Supporting Public Policy Making Processes with Workflow Technology

International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 8(3), 63-77, July-September 2012 63

Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

Keywords: Decision-Making,PublicAdministration,PublicPolicy,Workflow,WorkflowTechnology

Supporting Public Policy Making Processes with Workflow Technology:

Lessons Learned From Cases in Four European Countries

AggelikiTsohou,BrunelBusinessSchool,BrunelUniversity,UK

HabinLee,BrunelBusinessSchool,BrunelUniversity,UK

KarimAl-Yafi,BrunelBusinessSchool,BrunelUniversity,UK

VishanthWeerakkody,BrunelUniversity,UK

RamziEl-Haddadeh,BrunelBusinessSchool,BrunelUniversity,UK

ZahirIrani,BrunelBusinessSchool,BrunelUniversity,UK

AndreaKő,CorvinusUniversityofBudapest,Hungary

TuncMedeni,TURKSAT,Turkey

LuisMiguelCampos,PDM&FC,Lisbon,Portugal

ABSTRACTWorkflowtechnologyhasbeenprovenasanenablerfornumerousbenefitsforprivateandpublicorganizations.Including:costreduction,efficiencysavingsintermsoftimeandcost,increasedcapability,fasterprocess-ing,reductionsinerrors,andworkiterations,servicequalityandcustomersatisfaction.Publicsectorhasendorsedthesebenefitsbyadoptingworkflowmanagementsystemstosupportadministrativeprocesses,suchashumanresourcesmanagementorclaimsprocessing.Thistechnologyisyettobeutilizedtosupporttheformulationofpolicymakingprocessestofacilitatetheparticipationofcitizensinthepolicymakingprocessesandincreasetheirawarenessonpoliticalissues.ThispaperInvestigatesthefeasibilityofadoptingworkflowtoolsforthesupportofdecisionmakingprocessesthatleadtodevelopmentofpublicpolicies,despitethevariantinstitutionalsettings.Todoso,publicpolicymakingprocessesfromfourcountrieswereexaminedandanalyzed.Theresultsareexploredfurtherinthearticle.

DOI: 10.4018/jegr.2012070104

64 International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 8(3), 63-77, July-September 2012


1. INTRODUCTION

In the effort to sustaining competitive advan-tage, reducing administrative burdens and/or enabling innovation in services and products provision, organizations often continuously attempt to optimize their various business func-tions. Within this objective, business process redesign and workflow management attracted the recent interest of researchers and practi-tioners in private and public sectors. Business process redesign or re-engineering is used to optimize specified business processes while workflow models support this transformation of business and information processes. Workflows can be defined as a collection of tasks organized to accomplish some business process while workflow management systems coordinate and streamline business processes. Among the main benefits of workflow tools, cost reduction and efficiency savings (time and cost reductions to complete a process), increased capability, faster processing, reductions in errors and work iterations, service quality and customer satis-faction have been reported (Georgakopoulos et al., 1995). According to the research and market 2011 survey “Workflow Management Systems Market 2010-2013” the adoption of workflow management systems has reduced the response time of processes by 20% and in-creased business productivity by an impressive 50%. Further, in this survey, workflow manage-ment services have been widely adopted in the private sector, especially in the financial and manufacturing sectors. Public sector also holds a significant share in the workflow technology adoption which is commonly combined with public reform initiatives; Schäl (1998) reported nearly 50% of workflow technology licenses for government and health care agencies at the United States and United Kingdom.

While workflow technology has been widely adopted in the public sector, the use of this technology is mostly limited to sup-porting only back-end administrative business processes (Lee et al., 2011). Among the most common workflow applications for the public sector are a) claims processing and management,

b) bid and proposal routing and tracking, c) handling of customer service and complaints, d) grant and scholarship award, approval, and processing, d) human resource recruitment and hiring. Researchers have suggested to not restraining the employment of workflow tools only to the automation of administrative public processes. On the contrary, the adoption of workflow technology for the formulation of policy making processes is expected to reshape public policies by facilitating the participation of citizens in the policy making processes. However, developing a workflow model to sup-port policy-making processes that can exceed national, local or even sector borders, remains a challenging issue. Can the public policy for-mulation processes be generically abstracted in a way that the produced models apply to the different political and institutional contexts? In this study we investigate the feasibility of creating a workflow model that can support the automation of public policy making processes exceeding the limitations posed by the context diversities. To do so, policy making processes within four countries are examined in order to highlight commonalities and distinctions. In sequence to this introduction, a definition of public policies is provided along with the advancements in policy making modelling ap-proaches. Then we present our research setting and research methods applied. Afterwards, the analysis of collected data is given. The paper continues with a discussion on the findings and conclusions.

2. BACKGROUND AND STATE OF THE ART: MODELING PUBLIC POLICY FORMULATION PROCESSES

In the broad sense public policies are perceived as everything that the governments choose to do and not to do about a public issue (Dye, 1972). A more detailed definition is given by Brooks (1989) who conceives public policy as “the broad framework of ideas and values within which decisions are taken and action, or inac-



tion, is pursued by governments in relation to some issue or problem”. It goes without saying that public policy making processes are taking shape and constantly transformed according to several macro and micro economic, historical, cultural and political influences, such as the political structures, institutional pressures, so-cial values, worldviews, relationship between the policy makers and the stakeholders, avail-able communication media, etc. (Rotmans et al., 2001). An analysis of public policies, their diversities and similarities has been dominant in the political science and political studies literature, especially within the European Union. The discussions focused on the possible European decision-making deadlocks driven by the variant political, geographical, cultural institutional and economic features (Heritier, 1999). Vice versa, the analyses also focus on the way that Europe affects domestic policy-making; Europeanization as called refers to the process by which domestic policy areas become increasingly subject to European policy making (Featherstone & Radaelli, 2003). A political analysis of the public policy formation processes is beyond the scope of this study which explores the diversities and similarities of public poli-cies from a technical point of view in order to examine the feasibility of a workflow model that can support public policy making processes in various institutional settings.

Sajjad et al. (2011) summarize several policy making processes models such as the Model for Participatory Decision-making Process (Renn et al., 1993), Hofferbert’s Model for Comparative Study of Policy Formation (Mazmanian & Sabatier, 1980), the Linear Model (Grindle & Thomas, 1990), a Concep-tual Model for the Analysis of Policy-Making Process (Uslaner & Weber, 1975), the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) (Sabatier, 1988), the Bureaucratic Politics Framework (BPF) (Moe, 1990), the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IADF) (an instru-mental rational choice framework) (Ostrom, 1999), etc. However, as the authors of the study point out (Sajjad et al., 2011) these models have limitations on explaining how the stakehold-

ers of a specific policy interact and intervene to the policy formulation process. As already mentioned, this paper draws upon the belief that the adoption of workflow technology can reform public policy making processes by facilitating the participation of citizens. Having as a cor-nerstone the need for maximization of citizens’ participation and taking into consideration the limitations of the fore mentioned policy models, this paper employs for the analysis of policy design and implementation processes the model defined by Macintosh (2004). According to this, the design and implementation of public policies follows five phases:

1. Agendasetting: Establish the need for a new policy or the modification of an existing one and define what is the problem to be addressed.

2. Prioranalysis: Define the challenges and opportunities associated with the given agenda item and produce a draft policy document. This phase may include gather-ing evidence and knowledge from different sources, understanding the context of the agenda item, develop different options, etc.

3. Policycreation: Ensure a good, workable policy document. This phase involves a variety of mechanisms such as formal con-sultation, risk analysis, undertaking pilot studies and designing the implementation plan.

4. Policy implementation: Development of legislation, regulation, guidance and a delivery plan to put in force the new or altered policy.

5. Policymonitoring: Review of the policy in action, research evidence and views of users. A loop back to stage one is possible according to evidence.

3. PROPOSED SOLUTION

3.1. Research Strategy and Settings

In order to study the feasibility of creating a workflow model that is applicable to different



institutional contexts, this research analyses various policy making processes from three countries with the European Union and an associate member country. A quantitative method approach by administering a survey was employed in order to collect data relevant to public policy making processes in four coun-tries: United Kingdom, Hungary, Portugal and Turkey. Managers from local public agencies, such as municipalities and local administra-

tive divisions, were the target policy makers. The public policy domains that emerged in the research are:

1. Environment: public policies with regard to regulation to preserve better environment.

2. Householdmanagement: policies related to planning permission, housing and social benefits, waste collection, etc.

Table1.Samplepolicymakingprocessesforthestudy

Country Municipality Policy domain Process name

UK Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council

Urban planning Land use

Local transport planning

Household management Strategic waste development policy

Health and safety Neighborhood/Community safety

Crime prevention

Environment Development control

Hungary II district of Budapest Urban planning Local government resolution preparation on parking zones and fee

VI district of Budapest Restaurants opening time resolution

Budapest Resolution on road repairing work

Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County, Municipality of Monok

Household management Social benefit and card resolution

XIII district of Budapest Resolution on selective waste collection

Hungary, nationwide process

Resolution on co-payment on compulsory health insurance

XV district of Budapest Preparation on smoking in playground

Budapest Environment Resolution on noise pollution of flights

Portugal Câmara Municipal da Trofa (Municipality of Trofa)

Infrastructure Deployment of internet access points

Environment Deployment of recycling centers

Economic development Technologic park creation

Turkey Istanbul Pendik Municipality

Urban planning Strategic policy-making

Civic transformation

Park construction

New road opening

White desk for processing citizen applica-tions

Health and safety Social support in case of flood emergency

Household management Garbage collection



3. Urbanplanning: policies with regard to road/street maintenance, social places, parking places, etc.

4. Healthandsafety: policies related to anti-social behavior, crime prevention, etc.

Table 1 summarizes the processes that were included in the analysis, the policy domains

as well as the public agencies in authority for each process.

The survey was initiated at the beginning of March 2010 and lasted for two months. In order to facilitate the communication with the policy makers during interviews and optimize the capture of policy making processes, the researchers have established a process descrip-tion template (Table 2) and a process map

Table2.Policymakingprocessdescriptiontemplate

Process header information

Process ID

Process name

Process goals

Process owner

Triggering events

The final output

Procedural information

Step Actor/Role Action Input Form Output Form

1

2

3

4

…

Figure1.Policymakingprocessmaptemplate



model (Figure 1) to collect sample policy mak-ing processes in the four countries.

After the first interviews with the policy makers, the researchers identified the sample processes and produced a draft of sample de-scriptions of policy making processes in respect. The draft process templates and maps have been presented to the policy-makers to ensure that the templates and maps accurately reflect the real world public processes and were revised accordingly.

4. METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH AND PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

Each of the relevant processes was described according to the predefined template and the policy-making process map, and further anal-ysed using the Macintosh (2004) model. As an example of the conducted analysis, this section includes a detailed analysis of the neighbour-hood safety planning process for UK, restaurants opening time resolution process for Hungary, deployment of Internet access points throughout the municipality for Portugal, and social support for citizens in urgent need for Turkey.

4.1. Analysis of Processes from UK

The policy making processes collected from UK public agencies consist of the policy do-mains urban planning, development control, neighborhood safety, waste management, local transportation strategy and crime prevention. As a sample of the analysis, the process of neigh-bourhood safety is presented. The objective of this process is to create new polices to make safer neighbourhoods. The process is triggered by new ideas expressed at the community con-sultations or raised by the central government. The policy making process description template depicts the tasks of the processes, their sequence and the roles at responsibility (Table 3).

The process can be abstracted using the Macintosh model as follows: the two first steps of the process represent the ‘Agenda setting’ phase, steps 3 and 4 represent the ‘Prior

Analysis’ phase, steps 5 to 8 the ‘Policy cre-ation’, steps 9-11 the ‘Policy implementation’ and finally the last step reflects the ‘Policy monitoring.’

4.2. Analysis of Processes from Hungary

The local agencies and relevant policy making processes from Hungary were responsible for preparation of parking zones and fees, res-taurant’s opening timings, noise pollution of flights, social benefit of cards, waste collection, road repairing work, preparation on smoking in playgrounds and co-payment on compulsory health insurance. As a representative process we select the process which regards the formula-tion of policies regarding the opening hours of restaurants. The process aims at resolving the conflicting interests of relevant stakeholders. The process incorporates the initiation of a new strategy or alteration of existing ones regarding restaurants’ operation hours, the ways to collect public opinion on the proposed policy and its final implementation with the target to resolve any conflicts of interest between restaurant en-terprises and residents. The process is triggered by local government making a proposal for restaurants’ opening hours (Table 4). The policy making process description template follows.

Similarly, the process can be abstracted using the Macintosh model as follows: the first step represents ‘Agenda setting’ and ‘Prior Analysis’, steps 2 to 5 represent the ‘Policy creation’ phase, steps 6 and 7 the ‘Policy imple-mentation.’ It should be highlighted that no step can be related to ‘Policy monitoring.’

4.3. Analysis of Processes from Portugal

The samples collected from Portugal derived from the municipality of Trofa and refer to the policy making processes for the deployment of Internet access points throughout the municipal-ity, the deployment of recycling centers, and the creation of a technologic park. The process that is going to be presented is the formulation of strategy regarding the deployment of internet



Table3.Neighborhoodsafetyplanningprocessdescription


Process ID Health and Safety: Community/neighbourhood Safety

Process name Neighborhood safety

Process goals Create new polices to make safer neighborhoods

Process owner Inspector

Triggering events New ideas from community consultations or central government

The final output New policy implemented and monitored


Step Who does it What happens Input Form Output Form

1 Safer neighborhood team

Creation of new policy idea Existing policy docu-ments

List of proposed amendments

2 Business control unit

Business control process – Change man-agement invoked

Change management process documentation

Plan for change docu-ment


Information gathering Input from neighbor-hood watch teams via periodic reports National and local policy documents

Consolidated report highlighting all signifi-cant issues


Draft to policy forum Draft policy document Commentary on draft policy document


Policy sent into consultation process Iterative process involving: ▪ Diversity impact ▪ Customer insight ▪ Segmented communities issues resolved, ▪ Employees consulted

Draft policy document Commentary on draft policy document from each set of consulted people


Consult with external partners such as 3rd sector to get joined up approach

Draft policy document Commentary on draft policy document from each set of external partners


Inputs from consultation process assessed and incorporated into policy as appropriate

Draft policy document. External commentaries

Assessment report. Amended draft policy document.

8 Change control board

Final evaluation and acceptance Draft policy document Change management process documentation Change impact reports

Formal acceptance report. (If rejected process iter-ated from appropriate task above)

9 Senior command team

Senior command team approval Policy document Formal approval sign off

10 Police authority Police authority approval Policy document Formal approval sign off


Commissioning implementation Policy document Policy document published

12 Business control unit Monitoring and reporting Draft policy document Formal and informal feedback. Public percep-tion questionnaires.



Table4.Restaurants’openingtimeresolutionprocessdescription


Process ID Urban planning: Restaurants’ opening hours

Process name Restaurants opening time resolution

Process goals To reach a consensus among conflicting interests (habitants and companies)

Process owner Mayor with political responsibility, Administrative manager with professional respon-sibility

Triggering events Local representatives order on restaurants opening time resolution

The final output Local government resolution on restaurants opening time resolution



1 Local government professional com-mittee (II. district)

Local government professional committee collect relevant regula-tion and prepare a pre-proposal of local government resolution on restaurants opening time (draft version)

1. 2005. CLXIV. Law on Business 2. 4/1997 (I. 22.) Edict on operating restaurants, shops and business 3. Budapest resolution on restaurants opening time 20/2009. (VI. 29.))

Draft version of local government resolu-tion on restaurants opening time for Lo-cal Representatives Assemble

2 Local Representa-tives Assemble

Local representatives discuss draft version of local government reso-lution on restaurants opening time

Draft version of local government resolution on restaurants opening time

Harmonised version of local government resolution on restau-rants opening time

3 Administration department

Collection of residents’ opinions Harmonized version of local government reso-lution on restaurants opening time

Residents’ opinions

4. Administration department

Processing residents’ opinions Residents’ opinions (raw form)

Processed residents’ opinions

5 Local govern-ment professional committee (VI. district)

Refining local government resolu-tion on restaurants opening time considering residents’ opinions

Processed residents’ opinions; Harmonized version of local government reso-lution on restaurants opening time

Refinement version of local government resolution on restau-rants opening time considering residents’ opinions


Voting by local representatives on refinement version of local gov-ernment resolution on restaurants opening time

Refinement version of local government resolution on restau-rants opening time considering residents’ opinions

Voting outcome about refinement ver-sion of local govern-ment resolution on restaurants opening time


Local representatives pass a local government resolution on restau-rants opening time

Voting outcome about refinement version of local government reso-lution on restaurants opening time

Final resolution on restaurants opening time



access points. It is worth highlighting that in this instance the process was initiated by citizens who requested by the Mayor the deployment of internet access points (Table 5).

With an examination of the process we can conclude that ‘Agenda setting’ is performed in step 1, ‘Prior analysis’ is conducted by steps 2 to 5, ‘Policy creation’ by steps 6 to 9, ‘Policy Implementation’ by steps 10 to 14. The ‘Policy Monitoring’ phase is not reflected at any step.

4.4. Analysis of Processes from Turkey

The collected process samples from Turley include policy formulation for social support for citizens in urgent need (such as natural di-sasters), processing of citizens’ complaints and requests, garbage collection, urban planning and new roads and libraries, and strategic planning for municipality activities. The process of social support provision is further discussed (Table 6).

The differentiation of this process is that the ‘Agenda setting’ step is realized by the event triggering the process itself, which is the natural phenomenon. Steps 1 and 2 refer to ‘Prior analysis’, step 3 to ‘Policy creation,’ step 4 to ‘Policy implementation,’ and the final step to ‘Policy monitoring.’

5. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

From the examination of the policy processes collected from UK, the number of stages which involve the participation of government officials and citizens exist before a running policy is amended or a new policy were introduced. In this respect, these processes show commonali-ties among the stages although they belong to different policy domains; for example there are triggering events which grab the attention of government official’s first, there is develop-ment of options and alternatives for policies, reviews and analysis and public consultation in all processes. This leads to an extremely iterative process consisting of preparation of issues and alternative options. As the process

starts to roll, and a set of options and alterna-tives are gathered, public is invited to participate with their opinions. These public opinions are filtered into documents that are accepted or further analysed. A draft version of a prospec-tive policy is developed, it further goes through a chain of analysis by the policy makers and soon it takes the form of a final document with initial feedback from both the government of-ficials and the public. Before the final policy can be made once again public consultation and officials recommendations are considered for potential amendments to the final policy. Soon after that political authority accepts or restart process at most pertinent stage, a final policy is published for citizen’s access.

The policy making processes collected from Hungary are very similar to the ones from UK with some differentiations in the number of stages involved. Citizens’ participation to the creation of a new policy or amendment of exist-ing one remains a crucial factor. Following the identification of an issue the local government practitioners usually develop draft versions of possible options and alternatives and afterwards, the local administrative body consults citizens for their opinions. Once the feedback is collected from the citizens, then the local administration analyses it and updates the policy accordingly. The updated version is forwarded to local rep-resentatives for their analysis and review. Once an initial draft of prospective policy is made, it is set for local representative’s voting. A final policy document is created after consideration of the voting and then it is publicly announced.

The samples collected from Portugal, from the municipality of Trofa show a variety of stages involved. The drivers that initiated the policy making processes are variant; citizens’ requests, national legislation or ideas of govern-ment officials. In all cases after the process is initiated the government agency creates a task force that will deal with the issue in respect. The task force identifies potential options and solutions and publicly announces calls for pro-posals for their implementation. The submitted proposals are evaluated and the selected one is adopted.



Table5.DeploymentofInternetaccesspointsthroughoutthemunicipalityprocessdescription


Process ID 01

Process name Deployment of Internet access points throughout the municipality

Process goals Deployment of Internet access points across the municipality

Process owner Strategy Development Unit

Triggering events Request by a group of citizens in the form of a letter delivered during a scheduled meeting with the city mayor and the technical infrastructure deputy

The final output Deployment of free network of internet points across the municipality



1 Group of citizens Requested a meeting with the city mayor and infrastructure deputy

Letter containing request from citizens regarding implementation of a free network of internet access points delivered to city officials

Addition of the issue in the monthly city council meeting agenda

2 City council Decision to create a task force responsible for study-ing the impact (economical, social, other) of implement-ing the request from citizens

Letter presented by citizens detailing request for the deployment a network of internet access points [city council meeting agenda topic]

Internal directive for the city council

3 Task force Preparation of Cost- benefit analysis study

Internal Directive for the city council

Set of requirements for the cost-benefit analysis study

4 Task force Formal contacts with poten-tial suppliers of technology (hardware and software) required to implement the service

Requirement List (technical, social, economical)

Final report on cost-benefits analysis delivered to city council

5 City council Analysis of the Report pro-vided by the Task Force Decision to use budget from the infrastructure department for the execution of the work

Final report on Cost-Benefits analysis delivered to city council

Decision to launch a public procurement request for the implementation of system. Selection of Evaluation criteria and technical evaluators of proposals to be received

6 Office of the mayor

Official launch of public procurement

Decision to launch a public procurement request for the implementation of system

Legal and technical documents supporting the procurement


Reception of proposals and subsequent delivery to expert evaluators selected previously

None Folder with of all proposal submitted

8 Expert evaluators Evaluation of proposals Folder with of all proposal submitted

Ranking of all proposals received and technical evaluation based on evaluation criteria defined


Selection of supplier to implement system

Ranking of all proposals received and technical evalu-ation based on evaluation criteria defined

Final Evaluation of proposals sent to all suppliers that submit-ted proposals


Adjudication of work Final Evaluation of proposals Legal binding contract between parties

continuedonthefollowingpage



Similarly the samples collected from Tur- key begin with a triggering event from the local


11 Task force Acceptance of work Technical documents provid-ed by Supplier Selected for the implementation of system

Legal Binding document between parties


Add issue to the city council meeting agenda

None Addition of the issue in the monthly city council meeting agenda

13 City council Decision to officially deploy the system and inform public

Meeting agenda Internal directive allowing the public announcement of the internet access points through the municipality


Public announcement (using multiple advertising mecha-nisms)

Internal directive Marketing campaign and net-work of internet points across the municipality

Table5.Continued

Table6.Socialsupportprovisionprocessdescription


Process ID 02

Process name Social Support in case of flood emergency)

Process goals Social support for citizens in urgent need

Process owner Social Work Unit

Triggering events Applications as 1st party Citizens, or 3rd parties in behalf of them, Event Scene Investigation by Municipality

The final output Provision of Social Support to Citizens



1 Units in the field (unit of applied works)

Data collection, detection on the spot

Event that require ur-gent attention (flood)

Applications event scene inves-tigations

2 Social work unit or related units

Evaluation of applications (considering legislation, budget, history of ap-plicant)

Applications event scene investigations

Assessment report and recording

3 Upper management (office of mayor)

The approval and determi-nation of quality/quantity of support

Assessment report and recording

Decision and directive and recording


Provision of support Decision and directive Social support


Strategic policy develop-ment and update

Decision Activity report



government bodies or citizens who demand a change to an existing policy or the develop-ment of a new one. Afterwards, the respective government body issues an assessment report, which consists of opinions from citizens and mu-nicipalities, initial analysis, suitable solutions and options. The upper management evaluates the assessment report and advances affirmative decision on the issue. This is then transformed into a final version of policy relating to the agenda by the unit of responsible local agency.

In this paper we have examined public policy making processes with the perspective to explore their commonalities and differentiations in distinct public agencies, public domains, local and national contexts. Twenty five public policy making processes have been analysed from four countries. Our purpose was to investigate if the public policy formulation processes can be generically abstracted despite the different political and institutional contexts.

It can be concluded from the enclosed analysis that the policy making processes in the four countries have common tasks and sequence of steps, which can be abstracted according to the Macintosh Model. The analysis also reveals that three categories of triggering events ap-pear: citizen complaints, new legislation and periodic review of policy issues. Additionally, it is derived that especially in the cases where policies attempt to resolve conflicts of interests among different groups of citizens balanced citizen participation becomes more crucial. Similarly, in these cases citizens have stronger demand on transparency of the policy making process. Moreover, the analysis reveals that although much attention is given to the collec-tion of evidence and information, the creation of alternative options and the implementation of a new policy, little attention is currently given to the final stage of a policy formulation, which the policy monitoring.

This analysis has several practical un-derpinnings. First, we noticed in all contexts a lack of any structured workflow to support the decision making process and a lack of any supporting information technology. As a con-

sequence, the decision makers and the citizens are not provided with the ability to track the decisions taken and the documents generated, preventing transparency in the policy making process. Second, despite their differences, the processes of variant institutional settings show commonalities with respect to their phases: an event triggers the process, the local govern-ment agents develop alternative options and an iterative process of public consultation and review follows. A draft policy is formulated which further goes through a chain of analysis until it gets a final form that integrates the feed-back from government and citizens. We may conclude that workflow technology benefits for the public administration exceed the support of back-office operations as currently is limited to. Workflow tools can be used to support the automation of public policy making processes despite the contextual variations. Using work-flow technology for supporting policy-makers tasks to formulate public policies is expected to increase citizens’ awareness of political issues and facilitate a well-informed participation of citizens in these processes through the automatic delivery of relevant policy issues into their lives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work is partially supported by UbiPOL (Ubiquitous participation platform for Policy making) (EU ICT-2009-248010 STREP proj-ect). The authors would like to thank the proj-ect’s partners for supporting the development of this work, as well.

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AggelikiTsohouisaSeniorResearchFellowatBrunelBusinessSchool.Herresearchinterestsinclude e-government systems, information security and privacymanagement, security riskanalysis,andsecurityandprivacystandards.Sheisaco-authorofmorethantwentyresearchpublicationsininternationalscientificjournalsandconferencesofherinterest.SheisanEditorialBoardMemberfortheInternet Research Journal and the Information Management & Computer Security Journal.ShehasservedontheProgramCommitteeoffourinternationalconferencesandasaReviewerinmorethantwentyinternationalscientificjournalsandconferencesinthee-governmentandinformationsecurityfield.ShehasbeeninvolvedintheFP7EuropeanProjectsCEESandUbiPOL,andalso,inseveralGreekgovernment-fundedR&Dprojectsintheareasofinformationandcommunicationsystemssecurity.



HabinLeeisaSeniorLecturerattheBrunelUniversityBusinessSchool,UK.HewasanactivememberofEUFP5andFP7projectsandwasaprojectleaderofseveralBTprojectstotransformtheirmobilebusinessprocessesusingalight-weightagentplatform.Heisthewinneroftwointernationalresearchawards(GIGAExcellenceAwardinWorkflowManagementandIETIn-novationAward).Hehaspublishedmorethan50peerreviewedresearcharticlesininternationaljournals,conferencesandbookchapters,includingIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Pervasive Computing, Management Science, Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, andExpert Systems with Applications.

KarimAl-Yafiisasoftwareengineerandbusinessanalyst.HeiscurrentlyaResearchFellowinBrunelUniversityBusinessSchool.HeisinvolvedintheFP7EuropeanProjectUbiPOLasatechnicalresearcher,mainlyoccupiedwiththerequirementsanalyses,systemdesign,andthedesignandimplementationofthepolicymakingworkflowengine.Hismainresearchinterestsincludetheuseofmulti-agentsimulationtoevaluatetheemploymentofmobiletechnologiesinserviceenterprises.Hehaspresentedhisresearchthroughmultipleacademicconferenceresearchpapers,notablyattheIEEEInternationalWorkshoponEnablingTechnologies.

VishanthWeerakkodyisafulltimefacultymemberintheBusinessSchoolatBrunelUniversity,UK.HeholdsaMScin‘BusinessSystemsAnalysisandDesign’fromCityUniversityinLondonandaPhDin‘BusinessProcessandInformationSystemsReengineering’fromtheUniversityofHertfordshire.Hiscurrentresearchinterestsincludepublicsectorprocesstransformationandchange,technologyadoptionanddiffusioninthepublicsectorandelectronicgovernment,andhehasguest-editedspecialissuesforleadingjournalsandeditedanumberofbooksonthesethemes.HeisthecurrentEditor-in-ChiefoftheInternational Journal of Electronic Government Research.

RamziEl-HaddadehisafulltimefacultyintheBusinessSchool.HeholdsaPhDinNetworksQoSandMScinDataCommunicationSystems.Hiscurrentresearchinterestsincludetechnol-ogyinfrastructureadoptionandevaluationinadditiontoinformationsecuritymanagementandelectronicgovernment.Hehasguest-editedanumberofspecialissuesofinternationaljournals,andco-chairssessionsoninformationsecurityandtrustinthepublicsectoratinternationalconferences.

ZahirIraniistheHeadofBusinessSchoolandamemberofSenateatBrunelUniversity(UK).Hehasco-authoredateachingtext-bookoninformationsystemsevaluation,andwrittenover200internationallyrefereedpapersandreceivedANBARcitationsofresearchexcellence.Heisontheeditorialboardofseveraljournals,aswellasco-and-mini-trackchairtointernationalconferencessuchasAMCIS,HICSSandEMCIS.HehasreceivednumerousgrantsandawardsfromfundingbodiesthatincludeECFP7,EPSRC,ESRC,RoyalAcademyofEngineering,Aus-tralianResearchCouncil(ARC),QinetiQ,DepartmentofHealthandEU.HeistheEditor-in-ChiefofboththeJournal of Enterprise Information Management andTransforming Government: People, Process and Policy.



AndreaKőgraduatedfromELTE(EötvösLórándUniversityofBudapest)in1988andhasanMScinmathematicsandphysics.SheachievedaPhDincomputersciencein1992.Herresearchinterestsincludesystemsdesign,informationmanagement,intelligentsystems,managementanddesignofontology.SheparticipatedinseveralR&DprojectsincludingSAKE(Semantic-enabledAgileKnowledge-basede-Government),GUIDE(creatingaEuropeanstandardforinteroperableandsecureIdentityManagementArchitectureforeGovernment),ADVISOR(creatingknowledgebasedsystemforthehumanresourcemanagementdomain),COBIR(developinganintelligentsystem supporting IT audit and control activities), the Certified-EU-Manager Leonardo daVincipilotproject,TELEPIAC(implementationofknowledgeandsoftwarerepositorytosup-portelectroniccommerceanddevelopmentofareferenceelectronicshop).Shehaspublishednumerouspapersinherfield.

TuncMedeniisafull-timeresearcherinTurksatandalsoaffiliatedtovariousacademicinsti-tutionsasapart-timestaff.HewasawardedaPhDdegreefromtheJapanAdvancedInstituteofScienceandTechnology(JAIST),Japan;hisMSdegree fromLancasterUniversity in theUK;andhisBSdegreefromBilkentUniversity,Turkey.Hehascontributedtovarious(closeto60innumber)conferencepresentations,bookchapters,andjournalarticlesinhisinterestareassuchasknowledgemanagement,cross-culturallearning,ande-government.HehasbeenawardedscholarshipsandfundingfromNakayamaHayaoFoundation,JAIST,JapaneseState(Mombukagakusho)inJapan,LancasterUniversityinUK,andBilkentUniversityinTurkeyforhiseducationandresearchactivities.

LuisMiguelCampos received his BTech from IST (Instituto Superior Técnico – Lisbon) in1992,hisMSandPhDinInformationandComputerSciencefromtheUniversityofCalifornia,Irvinein1995,and1999respectively.CurrentlyDr.CamposleadsthesoftwaredevelopmentteamatPDM&FCandservesasanexpertevaluatorfortheEuropeanCommissionintheICT.Previously,heworkedasafacultymemberattheUniversityofCaliforniaIrvineandatNASA.HehaspublisheddozensofpapersininternationalconferencesinareasasdiverseasParallelComputing,Agent-BasedComputing,andresourcemanagementinDistributedSystems,Simula-tionTheoryandClusterComputing.

Supporting Public Policy Making Processes with Workflow Technology

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