An Effective Business Process Management System for Delivering Citizen Centric Services
Across the world Governments are creating right governance and institutional mechanisms and setting up core infrastructure and policies for implementing a number of e-Governance Projects. Their aim to create a citizen-centric and business-centric environment for governance. To provide effective citizen services is the single most important objective of all e-Governance initiatives. Several major initiatives have been taken at different levels to meet these objectives such as online application for registration, e-filing of returns, building approvals, waste management in municipalities, certificate issuance, etc.
These processes need to be monitored & controlled, rolled out quickly and changed for delivering new & better services to citizens. Hence there is a need for an effective Business Process Management system for delivering citizen centric services.
What is BPM?
Business process management (BPM) is a holistic management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM attempts to improve processes continuously. It can therefore be described as a process optimization process. BPM tools allow users to:
- Vision - strategize functions and processes
- Define - baseline the process or the process improvement
- Model - simulate the change to the process.
- Analyze - compare the various simulations to determine an optimal improvement
- Improve - select and implement the improvement
- Control - deploy this implementation and by use of User defined dashboards monitor the improvement in real time and feed the performance information back into the simulation model in preparation for the next improvement iteration
- Re-engineer - revamp the processes from scratch for better results
Why BPM is Important?
Now a day the businesses are facing the challenges brought about by globalization and automation. In order for a business organization to ride out the competition, it must learn to compete in both the local and international levels. Businesses therefore must think in a global perspective and adapt to the automation of the market place. BPM improves productivity and shortens cycle times for innovation within an organization. For government agencies this can mean saving money and improving services to citizens by making it easier to interact within departments and across agencies With a good BPM framework, organizations can efficiently and effectively improve their operational performance, manage risk, reduce cost, and create customer value. BPM brings following competitive benefits:
- Time optimization and money savings
- Ensure regulatory compliance and improve government services to citizens by making it easier to modify processes as requirements change.
- Centralization of data and realization of process automation
- Provides effective Change Management to support Government Process Re-engineering (GPR) initiatives
- Improve visibility into processes
Newgen’s Operational Excellence Framework
Achieving Operational Excellence in Delivering Citizen Services through Workflow & Business Process Management
Effective citizen services are the single most important objective of all e- Governance initiatives. Several major initiatives have been taken at the state level to meet these objectives such as online registration, e-filing of returns, building approvals, waste management in municipalities, certificate issuance, etc. These processes are needed to be monitored & controlled, rolled out quickly and changed for delivering new & better services to citizens. Hence there is a need for an effective Business Process Management system for delivering citizen centric services. Critical Success Factors for delivering effective citizen services are:
Ensure Tracking and Monitoring of Citizen Service
To provide effective citizen services, it is imperative to ensure that service requests are responded to in the defined timelines. For achieving this, a system should be put in place for monitoring and tracking of requests. Strong exception handling and escalation capability is also required. Bringing increased visibility through dashboards and monitoring will result in faster response times to citizen requests, leading to better adoption of the system and project success.
For e.g. If time frame of 10 days is defined for issuance of Identity Proof then adherence to the time line would require real time tracking & monitoring of requests. If any exception is found such as 'Date of birth not filled' or "Photograph not clear", it can be routed for taking appropriate action. Such exceptions can be isolated and tracked to closure to ensure the services are delivered to citizens.
Flexible workflow for cross department functioning
Delivering Citizen-centric services requires multiple approvals, workflow, processing etc. These workflows involve lots of human decision-making and are document & form intensive. These workflows require flexibility and cross department functioning. These will require forms to be made available online for citizens to avail the services. These forms need to have the provision of attaching documents and triggering a route for respective departments to process this request.
Effective Change Management to support
Government Process Re-engineering (GPR) initiatives During the implementation of these processes, there is going to be a lot of reengineering involved. The solution for any large e-governance initiative cannot be rigid and should be built for change. To effectively support re-engineering of such government processes there is a strong need for a business process management framework that will give control to the process owner for quick and effective change management. This will also facilitate quick roll out of any new sub-process.
Quick Rollout of new citizen services
E-Governance services are accessed by citizen through online portals, kiosks etc. Once these services are available and being used by citizens, the need to add more and more services becomes meaningful. A strong Business Process Management framework used at the back office to deliver these services can facilitate quick deployment and rollout of new services.
Leveraging existing investments – New Solution co- existence with Legacy Systems
Over a period of time, Government departments have put in a lot of time and effort on automating various individual functions. Many of these applications are fulfilling their objectives but running in silos. One of the critical success factors for the Mission Mode Projects would be the ability for the new solution to co-exist with and leverage the existing IT investments and legacy applications. The BPM Platform provides a framework to integrate these services together and deliver the advantage to citizens quickly without the time consuming process of re-building all applications from scratch.
Using Business Process Management as a platform for building such services will effectively meet the needs of government process reengineering, human centric workflows, monitoring dashboards, quick building and rollout of new services, change management etc.
Applications of BPM in Government
Transparency, efficiency, and enhanced coordination offered by a BPM fall right in line with the broader goals of e-government; thus, a BPM system is a natural choice for a government pursuingan integrated e-government strategy. A BPM system, especially an open source system, can helpmove a government towards open standards and provide increased accountability to citizens, thus providing a great advantage to an integrated e- government project.
Key drivers are: Compliance–Cost Containment– Productivity Improvement–Governance
Some of the application areas for BPM in Government are shown in the diagram.
Example-Case Management using BPM
Case Management is all about assembling the right people, processes, and content, aligning all of your case considerations and providing a structured approach to carry out the case lifecycle from the initial stages to resolution. Any activity that needs to be guided through a logical process for resolution from initiation to completion should be carried out through case management. A case contains the data, content, collaboration artifacts, tasks, milestones, discussions, events, behaviors, policies including rules, and processes supporting how each case is resolved. Today more and more agencies at all levels of government—federal/central, state, and local—are turning to case management solutions to transform their operations and achieve more effective and more efficient service deliver y. Case management requires a combination of different technologies including enterprise content management, business process management, collaboration, and capture, to manage the case file lifecycle.
Information required to process a case exist in multiple formats such as paper, electronic document, image, e-mail, voice mail etc. Newgen's comprehensive capture solution provides the ability to capture various inbound content objects to a Case Folder. Capture solution is well integrated with ECM and BPM suites and is designed to meet the demands of both high-volume centralized production scanning as well as distributed scanning.
Newgen's Distributed Scanning enables organizations to scan documents at branch offices and send them to central location electronically. This significantly reduces process turn-around-time, document shipping cost and risk associated with physical transfer of documents. Automated Data Extraction is supported for both structured documents like account opening forms, and semi-structured documents like invoices using OCR, ICR, MICR and Barcode. Capture of electronic document is supported through a seamless integration with all leading Office document suites and various other content generation products.
Case Management Core Components
Components of Case File Management
Comprehensive Content Capture
Acquisition of Documents of various types from various sources as a single Case File
Information required to process a case exist in multiple format such as paper, electronic document, image, e-mail, voice mail etc. Newgen's Comprehensive Capture Solution provides ability to capture various inbound content objects to a Case Folder. Capture solution is well integrated with ECM and BPM suites and is designed to meet the demands of both high-volume centralized production scanning as well as distributed scanning. Newgen's Distributed Scanning enables organizations to scan documents at branch offices and send them to central location electronically. This significantly reduces process turnaround- time, document shipping cost and risk associated with physical transfer of documents. Automated Data Extraction is supported for both structured documents like account opening forms, and semi-structured documents like invoices using OCR, ICR, MICR and Barcode. Capture of electronic documents is supported through a good integration with all leading office document suites and various other content generation products.
Comprehensive Content Capture
Case File (Case Templates)
A Case File is a model for a particular type of case. It represents a hybrid compound Case Folder consisting of scanned documents, electronic documents, forms, To-do list, Notes etc. A Case File consists of both tools for interactive task and event triggers for any action. A Case File modeled through advance set of tools available in Newgen's BPM suite provides a highly efficient functional case processing view for Government knowledge workers.
Case Events
External events include receipt of a phone call, letter, fax, or email related to the case. The contents of that message are added to the case folder, and new tasks or processes may be created. Internal events include assignments and business rules. Case workers assign tasks and initiate processes. Business rules within the case may automatically create and assign tasks or perform fully automated actions based on either external event, completion of other case tasks, or expiration of task deadlines. Case progresses by means of events, both internal and external. All the component tasks and documents announce their status changes through events.
Unified Case Management framework based on BPM and ECM Platform
Unified and Integrated case management framework demands processing and assignment of work both as ad- hoc and structured automated steps, handling of exceptions and escalations, dashboards for monitoring and control with content and communication management capabilities.
Process Modeler
Newgen's Process Modeler with user friendly GUI helps design processes using BPMN notations. Case workers with minimal training can easily design case movement processes with automated content management and configurable process and rule changes. Case file processing model including forms, document types, to- do lists, events, triggers, process definition, rules etc. is configured using process modeler.
Robust Process Engine for executing and orchestrating transactions in real time
The BPEL compliant business process automation engine executes process instances created in the process modeler. Newgen provides rule and role based routing. Filter based user assignment supports dynamic load balancing for optimal resource utilization. Process engine also provides messaging services through mail and SMS.
Comprehensive Document Management
Case-related information is generally received and managed in the form of business documents. Thus a case management platform must include a complete document management system, a comprehensive facility for creating, capturing, indexing, storing, finding, viewing, sharing, editing, versioning, and retaining a wide variety of document types. While common ones can be required by the case template; others may be added ad-hoc at runtime. A single document may be referenced by multiple cases, and its lifetime is independent of the cases that use it. Newgen's Document Management Engine is highly optimized to store and retrieve very high volumes of documents. It has capabilities like image replication for multi-location deployment, caching and pre-fetching that significantly improves user access time and optimizes load on bandwidth. Precise metadata-based search capabilities, library services, access permissions and version control helps faster access and better management of documents in a controlled environment.
Output Management System
Output management system allows for automated output content generation from the case management system, this facilitates correspondence, alerts, notifications and template generations through consolidation of various data sources and linking them to the case file reference.
Record Management System - Long term archival of Case Records
Case Management requires retention policies, incorporation of implicit records classification and life cycle management of case content. Once a case file is closed, it is archived in RMS & retention policies are applied. Newgen Case Management Suite has certified Records Management to comply with regulatory and legal policies for long-term archival of content.
Business Activity Monitoring
The term 'Business Activity Monitoring' refers to the aggregation, analysis and presentation of real time information about activities inside organizations involving customers and partners. A Business Activity can either be a business process that is orchestrated by Business Process Management (BPM) software, or a business process that is a series of activities spanning multiple systems and applications. The business activity monitoring tool by Newgen is an enterprise solution to provide a real time summary of business activities to operations managers and upper management. BAM is a platform independent, scalable Business Process Management solution that offers monitoring of organizational business processes. Built using open technologies, it has seamless integration abilities allowing it to be introduced into any IT infrastructure. BAM gives end to end visibility into business processes, by providing accurate information about the status and results of various operations, processes and transactions so that a user can address the problem areas and resolve the issues within his/her business process.
Management Dashboards
