The introduction of online public services may be hold new opportunities for citizens and businesses creating new value in their everyday activities. A key element in guaranteeing equal opportunities for all is making these services better, more accessible, and more cost-effective. Due to limited resources, Small and Medium sized Public Organizations are hampered in their efforts to provide suitable online services. In Italy, for instance, there are six thousands municipalities that cover a specific geographic region serving less than five thousands citizens usually located in rural or isolated area. These small authorities risk to be out from the actuation of many innovative programs for (at least) three main reasons: (i) the impossibility to get proper funds for the realization of innovative processes, (ii) the lack of adequate skills to support innovation and (iii) the lack of proper technological infrastructures. The primary aim of this research is to support Small and Medium sized Public Organizations in confronting these demanding challenges concerning their ability to provide next generation of online public services. In particular, we introduce a Shared Services environment to achieve operational efficiency among public organizations in a cost-effective way. A Shared Services environment is a collaborative strategy in which a subset of existing functions are concentrated into a new, semi-autonomous organizational unit that has a management structure designed to promote efficiency, value generation, cost savings, and improved service for the internal groups of the involved organizations. Our work uses the concept of Shared Services to share administrative processes among Small and Medium Sized Organizations. In this way, each organization can focus on its core activities and improve organisational competences. The result is the delivering of more citizen and business-centric services. In this work, each single organization separates the operational processes from the administrative ones that are instead shared among different organizations reducing duplicate efforts. This allows organizations to develop their strategic functions while optimizing investments by sharing services and resources of common interest. These services are concentrated and supplied by means of a modular architecture based on reusable building blocks. Our contribution is currently under experimentation and involves around the eighty per cent of rural authorities of Le Marche region (in the middle of Italy). The regional authority, Regione Marche, has a coordination role because it has the authority to manage the cooperation among underlying authorities (such as municipal districts). It is also able to plan and detect proper strategies within its territory.

Online Public Service Delivery for Small and Medium sized Organizations

RIGANELLI, Oliviero
2009-01-01

Abstract

The introduction of online public services may be hold new opportunities for citizens and businesses creating new value in their everyday activities. A key element in guaranteeing equal opportunities for all is making these services better, more accessible, and more cost-effective. Due to limited resources, Small and Medium sized Public Organizations are hampered in their efforts to provide suitable online services. In Italy, for instance, there are six thousands municipalities that cover a specific geographic region serving less than five thousands citizens usually located in rural or isolated area. These small authorities risk to be out from the actuation of many innovative programs for (at least) three main reasons: (i) the impossibility to get proper funds for the realization of innovative processes, (ii) the lack of adequate skills to support innovation and (iii) the lack of proper technological infrastructures. The primary aim of this research is to support Small and Medium sized Public Organizations in confronting these demanding challenges concerning their ability to provide next generation of online public services. In particular, we introduce a Shared Services environment to achieve operational efficiency among public organizations in a cost-effective way. A Shared Services environment is a collaborative strategy in which a subset of existing functions are concentrated into a new, semi-autonomous organizational unit that has a management structure designed to promote efficiency, value generation, cost savings, and improved service for the internal groups of the involved organizations. Our work uses the concept of Shared Services to share administrative processes among Small and Medium Sized Organizations. In this way, each organization can focus on its core activities and improve organisational competences. The result is the delivering of more citizen and business-centric services. In this work, each single organization separates the operational processes from the administrative ones that are instead shared among different organizations reducing duplicate efforts. This allows organizations to develop their strategic functions while optimizing investments by sharing services and resources of common interest. These services are concentrated and supplied by means of a modular architecture based on reusable building blocks. Our contribution is currently under experimentation and involves around the eighty per cent of rural authorities of Le Marche region (in the middle of Italy). The regional authority, Regione Marche, has a coordination role because it has the authority to manage the cooperation among underlying authorities (such as municipal districts). It is also able to plan and detect proper strategies within its territory.
2009
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11581/401926
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