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Formal Methods to Improve Public Administration BusinessProcesses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2012

Andrea Polini ,
Andrea Polzonetti  and
Barbara Re
Andrea Polini
Affiliation:
University of Camerino, School of Science and Technology, Computer Science Division, Camerino, Italy. polini.andrea@unicam.it
Andrea Polzonetti
Affiliation:
University of Camerino, School of Science and Technology, Computer Science Division, Camerino, Italy. polini.andrea@unicam.it
Barbara Re
Affiliation:
University of Camerino, School of Science and Technology, Computer Science Division, Camerino, Italy. polini.andrea@unicam.it
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Abstract

Starting from late 90’s the public administration has started to employ a quite relevantamount of its budget in developing ICT solutions to better deliver services to citizens.In spite of this effort many statistics show that the mere availability of ICT basedservices does not guarantee per se their usage. Citizens have continued to largely accessservices through “traditional” means. In our study we suggest that the highlightedsituation is partly due to the fact that relevant domain dependent requirements, mainlyrelated to the delivery process of e-government digital services, are often ignored in thedevelopment of e-government solutions. We provide here a domain related quality frameworkand encoded it in a set of formal statements, so that we can apply automatic verificationtechniques to assess and improve ICT solutions adopted by public administrations. Thepaper discusses both the defined quality framework and the tool chain we developed toenable automatic assessment of ICT solutions. The tool chain is based on a denotationalmapping of business process modeling notation elements into process algebraic descriptionsand to the encoding of quality requirements in linear temporal logic formulas. Theresulting approach has been applied to real case studies with encouraging results.

Keywords

Business process formal verificationbusiness process quality assessmentdomain dependent property checkinge-government quality framework
Type
Research Article
Information
RAIRO - Theoretical Informatics and Applications , Volume 46 , Issue 2: 12th Italian Conference on Theoretical Computer Science(ICTCS) , April 2012 , pp. 203 - 229
Copyright
© EDP Sciences 2012

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