Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to research the e-government architecture issue as a means of addressing the interoperability gap. It will incorporate the new knowledge acquired in the e-government integration methodology of the interconnectivity of cross-layers. These layers include the vertical direction of strategy, business, process, service and information.

Design/methodology/approach – The methodology used in this research as it progressed was component-base driven and involved the exploration of vertical e-government integration and common service interoperability between business and IT. The realization of this methodology first required a technical foundation setup followed by a business semantics study and a new concept of enterprise integration. The lack of interconnectivity between these layers is the main concerns with the implication that e-government architecture needs a robust micro-mechanism of semantic messaging and metadata to coordinate across layers.

Findings – E-government architecture became pervasive in the twenty-first century due to its significant growth in terms of huge volume transactions, the citizens' new service concept, and sophisticated businesses. Enterprise architecture mainly mediates between business and IT to minimize the gap by improving governance, agility and business integrity. All of these disciplines and principles should be applied to attain e-government transformation and vertical interoperability and common services provisioning are the major findings in the research.

Originality/value – This paper contribute new concept of enterprise vertical integration in e-government. The integrated solution of coherence of approaches forms the basis of this new concept; it serves as the backbone in vertical integration and addresses the e-government enterprise gap. It is expected to provide further insights into micro process integration across e-government enterprise layers.