Business-to-government application integration framework: A case study of the high technology industry in Taiwan

Computer Standards & Interfaces 35 (2013) 582–595

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Computer Standards & Interfaces journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/csi

Business-to-government application integration framework: A case study of the high technology industry in Taiwan Shing-Han Li a, 1, Shi-Ming Huang b, 2, David C. Yen c,⁎, Dong-Her Shih d, 3, Hsiang-Yuan Hsueh e, 4 a

Department of Information Management, Tatung University, Taiwan Department of Accounting and Information Technology, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan Department of Decision Sciences and Management Information Systems, Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA d Department of Information Management, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan e Department of Information Management, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan b c

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 29 November 2012 Received in revised form 8 March 2013 Accepted 30 April 2013 Available online 7 May 2013 Keywords: Business-to-Government Integration (B2Gi) Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Inter-organizational Integration Service Provider (IISP)

a b s t r a c t Business-to-government integration (B2Gi) requires the development of a unique, inter-organizational integration framework to meet the dynamic requirements of various business entities and government organizations. The authors proposed a conceptual framework for the inter-organizational integration service provider (IISP) as a philosophical and strategic guideline for developing inter-organizational integration. A real-world case study was discussed, with the presentation of a cost-benefit model to assess the possibility for adopting such a business model. With the assistance of the guideline for B2Gi, it is anticipated that the proposed integration model will take advantage of the trade-off between the flexibility and controllability issues. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Leveraging information and communication technology (ICT) in the field of government is regarded as a mission critical factor for achieving growth and competitiveness [46]. The global competitiveness of an enterprise is significantly influenced by transaction costs incurred in dealing with governmental bodies [9]. In order to become more effective and efficient, a government is expected to improve public services by using information and communication technologies combined with organizational change [9]. However, the promotion of eGovernment has to face a number of challenges from the Business-to-Government (B2G) and Government-to-Government (G2G) integration, including the

⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 513 529 4826; fax: +1 513 529 9689. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S.-H. Li), [email protected] (S.-M. Huang), [email protected] (D.C. Yen), [email protected] (D.-H. Shih), [email protected] (H.-Y. Hsueh). 1 Tel.: +886 2 25925252x3610. 2 Tel.: +886 5 2720411x16810; fax: +886 5 272 3943. 3 Tel.: +886 5 5342 601x5340. 4 Tel.: +886 5 2720411x24614. 0920-5489/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2013.04.005

seamless information exchange, interoperability between different eGovernment information systems and also the coordination of processes on both sides of the integration [35,43]. This requires interoperability within and between organizations, both nationally and internationally [9]. In a practical business environment, it is critically important to recruit the government's participation in, and involvement with, the different Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) processes of an enterprise [7,24,25,36]. With the strong need for e-Government, the government's interaction in an e-Business environment is represented by the term Business-to-Government Integration (B2Gi). The basic concept of B2Gi systems can be defined as the automation of business activities and associated transactions occurring among enterprises and governments. It involves the seamless integration of information system components developed by enterprises with public services provided by governments, such as taxing and auditing processes. By applying B2Gi to a business, the cost reduction and process flow will be improved in a flexible manner [1,37]. As the relationship between e-Government and business becomes more closely knit, implementation of B2Gi will become an even more important issue. In this study, our focus is on seamless B2G integration and the construction of an Inter-Organizational Integration Service Provider (IISP) framework. The IISP framework is proposed as a scalable solution aimed at playing an essential intermediary role in the complex

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B2Gi environment. The goal is to provide inter-organizational integration solutions that enable flexible and systematic integration among the information systems of enterprises and governments. In the proposed framework, the central management unit (CMU) module divides and decomposes integration tasks into a four-layer (platform integration, data-level integration, application-functionality integration, and business process integration) lifecycle in order to construct the IISP over various Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solutions and architectures. The main objective of such an architecturally central management module is to cooperate with, reuse, and control the various middleware applications required for integration, coordination, and supervision at different layers. Accordingly, this will create an effective and efficient inter-organizational EAI-based integration solution. In this study, the authors concentrated on two research issues raised by current B2Gi implementation. These two issues include: (1) the inability of enterprises and government applications to be integrated and (2) inefficient topology problems among the communication between the applications enterprises and government services. Typically, ERP systems contain the most essential business processes within an enterprise. There are also some considerations for integration among internal ERP and inter-organizational systems, since inter-organizational influence on the process flow is common in today's operating environment [31,36]. However, to implement B2Gi with ERP systems, connection and interaction with government is often a focal point for business activities, especially business automation, since governments and enterprises are considered independent entities. Information systems in both governments and enterprises are developed, adopted, and implemented in an independent and separate manner (though businesses generally need to adapt to the requirements imposed by the government). In terms of ERP systems, the effect of information heterogeneity will be more pronounced if there is no consideration of the compatibility between each entity, given the possibility that the original information systems of both governments and enterprises can be quite mature and large [38,39]. However, the same can be said about legacy, non-ERP systems — they are older and potentially more complex to understand due to all of the patches and code changes necessary to ensure the application's longevity. Integration among governments' and enterprises' IT systems is still a neglected issue in the current stage of IT development. Since the implementation of integration by ERP usually requires reengineering and redesigning of an entire business process, the potential costs versus benefits can pose a problem during the actual implementation [24,25,36,38]. Currently, the collaboration between governments and enterprises is considered to be in a “manually connected” status, which is a rather common approach. Based on the above discussion, it can be seen that the breakpoint in the normal business process will no doubt result in inefficiencies and inaccuracies within the process in the B2Gi environment. The situation is even worse in businesses, especially among medium and small-sized enterprises partnered with virtual organizations. For example, enterprises might be manually taxed by proper agencies which, without business process integration across enterprises and governments, might be time-consuming and costly due to a myriad of process errors or exceptions. In the current stage, business processes among governments and enterprises are still conducted through manual operation, and thus cannot take advantage of the advancement of business automation technologies. Furthermore, it may be even more inefficient to conduct business processes designed to smoothly operate between governments and enterprises. With EAI, it is possible to have different conceptual topologies for the various services and components deployed. The types of software topology may include hub topology, bus topology, point-to-point topology, pipeline topology, and network topology [24,25]. Table 1 shows the types of EAI software topology. In regard to B2Gi, Krcmar and Wolf have introduced the notion of “Collaborative eGovernment,”

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Table 1 The EAI software topology [24,25]. Topology

Descriptions

Hub (star) Bus Point-to-point (mesh) Pipeline Network

From source to a central hub (also known as “star” topology) Source puts messages on a bus (also known as “bulletin board”) Applications communicate with one another FIFO (first in first out) information flows Best use for asynchronous activity and independent transactions

which postulates seamless integration of eBusiness infrastructures of enterprises with information systems of governments from a pointto-point (P2P) process perspective [47]. However, it is not a scalable approach, since there are a large number of enterprise applications that must be connected with the government's applications in a B2Gi environment. The complexity of this approach may become increasingly important in implementing P2P approaches as the size of the B2Gi environment continues to aggrandize. It is therefore necessary to investigate and study this integration at a high conceptual level, and thereby consider global coordination in the implementation of B2Gi solutions. In this study, IISP is implemented with a hub topology, wherein a company attempts to balance the trade-offs between implementation cost, control, and flexibility of the infrastructure. This is due to the fact that different kinds of systems can be bridged and controlled together in a more flexible and efficient fashion through the use of middleware-based hub technologies [24,34]. In the proposed framework, the CMU module is responsible for coordinating the systems of both the enterprise and the government. Through this module, the original system functions can be decomposed into several components. The user can thereby monitor the flows between all system components. The CMU module plays the role of an interface agent, not only to decompose the original business processes, but also to redesign and integrate these business processes and data flows into an EAI-based, B2Gi environment. The concept of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) was introduced to respond to the aforementioned issues. EAI works toward a system wherein all enterprise-wide information and business processes among autonomous application systems can work together in an integrated and unrestricted manner by employing standard data exchanges and proper functionality negotiation. With minor modification of legacy systems, EAI could control the original application systems and bring increased flexibility & agility, which could result in more effective and competitive business services [11,22,24,25,31,32,39]. Nagel and Dove [30] describe agility and flexibility as the ability to “continuously monitor market demand; quickly respond by providing new products, services and information; quickly introduce new technologies; and quickly modify business methods.” This article discusses B2Gi implementation through a case study of Taiwan's medium and small business enterprises' resolution of the aforementioned business process integration issue by implementing an Inter-Organizational Integration Service Provider (IISP) framework (as described in the fourth section). The framework is meant to provide a minimalistic architectural guideline for systematically developing such solutions in order to enhance flexibility and agility. By using such a systematic integration approach with a focus on EAI, it will be feasible to witness a trade-off among such factors such as implementation costs, control capability, and operational flexibility within a B2Gi infrastructure. The structure of this paper is organized as follows: We first present a brief description of the emerging problems and issues encountered when migrating to EAI. Second, the IISP architecture is proposed. Next, we introduce the design and implementation of the IISP framework along with the corresponding case study. We discuss the lessons learned from the case study in the next section and, finally, conclude the paper by providing future research directions.

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2. Theoretical development 2.1. Enterprise Application Integration Most information systems host enterprise applications. The integration of multiple enterprise applications has spawned a new breed of middleware referred to as Enterprise Application Integration systems, which is based on technology that has been used for years. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) can be defined as the unrestricted sharing of information between two or more enterprise applications. It is critical to utilize these technologies to allow for the inter-organizational and/or intra-organizational movement and exchange of information among applications or business processes [26]. EAI addresses integration in a global and systematic manner. Companies invest in EAI solutions in order to streamline processes and maintain interconnectedness among all of the elements within an enterprise [6,18,45]. As shown in the different levels and steps of application integration in Fig. 1, EAI also provides a layered approach for systematic application integration [11,18,21,23–25]. These levels and steps include platform integration, data level integration, application interface integration, business method integration, presentation integration, and inter-EAI or B2B integration. Prior studies have focused on the practical implementation of EAI and ERP. Within this research, it was noted that EAI can be either a replacement of, or a complementary solution to ERP. Furthermore, it is possible to integrate legacy systems using EAI solutions instead of ERP in order to avoid the costs and other problems incurred by resolving reengineering issues as well as to take advantage of the desired flexibility offered by EAI solutions without dramatically changing the infrastructure. On the other hand, it is also feasible for an EAI solution to integrate ERP or ERP II (the next generation of Enterprise Resource Planning strategies and applications, the ERP II addresses the future by focusing on deep industry domain expertise and the inter-enterprise, rather than just enterprise business processes) solutions in an intraorganizational or inter-organizational manner to facilitate the interconnection among partners or individual departments as a virtual organization [2,4,24,25,27,31,32,36,38,39,45]. The conceptualization and implementation of heterogeneous computing technology extend the scalability and flexibility of an information system by allowing application components to be invoked remotely, instead of by local utilization only. Since the required

application components (as a form of objects) can either be deployed and then distributed throughout the network with a corresponding address space, or be stored locally as a part of a certain application, a loosely-coupled approach to constructing virtual information systems is becoming a reality. In order to resolve the previously addressed compatibility issues, a commonly used solution is to employ middleware as a communication agent. The traditional approach towards implementing EAI relies solely on available middleware technologies, which aim to build a new integrated system that is adaptable to all existing business requirements without having to update legacy systems. Integration is then accomplished by applying and re-utilizing special middleware components in order to create specific layers of integration [8,14,20]. 2.2. Government Enterprise Application Integration The term “e-Government” can be defined as the virtualization of information and technological communication platforms and applications utilized by public sectors [42,48]. It emphasizes services such as enhancing and improving the seamlessness of interaction and transactions among governmental sectors [3]. In this study, the authors concentrated on the issue of implementation of B2Gi, which can be considered to be one part of possible e-Government scenarios. The first issue that appears to hinder the adoption and/or implementation of B2Gi is that the process cannot automatically execute commands. The automatic execution problem occurs when the collaboration between governments and enterprises is conducted through manual operations. Today, manual operation is still a common approach used to connect governments and enterprises, especially small- and medium-sized companies. Though many companies have introduced ERP or EAI solutions internally, different ERP and EAI solutions are difficult to integrate externally [10]. Currently, information systems in both governments and enterprises are considered quite mature in terms of IT implementation and adoption. In the current e-Government environment, both governments and enterprises attempt to reengineer corresponding business processes to match equivalent e-Government services, which integrate the business processes between governments and enterprises [16,40]. An online tax system is one unique example. It is impossible for a government to change its own public systems to make it compatible with any and all enterprises since it is a public and common service. However, governments can mandate that organizations

Fig. 1. Layered approach for EAI implementation [18].

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modify their reporting systems to provide input compatible with the government system. When enterprises want to utilize different e-Government services, they have to add additional adequate integration channels and/or interfaces. However, this creates a serious issue for the implementation of point-to-point integration topology. When the B2Gi system adopts a point-to-point topology, it needs to support N*N methods for information integration, which are more complex and difficult to implement. (Note: N is the count of enterprise integration technologies, e.g. WebSphere, Biztalk, WebLogic, and Oracle application server). Based on the discussion above, one can see that the topology issue embodies a significant barrier to implementation which needs to be resolved in the near future. Fig. 2 illustrates the topology problem of B2Gi. In the scenario shown, not all pairs of application systems are connected, but nevertheless, the problem caused by the presence of a large number of interfaces can be seen. In summary, there are two serious conditions and/or problems that exist in the traditional point-to-point approach, both of which increase the complexity of the system integration issue.

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scheme in EAI solutions with its reduced complexity and flexibility [13], it may also be a good candidate for the B2G integration. Furthermore, since e-Government functions such as tax-filing and social health insurance deduction are intended for all enterprises, these functions and the components under each function can be considered as reusable services to be arranged in a grid or a service-oriented architecture with a high flexibility for enterprises to select and adopt to meet each enterprise's need [12,13,33]. In addition, given the nature of government authority, the B2Gi design can be a top-down integration to adopt unified data and application collaboration standards [15]. However, such an integration can become very costly for enterprises with various existing information systems. It is thereby obvious that this study, given its intent to employ EAI-based strategies, can be used to properly resolve automatic execution problems that may occur in the B2Gi environments between virtual organizations and governments in a flexible and cost-effective manner.

3. Business-to-government application integration framework • Heterogeneity among applications: In this circumstance, it is possible to apply any commercial solution to an enterprise to implement its enterprise applications. • Heterogeneity among applications and public government services: The solution applied to enterprises and governments might be different in this case. Consequently, the compatibility and scalability of such solutions will be a critical issue. Prior studies regarding the Government information system integration have been focused more on the construction of EAI-based services for internal (Government-to-Government, G2G) or external (to customers, Government-to-Customers, G2C) e-Government solutions [16,40]. Other previous studies had addressed more on the adoption of new technologies for e-Government portals such as security and web service standards [19,28,29]. Discussion of the implementation of B2G is, on the contrary, a neglected issue. As the hub-and-spoke integration architecture has been considered as the replacement to the traditional point-to-point application integration

3.1. The architecture of Inter-organizational Integration Service Provider (IISP) framework With EAI, it is possible to have different conceptual topologies for the various services and components deployed. These may include hub, bus, point-to-point, pipeline, and network topologies [24,25]. In this study, IISP is implemented with a hub topology, wherein the company attempted to balance the trade-offs between implementation cost, control, and flexibility of the infrastructure. The hub-topology was used due to the fact that different kinds of systems can be bridged and controlled together in a more flexible and efficient fashion through the use of middleware-based hub technologies [24,34]. The IISP framework is proposed as a scalable solution aimed at playing an essential intermediary role in the complex B2Gi environment. The goal is to provide inter-organizational integration solutions that enable flexible systematic integration among the information systems of enterprises and governments. However, one must always

ERP modules with independent solutions

Enterprise 1 Financial Support

WebSphere

Dustribution

Retailing

BizTalk

Manufacturing

WebLogic

Oracle Application Server

Government WebSphere BizTalk Customs System WebLogic Oracle Application Server

WebLogic Financial Support

Enterprise 2

WebSphere Dustribution

Taxation System

WebSphere BizTalk WebLogic Oracle Application Server

Oracle Application Server Retailing

BizTalk Manufacturing

ERP modules with independent solutions Fig. 2. Complexity for topology problem in B2Gi environment.

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consider the challenge of managing the trade-off between flexibility and control. In a B2Gi environment, the sequential and serialized nature of business processes' execution and the integrity of transactions are primarily considered. Thus, it is more important to demand process controls rather than to attain a certain degree of flexibility. It is therefore reasonable for such an IISP framework to be implemented through a central management module by which one can coordinate diverse interactions among systems. In the proposed framework, the central management unit (CMU) module divides and decomposes integration tasks into a four-layer life cycle in order to construct the IISP over various EAI solutions and architectures. This cycle is composed of platform integration, data-level integration, application-functionality-level integration, and business-process-level integration. The main objective of such an architectural central management module is to cooperate with, reuse, and control the various middleware applications required for integration, coordination, and supervision at different layers. Accordingly, this will create an effective and efficient inter-organizational EAI-based integration solution. Fig. 3 demonstrates the conceptual architecture of the IISP framework. The aforementioned four-layer life cycle can be implemented using the following guidelines. • Top-down consideration for IISP analysis: The most widely used approach for describing the current organizational situation is the top-down analysis. From a managerial perspective, it is recommended to use a top-down approach for envisioning, planning, and brainstorming about the IISP's conceptual framework construction. Adopting the top-down analysis method has some advantages, including a broader analytical perspective, improved integration, improved management support, and better overall understanding of the situation [17]. • Bottom-up consideration for IISP construction: From a technical perspective, a bottom-up approach is required to construct integration mechanisms for both enterprises and governments. Physical platform integration will be incorporated, followed by data integration, application integration, and process integration per roadmap constructed by managerial top-down IISP planning. Notice that it is necessary to ensure the participation of members with both managerial and technical expertise. 3.2. Implementation stepwise for the integration with government In this portion of the study, the researchers provided the implementation strategies necessary for IISP analysis and construction. The top-down analysis attempts to gain a broad understanding of the informational needs of the entire organization. The first step of this process

requires that the manager understands the current situation (e.g. listing the manual and automated processes, listing of manual and automated data, listing the OS and network protocols, and listing application systems' adapters and wrappers). In the second step, the manager needs to support the future situation (e.g. blueprint of manual and automated processes, blueprints of manual and automated data, technology blueprint, and choose applicable interfaces and middleware). There should also be some discussion of the issues related to the top-down managerial issues in this section. When the IISP analysis is finished, the bottom-up approach is required to construct integration mechanisms for both enterprises and governments. Strategically, it is necessary for the CMU to integrate each EAI-based information system in every corresponding layer. This basic set of IISP framework steps must include the following four architectural modules. 3.2.1. Step 1: platform integration with encapsulation This layer focuses on dealing with any underlying physical integration issues, such as different operating systems or different network protocols. In order to integrate various application systems from different organizations effectively, the CMU within the IISP framework is required to deal with the issue of compatibility among heterogeneous platforms by encapsulating the different available integration technologies. Various EAI-based entities and applications can thereby select and share the integration methods/technologies needed to solve their respective integration problems. In this case, the authors first resolve the incompatibility problem regarding the underlying platforms of systems in the B2Gi environment. 3.2.2. Step 2: data integration with semantic translation to open standards B2Gi activities usually involve huge amounts of data interchange. However, different organizations may utilize different data types and/or data formats in their own systems, even if the underlying platforms are identical. This discrepancy in data types or formats is a common and major obstacle to inter-organizational integration. The data integration service layer of the IISP framework is designed to resolve or diminish these painful inter-organizational data interchange problems. Fig. 4 shows the proposed step for data integration: Use of this strategy is required to orchestrate data exchange and integration without the loss of semantic information or content. This is especially true given the nature of the business processes involved in the B2Gi environment, such as financial and tax information, which are vitally important for each entity. Thus, translation with semantic equivalence is required as well as a plan to translate data between proper and open data formats using an XML-based or similar

Central Management Unit

Alliance Companies

E-Services Organizations Process Integration Services

Manufacturer

e-Governance

Application Integration Services Distributor

Port

Port

e-Banking

Data Integration Services Retailer

e-Stock

Platform Integration Services

Fig. 3. The conceptual architecture of IISP framework.

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solution. XML has the ability to help information systems share structure data, and it is used to both encode documents and serialize data. Furthermore, it is required for secure data communication and validation controls (such as hash total, public key infrastructure, and digital signature), since such content is private by nature for both parties. As a result, different data transformation, data mapping, and datainterchanged standard technologies can be reused by the organizations that require data integration. 3.2.3. Step 3: application integration by interface and middleware The application integration service, which is the third service within the CMU, is responsible for coordinating various application functionalities in order to ensure their cooperation. It is important to reuse and coordinate diverse kinds of application systems' adapters and wrappers to help with communication among different organizations' application systems. The IISP framework manages these middleware technologies at this layer and then contributes to managing the interorganizational application systems' integration so that legacy systems remain as free as possible. The following three-step re-engineering approach is recommended for systematic application integration. 1. Reverse engineering: The reverse engineering process is utilized to specify the current input and output information of applications that are involved in inter-organizational operations. 2. Generalization of data flow: The convergence of data flows from both enterprises and governments is then identified as a unified data flow for both sides. 3. Agent development: With a known input or output specification from both sides in a B2Gi environment, the agents forming the application interfaces or middleware implementations can be systematically developed in order to facilitate seamless application integration through a message-driven approach. Such utilities can thereby be reused by a variety of applications and also utilized in different scenarios. As for application-level integration in the case company, many Java Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) based wrapper programs have been implemented to increase flexibility and to encapsulate legacy systems and applications according to the open architecture characteristics of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Interactions among these systems are coordinated by the Java Messaging Service (JMS), which in turn contributes to the desired integration in the application integration layer. 3.2.4. Step 4: process integration with serialization The last part of the CMU is the process integration service, which is responsible for the conceptual design of process integration among enterprises and governments. The strategy used to overcome the bottleneck in B2Gi's operations is known as serialization. Serialization

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conceptually connects the two application processes with a bridge agent that is analyzed, implemented, and deployed within the application integration service. The corresponding processes used by businesses and governments are therefore sequential and serialized. Fig. 5 shows such a strategy being utilized in the case company. In order to simplify the users' job of implementation and maintenance of the business processes serialization, it is important to provide a graphical user interface (GUI) to perform the presentation of the IISP. The following section will show how the implemented IISP system can be used to facilitate the seamless integration of incompatible organizational application systems while leaving any existing legacy systems unchanged. 4. Implementation with the case study 4.1. AS-IS and TO-BE scenarios of the case company The case company used in this study is the SINONAR Corporation (http://www.sinonar.com.tw), which was founded in July 1988 and is located in the Science-Based Industrial Park in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. SINONAR is the first and foremost company in Taiwan engaged in the research, development, and manufacturing of amorphous silicon devices. Using the most advanced technology, SINONAR produces highly efficient solar cells and solar panels for a number of indoor and outdoor applications such as solar calculators, watches, radios, battery chargers, automobile ventilators, area lighting, and photovoltaic power generating systems. The business tax operations of SINONAR were conducted by the TAX system, which has been implemented within the finance module of its legacy ERP system. It is a Windows-based, standalone application system which includes four major functional sub-modules: invoice management, business tax preparation and related operations, report generation, and data maintenance. Fig. 6 shows the architecture of the TAX system. In the TAX sub-system, user involvement with the B2Gi occurs in the Business TAX reporting processes. The TAX reporting processes of SINONAR have traditionally been manually completed operations. As reports are generated by the TAX system, accountants then engage in related interactions with the government. Such activities involve copious paperwork, lengthy waiting queues, and significant human resources. The critical issue is that the accountant must fill out the tax application form and deliver it to the government. Below, Fig. 7 shows the AS-IS process. It is both costly and time consuming for Taiwanese enterprises to deal with such a manually-facilitated operation that is generally conducted once a month. The Ministry of Finance of the Taiwanese government is now planning to implement a web-based, online TAX system using a single log-on to accomplish the objective of business

Automated Service Connection among enterprises and governments Open Standard Content Format Available for Transformation Data layer of EAI Solution

Content Translation with Semantic Equivalence

Data layer of EAI Solution

Underlying Secure Communication e-Government

e-Enterprise Fig. 4. Data integration strategy adequate for B2Gi.

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e-Enterprise

Internal Users

CMU Interface

Interface

Internal Users Internal ERP System Internal Users

e-Government Application Collaboration Data Translation Platform Synchronization

Virtual Process Serialization between enterprise and e-Government Fig. 5. Process serialization of B2Gi utilized in the case company.

automation. Fig. 8 illustrates a “TO-BE” scenario for tax integration in a B2Gi environment. The integration strategy promoted by the Taiwanese government transforms the proper transactional history and associated taxing information into both a text-based file (*.TXT) and *.TET/*.T01 file in a pre-determined format. Transformed data in a pre-determined format can thereby be automatically analyzed and audited by various application agents and stored within a TAX-base in the government's information systems. In order to properly integrate governmental agencies into a B2Gi environment, the case company decided to construct a CMU to play the role of a service gateway between different business functionalities and governmental services. For taxing operations, the model of the “TO-BE” tax filing process is shown in Fig. 9. Compared with Fig. 7, the TO-BE process omits the lengthy paperwork and timeconsuming manual delivery, and instead it can save time and resources for the enterprise.

4.2. Implementation strategy for integration with government 4.2.1. Step 1: platform integration with encapsulation The TAX system of the case company is a Windows-based standalone system using Centura SQL Windows 1.51 (http://www.unify.

Other Sub-Systems AP

AR

PU R ORD

com), while the online TAX system of the e-Government is a web-based information system. In this case, the company decided to convert their systems into web-based systems to ensure the essential compatibility of these platforms with other systems. In order to translate the client-server architecture into a corresponding web-based system, this study utilized the Centura SQL Windows 2.0 as its tool of choice. This selection is justified by the value of the program's powerful translation-supporting feature, which can be utilized to facilitate a smooth translation of the older version into a web-based environment. With this advantage, system developers do not have to spend as much time modifying the program codes (Fig. 10).

4.2.2. Step 2: data integration with semantic translation to open standards The original data formats of the TAX system were designed for use with paper documents utilized by accountants. Our study revealed that the case company decided to express data and schema by implementing and using XML-based templates and data formats. Thus, in order for this new format to be compatible with the TAX reporting service and TAX service required by the government, the data formats of the case company needed to be changed from existing data formats to XML-based public data formats. These include the *.T01 and *.TET

INVOICE module Invoice-related business data and process management

…

TAX module Taxing-related business data and process management

ERP No integration to external information systems

REPORT module Report generation with pre-defined formats TAX Sub-System

SYS module Data Maintenance

Fig. 6. The legacy TAX system architecture in the case company.

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Fig. 7. The AS-IS model of manual tax filing process.

formats, both of which would be used in the online TAX system. Fig. 11 summarizes our experience with using this step: As the previous discussion shows, in data-level integration, a threestep method is applied to integrate data from both sides (Fig. 12): 1. Translation to XML-based public format: First, the original data formats of the TAX system must be translated into corresponding XML files known as the public format. 2. XSLT template utilization: The emerging XLST template is utilized for each corresponding layout. Through this approach, it is easy to map the TAX system data formats into the specific data formats required by the online tax system based on their XML schemas, without creating semantic conflicts. 3. Assigned TAX file generation: Finally, the required *.T01 and *.TET files for the online tax reporting service are generated. 4.2.3. Step 3: application integration by interface and middleware In this step, IT professionals can decompose the legacy system into smaller components and integrate them with the relevant new software components. Newer adjustments can be introduced by simply

adding or removing software components. Alterations can be made to legacy systems to enable them to adapt to rapid changes in the IT environment without completely redeveloping these information systems. In this case, the CMU is responsible for coordinating the enterprise's TAX system and the government's Online TAX system. In this manner, the original TAX system can be decomposed into several components. The user can thereby monitor the flows between all components. Fig. 13 demonstrates the decomposition of the TAX system into the functional components. 4.2.4. Step 4: process integration with serialization A web-based interface was designed and developed for the finance managers and affiliated TAX-filing participants working within the case company. The function of this interface was to utilize and manage the new inter-organizational TAX reporting processes with an emphasis on enabling better access to the integration between businesses and the government. The implementation detail is shown in Fig. 14 and the final result of the integrated TAX business process between the case company SINONAR and the Taiwanese government is shown in Fig. 15.

START

Transaction History

Single Logon

Data Export

END

Transaction information Text Files

Tax information Uploading to Government

Auditing

* .TX T Tax Calculation

Auditing

Tax Export

Tax information Text Files

* .TET * .T01

TAX-base

Government Side

Business Side Fig. 8. The online tax filing procedure as a TO-BE scenario.

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Fig. 9. The TO-BE model of the tax filing process with EAI.

company's experience in completing implementation and the lessons learned.

5. Summarized discussions 5.1. Evaluation of implementation experience For an administrator in an enterprise with various heterogeneous internal and external information systems, additional emphasis will be concentrated on the issue of evaluation of the implementation of the IISP. Within this system, administrators must consider maintaining a balance between efficiency and cost considerations of information system architectures. Table 2 demonstrates a comparison between traditional manual tax systems and an IISP framework through several dimensions. In this section, the authors discuss some practical factors used to determine if the proposed architecture is successful and summarize two categories of satisfaction for IISP adoption in the case company. This evaluation is conducted through interviews regarding the case

• Technical feasibility: an overall condition of system development for the CMU of the IISP framework. This assessment involves determining the time and cost required for the analysis, development, and maintenance of the system components, which include the platform synchronizer, data translator, and application agents. For this case, the process was outsourced and one month was spent by three part-time programmers on developing a workable prototype. The evaluation was considered acceptable by managers of the case company. • User acceptance: the acceptance of users after the adoption of IISP systems. The evaluation criteria are comprised of the efficiency of the modified workflow and acceptance of the modified platform. This acceptance is attributable to the fact that TAX operations with

Window-based system

Translate

Web-based system

Fig. 10. Translate the windows-based system into a web-based environment using Centura SQL Windows 2.0.

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Fig. 11. Data integration in the B2Gi environment.

e-Governments can be done immediately instead of being encumbered by paperwork and tedious manual processing. This evaluation was also considered to be acceptable by managers of the case company. However, due to budget limitations and inadequate integration of information resources, we have not yet fully explored our study's capabilities within other systems. Nevertheless, several benefits did surface through the interviews conducted with the case company's managers and users. The cited benefits listed below prove that it might be reasonable to support the belief that developments such as IISP may still potentially be implemented. The main benefits cited include: • Potential user satisfaction: The integrated process used to report business TAX reduced the time and effort required for TAX operations. • Potential technical satisfaction: The case company was satisfied with the resolution of incompatibility issues with the existing legacy system and the external online TAX system of the government through the use of the integrated process.

5.2. Lessons learned from the case experience Contemporary businesses will continue to face an increasing number of challenges from the process of inter-organizational application systems integration. It is important for IT managers to consider the possibility of outsourcing to develop the sophisticated interorganizational integration technologies needed to meet the needs of different companies and businesses [24]. According to the relevant literature, numerous research efforts have focused on the barriers against adoption of new information technologies. The studies of Thong and Walczuch indicated that knowledge deficiencies, lack of financial budget flexibility or slack resources, and a lack of confidence in new technologies that could eventually lead to increased operational efficiency and lower costs are the major barriers faced by small and medium-sized enterprises [41,44]. Moreover, other research exists that asserts that the primary adoption barriers of Internet-based information systems appear to be high start up costs, internet security issues, unfamiliarity with the Web, and a lack of guidance regarding how to start the process [5].

Fig. 12. An example for a text file translated to an XML file.

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Fig. 13. Decomposition of a TAX system into components.

Several lessons were learned from this case study for the implementation of an IISP framework in the B2Gi environment: • The dynamic business process reengineering approach may not be adequate for implementation in the B2Gi environment. This discussion has evinced the fact that seamless, loose-coupling, and lightweight integration solutions, such as EAI, may be adequate and feasible solutions for B2Gi implementation, since the infrastructure present in enterprises and governments is considered mature, independent, and heterogeneous in all levels of integration (including platform integration, data-level integration, applicationfunctionality level integration, and business-process-level integration). However, it is both risky and costly to apply business process reengineering methods such as global ERP, since the redesign issues and migration of infrastructure cannot be avoided within the tightly-coupled information system architecture of a virtual organization.

• It is important to analyze the flexibility of participation in the IISP framework in order to balance the trade-offs. In the case study, two members of B2Gi participated in the IISP framework. It is in fact possible for an unlimited number of members to join in the B2Gi environment, since CMU is sharable among different partners in the entire virtual organization. For example, partner companies can share the CMU for taxing operations since interfaces provided by governments' public services are identical. This solution can potentially balance the trade-off between factors such as flexibility, control, power, and the costs of implementation and adoption. • It also important to examine IISP's suitability for various virtual organizations. The IISP framework is particularly adequate for partners in virtual organizations operating in B2Gi or B2B environments, such as supply chain partners, allies working to implement collaborative commerce, or even a single company connected to public services.

J2EE Application Server New Web-based Online Tax System Integration Service

Central Management Unit

Process

Port

Security Control

Application

User Management

Data

Platform

Port

Tax System

Online Tax Database

e-Enterprise

Database

e-Government

Fig. 14. The implemented IISP system architecture.

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Fig. 15. Integrated TAX business process between enterprise and government.

This is mainly due to the fact that data and business are transparent and sharable among the members within the IISP framework. 6. Conclusion In this article, the authors proposed using the IISP framework to support systematic, inter-organizational, system integration that is adequate for the B2Gi environment. The authors also discussed the feasibility of this IISP framework by describing an actual case that had a successful implementation and experience. The implementation of our IISP framework using the SINONAR case study has shown that such a framework can indeed complete a systematic integration of inter-organizational application systems, while leaving the legacy systems unchanged. This framework is therefore feasible to use in the B2Gi environment. The main benefit of adopting the IISP framework is the ability to methodically bridge gaps in inter-organizational processes among enterprises and governments. The framework provides inter-organizational integration solutions that enable flexible systematic integration among the information systems of enterprises and governments. The framework can control, reuse, and cooperate with various middleware applications

required for integration, coordination, and supervision at different layers via a CMU module. Accordingly, this will create an effective and efficient inter-organizational EAI-based integration solution. The topology issue can be properly managed without using methods such as ad-hoc or point-to-point topologies. The strengths realized by the company are manifested in its influence on the traditional TAX system, with such benefits including minimizing the time spent on reporting processes and increasing the cost-effectiveness of the process. This systematic and automatic approach for inter-organizational processes is based upon the IISP framework, rather than traditional manual operations used by the case company. The results and findings from our study can still play an important role in promoting future research in this subject area. Potential future implications of this study are only magnified by the important fact that the process cannot automatically execute issues within the mainstream industry in Taiwan. For practical utilization, the results of our study can be considered a reference paradigm for developers and consultants in various industries, and as an adequate, minimal guideline for the practical adoption and implementation of systematic integration approaches in the B2Gi environment. This study may also be of interest to those seeking more research on the attitude and roles of

Table 2 Comparison between traditional manual tax systems and an IISP framework. Dimension

Process time

Manpower Time effect

Error detected Damages

Type Traditional manual tax systems

IISP framework

Accountant daily input data: 2(min) ∗ 1000(rows)+ Finance manager check data:1(min) ∗ 1000(rows)+ Accountant export and print data: 30(min)+ Accountant delivery data to government (2 days)+ Public servant key in data: 1(min) ∗ 1000(rows)+ Public servant totally check: 10(min) Total: 5920(min) / 1month 5 days/1 month Post delivery may be lost or require over time. Saturday, Sunday and Public Holidays are not acceptable tax return days, instead they must be sent in advance. 2 rows/1 month (typing error or translate error) Tax evasion -The firm's credit is negatively effected -Punitive damages (10–100 times)

Accountant daily input data: 2(min) ∗ 1000(rows)+ Finance manager check data:10(min)+ Accountant export and print data: 30(min)+ Accountant authentication and upload data to government 10(min)+ public servant totally check: 10(min) Total: 2060(min) / 1month 1.5 days/1 month Allow to upload data during vacations

0 rows/1 month The government has urged the company to adopt online taxing, and allow firms to correct data that is found to have errors

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Shing-Han Li is an associate professor in the Department of Information Management in Tatung University, Taiwan. He received his M.S. in computer science and information engineering from Tatung University, Taiwan in 1996, and his Ph.D. in information management from the National Chung-Cheng University, Taiwan, 2006. His current research interests include service quality, ERP system, web services and information auditing and assurance. He has published his work in the Journal of Computer Information Systems, the Journal of Database Management, Information and Software Technology, Computers in Human Behavior, Industrial Management & Data Systems, and Production Planning & Control.

Shi-Ming Huang received his Ph.D. degree at the School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Sunderland, U.K. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He is also a joint professor in the Department of Accounting and Information Technology and the Department of Information Management. He has published six books, three in business software and over 70 articles in refereed information system journals, such as Information and Management, Decision Support Systems, Journal of Computer Information Systems, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Database Management, ACM SIGMOD, etc. He has received over 10 achievement awards in the information system area. He has served as an editorial board member in several international journals and has acted as a consultant for a variety of Taiwanese government departments, software companies and commercial companies.

S.-H. Li et al. / Computer Standards & Interfaces 35 (2013) 582–595 David C. Yen is currently a Raymond E. Glos professor in business and a professor of MIS of the Department of Information Systems and Analytics at Miami University. He is active in research and has published books and articles which have appeared in Communications of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, Information Sciences, Computer Standards and Interfaces, Government Information Quarterly, Information Society, Omega, International Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce and Communications of AIS among others. His research interests include data communications, electronic/mobile commerce, database and systems analysis and design.

D. H. Shih received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, in 1986. He is a senior professor in the Department of Information Management, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Douliu, Yunlin, Taiwan. He has published over 50 journal articles in related areas and serves as an Asian editor at Int. J. of Mobile Communication. His current researches include Decision analysis, Information Security, Petri net and Wireless network.

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Hsiang-Yuan Hsueh received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Information Management of the National Chung-Cheng University. Mr. Hsueh's research focuses on Data base, Software Engineering, Computer-Assisted Audit Techniques and Tools, IT Auditing and IT Governance.