1.6.7: Service-Oriented Technology Management

Move towards a model of [government]-wide, service-orientated enterprise architecture, where common building blocks using open standards can be re-used to enable flexible and adaptive use of technology to react quickly to changing customer needs and demands.

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The transformations to business, customer and channel management described above require a new approach to technology. Citizen service transformation demands a single view of the citizen, delivered inside an integrated business and channels architecture. In terms of IT, all of this requires governments to learn from private-sector best practice. Industry is moving towards a model of company-wide, service-orientated enterprise architecture, where common building blocks using open standards can be re-used to enable flexible and adaptive use of technology to react quickly to changing customer needs and demands. Increasingly, companies are gaining even greater efficiency benefits by managing these building blocks as a service, provided not within their own IT architecture but from within "the Cloud" - the dynamically-scalable set of computing resources now being offered as a service over the Internet. Governments are increasingly taking this 'building block' approach to technology development. Key building blocks such as ICT infrastructure, common data sets, and identity verification need to be co-ordinated effectively. While much can be learned from the private sector, simply importing industry practices will not solve this coordination problem within government. Governments are taking different approaches to the co-ordination function: some build central infrastructure for use by all departments and agencies; others identify lead departments to build and implement common solutions; others have a more decentralised approach, allowing departments to develop their own solutions according to a common architecture and standard set. However, finding an effective approach which works within a specific government approach is vital, since without this sort of technology flexibility, then citizen service transformation becomes impossible - or possible only at great expense and with significant wasteful and duplicated IT expenditure.

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Indicator:1

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