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Subject: RE: [soa-rm-ra] 'Consumer'


Ken,

“So what would you like to call the resource, the responsible one, and the interacting someone*?”

[Peter:]          That is precisely the problem at hand, at least for the “interacting someone”. We are clear about the concept of who is doing the interacting but not the term. In the RAF, we are clear that a service Consumer is a role played by a Participant in a Service. Consumer sounds too passive/purely commercial. Public sector/government agencies, in the anglo-saxon world at least, increasingly refer to “Customer” for any number of (often highly politicized) reasons:

-          “Consumers”  are what you find on the high street and shopping malls, not in the DMV, social security administration, etc.

-          “Customer” reflects the shift for many government agencies who try to operate on private sector lines and think that the nomenclature also needs to change;

but most importantly,

-          Their “user base” is not restricted to “Citizens” (which is the correct term for the role played by a class of Individuals who interact with Government), but also includes Businesses and other Organizations – the closest equivalent in the RAF would be “People”, as defined in footnote 3 on page 21;

“ * “Customer” sounds like you are buying something and does not have the connotation of one actively shaping the resource.  If anything, it has the connotation of one who is manipulated by the advertising of those trying to sell.  It is likely the most passive term that could have been chosen and the least satisfying of alternatives.  Not that I have a strong opinion on this.”

[Peter:]          Interesting, that was precisely our argument against the use of the term “consumer” in our work on the TGF TC! :-/

 

So the main issues seems to be twofold:

-          Is there a suitable, self-evident, and “politically satisfactory” term that encompasses both citizens and organizations (natural and legal persons) other than “Customer”? – “Persons”/”People” just doesn’t hack it, IMO;

-          IS there a distinction to be made between a service Consumer, in the sense we define it in the RAF; and the sense of a “interacting-someone” who does more than simply consume a service but actually may be involved in the service’s development and use? The conclusion for the RAF is probably that it is not important because we distinguish already between service development and service consumption. For the TGF, however, it is an important distinction precisely because we are looking for a term that encompasses both service consumption and development….

 

Cheers,

Peter

 

Peter F Brown

Independent Consultant

www.peterfbrown.com

P.O. Box 49719, Los Angeles, CA 90049, USA

Tel: +1.310.694.2278

 

From: Ken Laskey [mailto:klaskey@mitre.org]
Sent: Friday, 11 November, 2011 13:35
To: Peter F Brown; soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [soa-rm-ra] 'Consumer'

 

G-d, do I love a good can of worms J

 

There is a resource.  There is the one responsible for making a resource available so someone can interact with the resource, e.g. in the case of a SOA service,  to realize its real world effects.  There is the someone who desires the effects of the interaction (e.g. the real world effects) and engages in (initiates?) the interaction with the resource.  Note the one responsible may also be the someone interacting.

 

The interacting someone may or may not have a satisfying choice in choosing a resource.  (For example, I find Comcast and Verizon equally annoying but those are my major choices for bits coming into my house.)  The interacting someone may be in a fairly passive role or they may find ways to be assertive in what they find unacceptable (or at least able to be improved) about the resource.

 

The responsible one may or may not care much about the opinions of the interacting someone.  If they have monopoly due to market conditions or governance fiat, they tend to be less responsive.  OTOH, the responsible one may pay a great deal of attention to the opinions of the interacting someone, especially if the responsible one has occasion to be an interacting someone.

 

There may be intensions to have a service market and one does not materialize; there may be active intent to bless The One to avoid resource duplication but a market (or at least some alternative) springs up anyway.  This changes the character of the ecosystem and the behavior of the participants, but it does not change the fundamental idea of the resource, the responsible one, and the interacting someone.

 

So what would you like to call the resource, the responsible one, and the interacting someone*?

 

* “Customer” sounds like you are buying something and does not have the connotation of one actively shaping the resource.  If anything, it has the connotation of one who is manipulated by the advertising of those trying to sell.  It is likely the most passive term that could have been chosen and the least satisfying of alternatives.  Not that I have a strong opinion on this.

 

Ken

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Kenneth Laskey

MITRE Corporation, M/S H305              phone: 703-983-7934

7515 Colshire Drive                                    fax:        703-983-1379

McLean VA 22102-7508

 

From: soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Peter F Brown
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 3:28 PM
To: soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [soa-rm-ra] 'Consumer'

 

Over at the OASIS “Transformational Government Framework” TC, we are looking at aligning key terminology in our deliverables with the SOA-RM and RAF. We are already comfortable with Ecosystem, Stakeholder, Actor, Service Provider but we are a bit stuck with Service Consumer.

Consumer would seem to imply a service market in which consumers can pick and choose their providers from competing or complementary offers. In the context of government/public service delivered services, can we really talk about “consumers”, given that they do not have alternative providers of, for example, tax filing, driver license or ID, social security, etc.? Also, the term ‘consumer’ comes over as very ‘passive’ and doesn’t reflect the reality that – at least in terms of many newer-generation government services, the ‘consumer’ is actually promoted as an active stakeholder in the design and delivery of the service.

We are currently using the term “Customer” to embrace all citizen and business interactions with government services because of those reservations about ‘consumer’.

Any thoughts from the SOA community?

 

Cheers,

Peter

 

Peter F Brown

Independent Consultant

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Using Information Technologies to Empower and Transform

www.peterfbrown.com

P.O. Box 49719, Los Angeles, CA 90049, USA

Tel: +1.310.694.2278

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