Workflow

["Tor Haug" <tor.haug@c2i.net>]

OASIS/eGov Workflow Standards

Comments from EPR (Electronic processes)

Tor Haug February 26^th 2004  

 

The purpose of EPR – is to

• Organize information and working tools in a common way in all applications.
• Give humans in work and in collaboration needed information and working tools in an effective way.

In a way you might look upon EPR and the content in the folders as Workflow Management System – according to the definition of workflow (2.)

 

EPR organize workflow and is integrated in the folders. The main purpose is to give assistance to work. I feel that we don’t need standardization of assistance in work (perhaps). What wee need to standardize upon is the flow – different needs in different situation.

 

The folders in EPR might have 3 sections – steering cards

• Document card
• Work flow card – organizing administrative and technical tasks in processes
• Job card – describing and reporting physical jobs.

All three sections need flow functions. The draft of the EPR standard says this about workflow card:

(http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/bcm-epr/document.php?document_id=5442)

 

Work flow card   

The basis for work flow card is tasks in the administrative routines. The purpose will be to give support to execution of the administrative tasks and the work flow in itself. 

The work flow must be managed by a simple system for work flow (in itself). The functions must include:

- Transfer a case to the next operation – also to an other company or other enterprise

-  Parallell case consideration  

-  Follow up case consideration

-  Individual help 

- Time consumpton and time of flow

 

The tasks might often consist of filling in forms. An alternative might be that the user answer questions which will be a kind of decision support. The result will be presented in forms. The same principle can be used in communication with legacy systems.

Communication with legacy systems will often be essential in the administrative routines. Whether the user is satisfied with the communication, or the communication should be restructured in relation to the tasks in the routine, must be evaluated in each case.  

 

Our plan is to revise the draft in near future. The next version must be more precise. It will also be a help if we can refer to a standard for work flow .

The flow functions must not be to detailed and based on automatic flow. An example of too rigorous solutions is Flowmark from IBM in late 90’ties. Too detailed role based and automatic flow will be in conflict with dynamic demands to eprAPL (applications).   

I suggest that the subcommittee of BCM – eprXML – will define tools to handle flow functions.  

Tor Haug
tor.haug@c2i.net
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