Barbara Re | Università degli studi di Camerino UNICAM (original) (raw)

Papers by Barbara Re

Business Process flexibility supports organizations in changing their everyday work activities to... more Business Process flexibility supports organizations in changing their everyday work activities to remain competitive. Since much research has been done on this topic a better awareness on the current state of knowledge is needed. This paper reports the results of a systematic literature review to develop a map on Business Process flexibility with a special focus on software systems related aspects. It covers a spectrum of the state of the art from academic point of view. It includes 164 research works from the main computer science digital libraries. After an introduction into the topic the applied methodology is described. The output of the paper is in the form of schemes and reflections. Starting from the needs for Business Process flexibility, its impact on Business Process life-cycle is introduced. Successively instruments used to express and to support Business Process flexibility are presented together with related validation scenarios. In this paper we also highlight possible future research lines needing further investigations. In particular we identified room for future works in the area of languages for modeling flexibility, on-the-fly verification solutions, adaptation of Business Process running instances, and techniques for evolution recognition.

2015 IIAI 4th International Congress on Advanced Applied Informatics, 2015

Business Process Management Journal, 2015

The introduction of e-Government services and applications leads to significant changes in the st... more The introduction of e-Government services and applications leads to significant changes in the structure and organization of Public Administrations. In this paper we investigate the basic services needed by Regione Marche to offer accesses to available e-Services. In this setting, of course, the "Digital Identity" plays an important role. We present a general framework for shared and standardized services that supports specific mechanisms of authentication. The Regione Marche provides an interesting benchmark in Participatory Design e-Government. We explain the use of the presented framework together with smart cards technologies for the Digital Identity.

Several Italian Regions develop e-Government solutions with the aim to increase interactions betw... more Several Italian Regions develop e-Government solutions with the aim to increase interactions between Public Administrations (PAs) and users through the use of infrastructures builded around citizens needs. In order to reach a flexible system we take into consideration basic functionalities to solve key questions in e-Government domain. Aspects as authentication and authorization, service publishing and discovery as well as composition are fundamental to build efficient and effective architectures. We present a case study about shared and standardize services that integrates them into a Web portal for Italian citizens and firms. In particular, 'Marche Region' provides an interesting benchmark in e-Government solution development.

L'adozione di standard di metadati rappresenta un elemento fondamentale per la realizzazione dell... more L'adozione di standard di metadati rappresenta un elemento fondamentale per la realizzazione della piena interoperabilità tra sistemi informativi eterogenei. La loro applicazione, infatti, permette di definire una rappresentazione efficiente ed efficace della realtà inerente il dominio di riferimento verificando, al tempo stesso, lo scambio di informazioni tra soggetti che cooperano per il raggiungimento di un obiettivo specifico. Con questo lavoro si vuole offrire una review dell'applicazione dei metadati nel dominio e-Government discutendone l'importanza. Inoltre, si propone un'infrastruttura basata su metadati per la rappresentazione di processi e documenti capace di garantire l'interoperabilità tra sistemi informativi.

The increasing size and heterogeneity of the Information Systems in the Public Administrations ar... more The increasing size and heterogeneity of the Information Systems in the Public Administrations are forcing the use of reference models and policies to manage their complexity. Enterprise Architecture has been developed all around the world to introduce a strategic planning frameworks and to align Information Systems with the government functions that it support. The European and Italian scenarios recognize the role of Enterprise Architecture, among the others, to govern Public Administrations interaction with other stakeholders. Regional government represents technological and governance enablers for the local administrations, in most of the case municipalities, during the development of digital administrations according to the national and European guidelines. In this way it is possible to support Public Administrations innovation focusing on small scale local challenges. In this paper we present the Marche Region experience for what concern the applicative cooperation policies deployment according to the reference Enterprise Architecture.

Public Administrations provisioning of services to citizens through information and communication... more Public Administrations provisioning of services to citizens through information and communication technologies (ICT) is rapidly increasing in the European Countries. Nevertheless the increasing rate, with reference to access and usage of e-services, does not follow a corresponding trend. Nowadays Public Administrations deliver many electronic services, but they are seldom used by citizens. Many reasons can be provided to justify such a situation. In this paper we suggest that specific characteristics of the e-service delivery process strongly affect access by citizens. In particular we provide a four dimensional quality framework for business process e-service delivery evaluation. Correspondingly we define process design guidelines that could help in designing and delivering e-services fostering real usage by citizens. A first experiment in applying the framework is reported.

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2015

In complex organizations Business Processes tends to exist in different variants that typically s... more In complex organizations Business Processes tends to exist in different variants that typically share objectives and part of their structure. In recent years it has been recognized that the explicit modeling of variability can brings important benefits to organizations that can more easily reflect on their behavior and more efficiently structure their activities and processes. Particularly interesting in this respect is the situation of the Public Administration that delivers the same service using many different and replicated processes. The management of such complexity ask for methods explicitly supporting the modeling of variability aspects for Business Processes. In this paper we present a novel notation to describe variability of Business Processes and an approach to successively derive process variants. The notation takes inspiration from feature modeling approaches and has been implemented in a real tool using the ADOxx platform. The notation, and the corresponding approach, seems particularly suitable for the Public Administration context, and it has been actually experimented in a complex real scenario.

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2015

Focusing on the relationship between behavioural and information perspectives in this paper we pr... more Focusing on the relationship between behavioural and information perspectives in this paper we present an approach to support flexibility of Business Processes. The approach extends Feature Model descriptions with data-objects in order to derive process fragments and process variants. The approach has been applied to a data-intensive scenario such as the reporting activity of EU projects with encouraging results.

Proceedings of the 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing - SAC '14, 2014

Modern software systems are more and more deployed within moving and continuously changing contex... more Modern software systems are more and more deployed within moving and continuously changing contexts. It is not easy to consider all the possible contexts configurations/variances at priori, or it is quite cumbersome and error prone to list and program all this variability points at development time. For such a reason different research trends try to develop mechanisms to express, analyse and support the dynamic adaptation of a software system while it is running.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014

Smart city can be considered as a process-intensive environment that needs to be as flexible as p... more Smart city can be considered as a process-intensive environment that needs to be as flexible as possible to support a continuously evolving scenario. In this paper we present an approach to support flexibility of Business Processes regulating the behaviour of ICT systems deployed within a smart city. The approach permits to deal with large collections of process variants thanks to the integration of Business Process notations and Feature Model descriptions. The approach is applied to a smart mobility scenario with a specific focus on bike sharing systems.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

The Public Administration domain is characterized by the dominance of inter-organizational Busine... more The Public Administration domain is characterized by the dominance of inter-organizational Business Processes. These are a set of interrelated and sequential activities shared and executed by two or more Public Administration officies to achieve a business objective that is of value to citizens or companies in term of services. A Business Process results from the un-trivial integration of internal administration processes, so that structural problems such as livelock or deadlock may easily occur and in reality they are generally solved by involved civil servants. Nevertheless with the shift versus an electronic government this problem becomes particularly relevant. The paper presents a suitable approach for inter-organizational Business Process detection of livelock and deadlock situations. In particular, we introduce an approach to directly verify a Business Process modeled using the BPMN 2.0 semi-formal notation. The verification uses a state evaluation technique with an optimized unfolding algorithm considering specific BPMN 2.0 characteristics. A plugin for the Eclipse platform has been also developed, which permits to have an integrated environment in which to design Business Process, using the Eclipse BPMN 2.0 Modeler, and to automatically verify it. The approach and the tool prototype have been successfully applied to real scenarios such as family reunion, grant citizenship and buoncer registration.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2010

Research works and surveys focusing on e-Government Digital Services availability and usage, reve... more Research works and surveys focusing on e-Government Digital Services availability and usage, reveal that often services are available but ignored by citizens. In our hypothesis this situation can be justified since defined service delivery processes do not sufficiently take into account social aspects and mainly focus just on technical aspects. Domain knowledge, related to how delivering high quality e-Government Digital Services, remains in most of the case in the mind of e-government stakeholders.

2010 Third International Conference on Communication Theory, Reliability, and Quality of Service, 2010

I.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

2012 12th International Conference on Quality Software, 2012

Business process analysis is one of the most important and complex activities of Business Process... more Business process analysis is one of the most important and complex activities of Business Process Management. Business processes are typically defined by business experts which ask for graphical and user-friendly notations. Nevertheless most notations used typically lack precisely defined semantics limiting the possibility of analysis to informal approaches such as observation techniques. To support formal verification techniques it is necessary to define a precise mapping between the adopted user-friendly notation and a formal language.

For more than a decade e-Commerce and e-Government applications have made major impacts in their ... more For more than a decade e-Commerce and e-Government applications have made major impacts in their respective sectors, private and public. Some time ago, we presented early insights from a comparative study of the two phenomena. This paper reports on more robust findings from an ongoing empirical investigation and deepens our understanding of similarities and differences between e-Commerce and e-Government. The findings show that despite major similarities the two phenomena follow quite separate and distinct trajectories.

In this paper we propose a collaborative Business Process modeling approach where multiple stakeh... more In this paper we propose a collaborative Business Process modeling approach where multiple stakeholders can be coordinate considering global and local views on Business Processes. In the modeling phase we use a standard language such as BPMN 2.0 that provides both local view, via collaboration specification, and global view, via choreography models specification. The approach provides support also for analysis activities aiming at reconciling local and global views to effectively and efficiently derive inter-organizational Business Processes. For the analysis phase we adapted well known verification approaches in order to check behavioral constraints.

Business Process flexibility supports organizations in changing their everyday work activities to... more Business Process flexibility supports organizations in changing their everyday work activities to remain competitive. Since much research has been done on this topic a better awareness on the current state of knowledge is needed. This paper reports the results of a systematic literature review to develop a map on Business Process flexibility with a special focus on software systems related aspects. It covers a spectrum of the state of the art from academic point of view. It includes 164 research works from the main computer science digital libraries. After an introduction into the topic the applied methodology is described. The output of the paper is in the form of schemes and reflections. Starting from the needs for Business Process flexibility, its impact on Business Process life-cycle is introduced. Successively instruments used to express and to support Business Process flexibility are presented together with related validation scenarios. In this paper we also highlight possible future research lines needing further investigations. In particular we identified room for future works in the area of languages for modeling flexibility, on-the-fly verification solutions, adaptation of Business Process running instances, and techniques for evolution recognition.

2015 IIAI 4th International Congress on Advanced Applied Informatics, 2015

Business Process Management Journal, 2015

The introduction of e-Government services and applications leads to significant changes in the st... more The introduction of e-Government services and applications leads to significant changes in the structure and organization of Public Administrations. In this paper we investigate the basic services needed by Regione Marche to offer accesses to available e-Services. In this setting, of course, the "Digital Identity" plays an important role. We present a general framework for shared and standardized services that supports specific mechanisms of authentication. The Regione Marche provides an interesting benchmark in Participatory Design e-Government. We explain the use of the presented framework together with smart cards technologies for the Digital Identity.

Several Italian Regions develop e-Government solutions with the aim to increase interactions betw... more Several Italian Regions develop e-Government solutions with the aim to increase interactions between Public Administrations (PAs) and users through the use of infrastructures builded around citizens needs. In order to reach a flexible system we take into consideration basic functionalities to solve key questions in e-Government domain. Aspects as authentication and authorization, service publishing and discovery as well as composition are fundamental to build efficient and effective architectures. We present a case study about shared and standardize services that integrates them into a Web portal for Italian citizens and firms. In particular, 'Marche Region' provides an interesting benchmark in e-Government solution development.

L'adozione di standard di metadati rappresenta un elemento fondamentale per la realizzazione dell... more L'adozione di standard di metadati rappresenta un elemento fondamentale per la realizzazione della piena interoperabilità tra sistemi informativi eterogenei. La loro applicazione, infatti, permette di definire una rappresentazione efficiente ed efficace della realtà inerente il dominio di riferimento verificando, al tempo stesso, lo scambio di informazioni tra soggetti che cooperano per il raggiungimento di un obiettivo specifico. Con questo lavoro si vuole offrire una review dell'applicazione dei metadati nel dominio e-Government discutendone l'importanza. Inoltre, si propone un'infrastruttura basata su metadati per la rappresentazione di processi e documenti capace di garantire l'interoperabilità tra sistemi informativi.

The increasing size and heterogeneity of the Information Systems in the Public Administrations ar... more The increasing size and heterogeneity of the Information Systems in the Public Administrations are forcing the use of reference models and policies to manage their complexity. Enterprise Architecture has been developed all around the world to introduce a strategic planning frameworks and to align Information Systems with the government functions that it support. The European and Italian scenarios recognize the role of Enterprise Architecture, among the others, to govern Public Administrations interaction with other stakeholders. Regional government represents technological and governance enablers for the local administrations, in most of the case municipalities, during the development of digital administrations according to the national and European guidelines. In this way it is possible to support Public Administrations innovation focusing on small scale local challenges. In this paper we present the Marche Region experience for what concern the applicative cooperation policies deployment according to the reference Enterprise Architecture.

Public Administrations provisioning of services to citizens through information and communication... more Public Administrations provisioning of services to citizens through information and communication technologies (ICT) is rapidly increasing in the European Countries. Nevertheless the increasing rate, with reference to access and usage of e-services, does not follow a corresponding trend. Nowadays Public Administrations deliver many electronic services, but they are seldom used by citizens. Many reasons can be provided to justify such a situation. In this paper we suggest that specific characteristics of the e-service delivery process strongly affect access by citizens. In particular we provide a four dimensional quality framework for business process e-service delivery evaluation. Correspondingly we define process design guidelines that could help in designing and delivering e-services fostering real usage by citizens. A first experiment in applying the framework is reported.

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2015

In complex organizations Business Processes tends to exist in different variants that typically s... more In complex organizations Business Processes tends to exist in different variants that typically share objectives and part of their structure. In recent years it has been recognized that the explicit modeling of variability can brings important benefits to organizations that can more easily reflect on their behavior and more efficiently structure their activities and processes. Particularly interesting in this respect is the situation of the Public Administration that delivers the same service using many different and replicated processes. The management of such complexity ask for methods explicitly supporting the modeling of variability aspects for Business Processes. In this paper we present a novel notation to describe variability of Business Processes and an approach to successively derive process variants. The notation takes inspiration from feature modeling approaches and has been implemented in a real tool using the ADOxx platform. The notation, and the corresponding approach, seems particularly suitable for the Public Administration context, and it has been actually experimented in a complex real scenario.

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2015

Focusing on the relationship between behavioural and information perspectives in this paper we pr... more Focusing on the relationship between behavioural and information perspectives in this paper we present an approach to support flexibility of Business Processes. The approach extends Feature Model descriptions with data-objects in order to derive process fragments and process variants. The approach has been applied to a data-intensive scenario such as the reporting activity of EU projects with encouraging results.

Proceedings of the 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing - SAC '14, 2014

Modern software systems are more and more deployed within moving and continuously changing contex... more Modern software systems are more and more deployed within moving and continuously changing contexts. It is not easy to consider all the possible contexts configurations/variances at priori, or it is quite cumbersome and error prone to list and program all this variability points at development time. For such a reason different research trends try to develop mechanisms to express, analyse and support the dynamic adaptation of a software system while it is running.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014

Smart city can be considered as a process-intensive environment that needs to be as flexible as p... more Smart city can be considered as a process-intensive environment that needs to be as flexible as possible to support a continuously evolving scenario. In this paper we present an approach to support flexibility of Business Processes regulating the behaviour of ICT systems deployed within a smart city. The approach permits to deal with large collections of process variants thanks to the integration of Business Process notations and Feature Model descriptions. The approach is applied to a smart mobility scenario with a specific focus on bike sharing systems.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

The Public Administration domain is characterized by the dominance of inter-organizational Busine... more The Public Administration domain is characterized by the dominance of inter-organizational Business Processes. These are a set of interrelated and sequential activities shared and executed by two or more Public Administration officies to achieve a business objective that is of value to citizens or companies in term of services. A Business Process results from the un-trivial integration of internal administration processes, so that structural problems such as livelock or deadlock may easily occur and in reality they are generally solved by involved civil servants. Nevertheless with the shift versus an electronic government this problem becomes particularly relevant. The paper presents a suitable approach for inter-organizational Business Process detection of livelock and deadlock situations. In particular, we introduce an approach to directly verify a Business Process modeled using the BPMN 2.0 semi-formal notation. The verification uses a state evaluation technique with an optimized unfolding algorithm considering specific BPMN 2.0 characteristics. A plugin for the Eclipse platform has been also developed, which permits to have an integrated environment in which to design Business Process, using the Eclipse BPMN 2.0 Modeler, and to automatically verify it. The approach and the tool prototype have been successfully applied to real scenarios such as family reunion, grant citizenship and buoncer registration.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2010

Research works and surveys focusing on e-Government Digital Services availability and usage, reve... more Research works and surveys focusing on e-Government Digital Services availability and usage, reveal that often services are available but ignored by citizens. In our hypothesis this situation can be justified since defined service delivery processes do not sufficiently take into account social aspects and mainly focus just on technical aspects. Domain knowledge, related to how delivering high quality e-Government Digital Services, remains in most of the case in the mind of e-government stakeholders.

2010 Third International Conference on Communication Theory, Reliability, and Quality of Service, 2010

I.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

2012 12th International Conference on Quality Software, 2012

Business process analysis is one of the most important and complex activities of Business Process... more Business process analysis is one of the most important and complex activities of Business Process Management. Business processes are typically defined by business experts which ask for graphical and user-friendly notations. Nevertheless most notations used typically lack precisely defined semantics limiting the possibility of analysis to informal approaches such as observation techniques. To support formal verification techniques it is necessary to define a precise mapping between the adopted user-friendly notation and a formal language.

For more than a decade e-Commerce and e-Government applications have made major impacts in their ... more For more than a decade e-Commerce and e-Government applications have made major impacts in their respective sectors, private and public. Some time ago, we presented early insights from a comparative study of the two phenomena. This paper reports on more robust findings from an ongoing empirical investigation and deepens our understanding of similarities and differences between e-Commerce and e-Government. The findings show that despite major similarities the two phenomena follow quite separate and distinct trajectories.

In this paper we propose a collaborative Business Process modeling approach where multiple stakeh... more In this paper we propose a collaborative Business Process modeling approach where multiple stakeholders can be coordinate considering global and local views on Business Processes. In the modeling phase we use a standard language such as BPMN 2.0 that provides both local view, via collaboration specification, and global view, via choreography models specification. The approach provides support also for analysis activities aiming at reconciling local and global views to effectively and efficiently derive inter-organizational Business Processes. For the analysis phase we adapted well known verification approaches in order to check behavioral constraints.