the orange rectangles.

As per the ‘service mazes’ and conceptual model, the green rectangles represent the life event or the delivery of public services to citizens and businesses via end-user applications.

The central X-rays image repository, for example, allows doctors to retrieve all x-rays of a certain patient. It would use a Composed Service, which initiates the search and retrieval of images from all hospital databases. Data access to these would be provided by the Basic Services.

Support for electronic care prescriptions speeds up the process of approving prescriptions by third parties. By using electronic time-stamping and encryption services, prescriptions can be generated and approved within minutes, allowing the patient to receive the required medicines sooner.

The eBirth service entails the establishment of a new record in the national registry of physical persons. At the same time, a new record can be created in a healthcare provider’s database subscribing the new born child to its services. Both actions could be initiated by a Composed Service via a service bus. This service could be offered to end-users via a single web-form.

Delivering medical data in line with the concept of a ‘cloud of public services’ allows processes to be completed more quickly, avoids the duplication of data entry and reduces the margin for error, saving time, costs, resources and administrative burdens, and improving public health

Future Scenario: Flu Prediction

Based on this model, it is possible to broaden the scope of the eHealth platform to facilitate the development of a Flu Prediction service. In addition to reusing the existing services, additional building blocks, such as social media and search engines, could be added and combined to increase the efficiency of the existing medical information exchange service. Google, for example, has stated that it sees an increase in searches for keywords like ‘flu’ in areas where epidemics are present. Evidence suggests that citizens often search the internet for medical information before they consult a doctor.

Analysis of the keywords would allow flu outbreaks to be identified and earlier and more accurately than at present.

The Flu Prediction Service can be illustrated using the conceptual model. This is shown in Figure 30.

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Figure 30 - Conceptual Model of the Flu Prediction Service

The conceptual model illustrates how a flu prediction application could be built based on existing services on the eHealth platform. These include access to the registration of flu cases by healthcare providers represented by the orange box which is composed of Basic Data Services for data access.

In addition, by including Basic Services which provide data from social media/search engines on the frequency of searches for ‘flu’ online, combined with a Composed Service which allows the data to be harvested and interpreted a more accurate and enhanced flu prediction service could be provided.

This scenario shows how an additional service could be created by combining existing services and data (both based on public services and other services) which allows governments to more efficiently monitor and predict a flu pandemic, creating public value.

4.3.2 Competitive advantage

The application of the service taxonomy and methodology in Belgium identified the examples of the eDepot and ‘one stop shops’ for company registration in Belgium, in which third parties (notaries and the ‘ondernemingsloketten’) provide services for business start-up by reusing public services provided in an open and interoperable way by the public administrations. It is possible to envisage a situation in which other third parties, such as a bank, could gain a competitive advantage by providing a similar service to the ‘one stop shops’ to its clients, in addition to its traditional offering. This scenario is described below.

Real life example: ‘One stop shop’ for company registration

In Belgium, the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE) provides services which are used by third parties. Specific, authorised organisations implementing the so called ‘one-stop-shops’ for enterprises (‘ondernemingsloketten’) use services offered by the CBE to provide services for starting-up businesses. There are in total nine organisations which offer these services as officially recognised

‘one stop shops.’ These organisations are non-profit and have offices in different parts of the country.

In addition, the Belgian eDepot system provides services for notaries integrating services provides by the CBE and others, thereby supporting the process of legally setting up companies.

Based on the findings of the case study phase of this study, it is possible to map the building blocks of public services provided by the public administrations involved in the start up of new businesses in Belgium (the Business Registry (CBE), justice department, the tax authorities/national bank, and social security). The ‘one stop shop’ for company registration has been developed according to the availability of these services. It can be illustrated using the conceptual model and is shown in Figure 31.

46 Figure 31 – Conceptual Model of ‘One stop shop’ for company registration

By combining the Basic or ‘Fundamental Services’ represented by the orange rectangles, the ‘one stop shop’ is able to fulfil a number of higher level services related to business start-up, including the registration and activation of the business, and registration for social security and tax, as shown by the blue rectangles.

Although the public services required for company registration are provided for reuse by public administrations, ‘one stop shops’ and notaries based on a SOA-approach, access to the services is at present restricted to these appointed actors. Making these services fully available in an open and interoperable way in line with the concept of the ‘cloud of public services’ to other parties could allow new models of integrated service delivery or ‘one stop shops’ to be developed.

Future Scenario: Bank as a ‘one stop shop’

Establishing a business as a legal entity often requires a bank account to be opened in which starting capital can be deposited. The first step in the process is therefore for the entrepreneur to go to the bank. Currently, this obliges the founder to visit at least two actors: a bank and a notary or the ‘one stop shop’. In the future, the current ‘one stop shop’ service could also be offered by banks. Using the conceptual model, the Bank as a ‘One stop shop’ scenario is illustrated in Figure 32.

47 Figure 32 – Conceptual Model of a Bank as a ‘One stop shop’ for company registration

The building blocks of public services needed to register a new business could be made available via a ‘cloud of public services’ to a bank. In this way, the existing service could be offered by a new service provider (the bank) as a new ‘one-stop-shop’. Significantly, the bank would be able to offer an integrated service, by complementing the company registration process with its traditional business banking services, such as business plan advice, account management, loan facilities and insurance.

If banks were able to provide this service to their clients, they could be expected to gain an advantage over competitors. By extension, different banks could provide this service, thus generating inter-bank competition and potentially improving on the effectiveness of the service delivery.

4.3.3 New business models

The development of new services based on existing services can also provide business opportunities for private sector actors which use existing public services to offer a value added service of their own.

Based on the real life example of the Dutch implementation of the Environmental Permit law, it is possible to foresee a situation in which a new business model could arise from the provision by one private sector actor of permits and licenses currently available from different public sector providers. A

‘Front Office’ for permits and licenses could provide a service based on existing public services to implement a complex and knowledge intensive process on behalf of a citizen or business. This scenario is presented below.

Real Life example: Dutch Environmental Permit Law

The Dutch Environmental Permit law⁴⁶ establishes the combination of different permit which need to be granted to be compliant with environmental law. These include building and demolition permits, usage permits, waste permits and water permits. The implementation of the Environmental Permit law in municipalities demonstrates how establishing services as building blocks has helped municipalities to solve the problems related to the implementation of this law.

Traditionally, most of the municipalities deal with permit requests in isolation. Each department in a municipality in charge of providing a permit has the specific knowledge about its own domain and is responsible for handling permits according to this scope. The Environmental Permit law obliged municipalities to combine the different permit services into one integrated permit service. The law also prescribes the time limit for a municipality to provide a positive or negative answer for the integrated

46 Information provided by: http://omgevingsvergunning.vrom.nl/

48 Environmental Permit. The permit request is made at the national level and at this point, the time limit is decided.

Instead of asking for multiple permits with individual time limits, the citizen or business requests only one Environmental Permit with several elements (such as building and water) and only one time limit at the national level. This permit request is then forwarded from the national level to the municipality, where the permit is split into several cases. Each permit is dealt with by the responsible department.

The Environmental Permit example shows how different services provided by different departments have been combined into an ‘integrated’ environmental permit. This ‘integrated’ environmental permit is illustrated using the conceptual model in Figure 33 below.

Figure 33 - Dutch Environmental Permit law

The ‘intake of request’ service ensures that all the required information is collected from the permit requestor. The ‘orchestration & follow’ up keeps track of the sequence (performance of the cases in parallel or sequence), the time limit and the consistency between the regulations⁴⁷ of the overall permit. This orchestration services are the ‘glue’ between the domain specific services, such as the building, water, waste and usage permits, all of which are provided by different departments.

Future Scenarios: Front office for permits and licenses

A ‘cloud of public services’ can facilitate the creation of new services by reusing already existing services as building blocks. The Dutch Environmental Permit Law notwithstanding, if a citizen or a business needs to request several licences or permits, these are often distributed by different institutions at different times. As the process of requesting and granting a license depends on the nature of the license, requestors are often not familiar with all procedures, steps to be taken and required information.

It is however possible to envisage a scenario in which a company - a ‘Front office’ - is established to provide a consumer with all of the licences and permits necessary to undertake a particular activity. By reusing and combining existing public services, it is able to request and receive licences and permits from different public administrations, according to the end-users’ circumstances, thus providing an new service and a new business model, based on a ‘cloud of public services.’ Through this service, a third party could handle the request (and even granting) of licences and can therefore:

Communicate directly with all institutions involved for all licences Group and follow up on all requests in a single place

Handle the transport of physical documents Follow up on the expiry and renewal of licenses

49 Keep track of legislation that influences the licence

The building blocks of public services used by the new Front office for permits and licences have been derived from the decomposition of life events related to permitting undertaken in Chapter 3. These included applications for building permits (‘Expanding’), for hazardous activities and chemicals (‘Responsible Business’) and for the Import and Export of goods and services (‘EU Market’).

Via the ‘cloud of public services,’ the Front office would be able to access a range of public services (Process, Composed and Basic Services) delivered by different public administration and to reuse them to create new services. These could be offered to citizens or businesses in person or online.

The ‘Front office for permits and licences’ is illustrated using the conceptual model in Figure 34.

Figure 34 - Analytical Model of a Front office for permits and licences

The new Front office could offer its services either via face to face contact with the customers or potentially via the internet, resulting in clear benefits for the end-user. The creation of a new, innovative business model by making public services available online in a ‘cloud of public services’

can also be expected to have a positive impact in terms of job creation and growth.