Business process automation was traditionally the field of workflow management (WfM) and business processes consisted mostly of human performed activities without using functionality offered by information systems. Nowadays, a shift from WfM towards BPM (Business Process Management) is occurring, where on top of the design, configuration, and enactment of business processes, also a module to analyze these processes is present (Van der Aalst, Hofstede, & Weske, 2003). Although Web service orchestration is a very promising technology, the developments in the orchestration market go rapidly. Orchestra- tion servers are incorporating more and more levels of functionality. It is expected that future BPM products will be more and more capable to deal with invoking Web services and that BPEL implementations will offer more and more advanced workflow capabilities, or in other words that the paradigms behind Web service technology and business process management (BPM) will merge slowly (Zhao & Cheng, 2005).
We also observe that the Enterprise Application Integration market is converging with the Workflow/BPM market with as a provisional climax the acquiring of leading BPM-vendor Staffware by Enterprise Application Integrator Tibco (Tibco, 2004). Considering the current
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momentum behind BPEL, other BPM vendors are expected to support BPEL in the near future, all resulting in large BPM or business process integration suites with BPEL support that are capable of coupling applications, processes, and businesses.
Conclusion
The objective of this chapter is to investigate the feasibility of Web service orchestration technology for the automation of cross-agency processes. Based on a case study of cross- governmental service-delivery processes at a business counter and using a prototype we conclude that Web services and Web service orchestration in particular have huge potential for the automation of governmental cross agency service-delivery processes. We also conclude that the following three categories of organizational-oriented issues need to be addressed when implementing Web services orchestration for automating cross-agency processes to leverage the full potential of Web service orchestration technology: (1) ensuring the correct and in-time execution of subprocesses, (2) facilitating the sharing of information among the agencies, and (3) allocating responsibilities and ensuring accountability among agen- cies participating in the cross-agency processes. Further research focuses on supporting public managers in dealing with these issues when designing their automated cross-agency processes.
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