Conceptual framework for the development of an e-government licensing system

The term electronic government (e-government) is widely used to describe the utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to digitize government functions and procedures. One of the e-government system's most used functionality is issuing licenses to citizens and businesses. Governments usually develop centralized e-government licensing systems to issue a specific license type, hence limiting the possibility of system expansion and integration with other government bodies. However, a flexible solution enabling a platform for the rapid transformation of specific and various license-issuing processes and integration with other government bodies could reduce the time and cost of e-government projects. This paper presents such a novel e-government licensing framework developed with the waterfall methodology and implemented in Serbia. Firstly, the system requirements were set as flexible, low coding, continuous improvement, and digital transformation of all government licensing processes. Secondly, a generic government licensing process containing recurring activities was identified as the BPMN process model. The process is then integrated with horizontal e-services such as Government Service Bus, Electronic Identification(eID), eDelivery, eNotify, eSeal, ePayment, and National Government Portal. The main contribution of this approach is the attempt to automate and manage licensing process through a Business Process Management engine to achieve a low-coding and flexible development and maintenance environment. The designed e-government licensing framework was successfully applied to transform and digitalize Serbia's e-services into a standardized, integrated platform, where e-services are designed as a customizable e-licensing process and managed through Business Process Management software.