Data-centric workflows in government: a new avenue of research?

  • Authors:

  • Hans J. (Jochen) Scholl;Theresa A. Pardo

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Washington, Mary Gates Hall, Seattle, WA;University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Digital Government Research Conference on Public Administration Online: Challenges and Opportunities
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

A focus on organizing and implementing workflows in government from a standpoint of data awareness, or even data centricity might provide opportunities to address several of the challenges facing governments efforts to improve government effectiveness and efficiency as well as interoperation between government entities. The notion of data-aware, as opposed to data-unaware, or just process-centric workflows, is based on taking into account and using the particular enactments and instance-specific data in the workflow itself and beyond its single instance. In other words, on the one hand, workflows "process" data; however, through their enactments and instances, on the other hand, workflows "are" data--ready as inputs for other workflows including cross-process enactment mining and analyses. To be useful as a strategy in government, we need to explore how data-centric approaches can tackle the specific challenges of government such as the ill-structured or semi-structured workflows found in emergency and disaster response management and we need to better understand the specific constraints, under which (intra- and cross-agency) data-centric workflows can be designed and implemented. This paper lays out a research agenda that will inform questions about the issues with and the potential of the data-centric approach in the context of government.