eGOVSIM: A Model for Calculating the Financial Gains of Governmental Services Transformation, for Administration and Citizens

Targeting systematic and formal methods for measuring the impact of interoperability on digital public services is emerging as an important research challenge in electronic government. The eGOVSIM model that is proposed in this paper aims to provide administrations with a tool to calculate the gains from digitising and making interoperable services for citizens and businesses. The paper presents existing methods for calculating the cost of services for the administration and the service consumers, such as the Standards Cost Model (SCM) and the Activity Based Costing (ABC). Then it goes on presenting a toolset for analytical cost calculations based on the various process steps and the information needs of each governmental service. The tool supports the definition of several service provision scenarios, such as front/back office system interoperability, cross-system or cross-organisational interoperability allowing the calculation of time, effort and cost elements and relevant gains from the application of each scenario.