Standards and architectures for e-government applications

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In Germany, the Federal Government's “ Coordination and Advice Center for Information Technology in the Federal Administration ” ( KBSt ) published the document Standards and Architectures for E-Government Applications ( SAGA ) as part of the BundOnline 2005 initiative Version 5.0 has been available since November 2011. After the conclusion of BundOnline, SAGA will be continued as a technical specification of the federal IT strategy.

aims

The objectives pursued with the document are primarily interoperability , reusability , openness, reduction of costs and risks as well as the scalability of e-government applications. To achieve these goals, SAGA gives a series of recommendations regarding architecture, infrastructure and standards and technologies to be used in e-government projects of the federal administration.

Contents of SAGA

In SAGA, all relevant areas of e-government applications are considered. This ranges from recommendations for software architecture, methods for data and process modeling (from SAGA 3.0) to specifications for a secure infrastructure. The recommendations on standards and technologies are often seen as the heart of the document. Specifications in this area relate to B. Standards for data description (e.g. XML , XSD ), middleware technologies (e.g. Java EE , .NET ), security standards (e.g. ISIS-MTT ) and exchange formats for various file types such as texts, images, Audio and video files.

SAGA as an interoperability framework

SAGA is the Government Interoperability Framework of the German Federal Administration and is published in German and English. Other countries such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, India or Brazil have developed comparable frameworks that serve as a decision-making aid for the use of technical standards in the field of e-government.

South Africa was the first country to use the ISO-certified ODF , e.g. B. in the free office package OpenOffice.org for word processing and spreadsheets, prescribed as a mandatory interoperability standard.

The inclusion of the ODF format as a recommended standard in Germany took place with the publication of SAGA 4.0.

The European Commission supports the EU member states through the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) for Pan-European eGovernment Services (PEGS).

User participation

In order to take into account the interests of users when updating SAGA, the Federal Commissioner for Information Technology (BfIT) (also "CIO-Bund", currently Klaus Vitt ) has set up public discussion forums on its website. a. Proposals for standards are accepted and the application of SAGA is discussed. Furthermore, an expert group consisting of representatives from business (e.g. Adobe , BITKOM , IBM , Microsoft , Oracle , SAP , sd & m , Sun Microsystems ), science and administration was set up, which is involved in the further development of SAGA.

Public discussion about SAGA

The establishment of certain “open” standards and technologies suggests that a. a monoculture shaped by only one or a few software manufacturers should be avoided and, in particular, the dominance of Microsoft products should be suppressed. While the relevant specifications are welcomed by many users and IT service providers, other IT service providers who, for example, B. on the Microsoft development environment .NET ( ASPX ), excluded from the competition for public contracts. Since the publication of SAGA 3.0 in particular, there has even been talk of a serious market distortion, since selected technical solutions are increasingly being prescribed or excluded.

The document is also controversial among users (federal authorities, some federal states and municipalities) because of its too narrow and too numerous specifications.

It is also criticized that the specification of today's mainstream procedures could impede future innovative and alternative software technologies (e.g. newer " Smart Client " -based concepts from IBM and Microsoft) and thus technical progress as a whole. The excess of standardization does not lead to the desired cost reduction, but on the contrary to serious additional costs.

For all these reasons, SAGA is very controversial in the German IT industry and in administration.

On the other hand, there are various projects at federal, state and local level in which SAGA has been successfully applied. The adaptation of the basic principles of SAGA for comparable frameworks in German federal states (e.g. Brandenburg) and other states (e.g. SAGA.ch in Switzerland) speak for the importance and at least partially achieved acceptance for the document. The University of Mannheim examined the level of awareness and acceptance of the SAGA document for local authorities: in March 2007, a survey was sent to 214 member communities of the German Association of Cities . The results of the study show that almost 90% of the municipalities are aware of the SAGA document, although not consistently in favor of it. It was also determined that the most used part of SAGA is the chapter with the classifications of technical standards.

The industry association BITKOM , which represents the IT industry concerned, on the other hand, criticizes the lack of technology neutrality very clearly and points to a serious disadvantage for medium-sized providers in public tenders, etc. a. because of the particularly controversial “SAGA conformity”, which is increasingly used as an exclusion criterion.

More recent efforts aim at a more open discussion and further development of SAGA. a. a semi-public discussion group in the XING business network and an open source project called OpenSAGA , which was initiated in December 2008 and is committed to promoting the SAGA standard based on open software components.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Swiss GIF: SAGA.ch
  2. ↑ English GIF: The English E-Government Interoperability Framework (eGIF) ( Memento of the original from August 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.govtalk.gov.uk
  3. ↑ Australian GIF: Australian Government Technical Interoperability Framework (PDF)
  4. ↑ Indian GIF: Interoperability Framework for E-Governance ( Memento of the original of September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / egovstandards.gov.in
  5. ↑ Brazilian GIF: Padres de Interoperabilidade de Governo Eletrônico ( Memento of the original from August 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eping.e.gov.br
  6. ↑ MINIMUM INTEROPERABILITY STANDARDS (MIOS) for Information Systems in Government ( Memento of the original from October 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, 368 KB)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sita.co.za
  7. ^ South Africa adopts ODF as govt standard , Tectonic. October 24, 2007. Archived from the original on October 27, 2007 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tectonic.co.za 
  8. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated December 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. PDF  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gsb.download.bva.bund.de
  9. ^ Pan-European eGovernment Services for Citizens & Enterprises. IDABC, accessed November 8, 2019 .
  10. ^ Dieter Juerges: IT standards in administration - problem of federalism. Lecture at the workshop of the IT Standards working group of the Federal and State Commission for Information Technology in Justice (BLK), accessed on February 22, 2006 .
  11. ↑ Nils Parasie, Daniel Veit, University of Mannheim, 2007: Survey on e-government standards - empirical study in German municipalities ( memento of the original from September 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 340 kB)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / veit.bwl.uni-mannheim.de
  12. ^ SAGA discussion group on Xing
  13. ↑ OpenSAGA

Web links