The saga of electronic services and their locations. Part 1. Electronic service

I. Introduction

I’m sure if Death knew what bureaucracy is,
people would never die, always standing in line ...
Symbiote.

Recently, they have plunged me into one interesting topic related to the virtualization of the activities of organizations, in the good sense of the word. Not enterprises, but organizations, like a certain association of citizens, no matter commercial or public. Since the person who has drawn me into the topic is closely connected with the services of Internet provider, his lobbying view of the virtual institution is expressed in the distribution (of course, without any interest) to all the actors involved in it, unique addresses. How to stake out in the virtual space workstations. What will happen next there, the second thing. Well, his interest is clear. And what is the interest of the owners and customers of these offices in this scheme?

In my understanding, it is tempting for citizens to get a service. Yes, such that everything is fast and without any particular nerves, and not an exciting reel around the cabinets, even if it's virtual and very beautiful. This is the case when one very small, but very convenient single window is better than many large and beautiful cabinets. I submitted an application for the provision of the service, but not simple, but complex, affecting many areas of responsibility and waiting for myself. And it is already there somehow itself itself. Gathered with the forces, plucked up the audacity and walked through the offices. I collected all the visas and certificates, found out what was missing, requested them from other electronic services and still provided me with the required courtesy. And not least, he immediately informed me about the result.

In connection with such a difference in approaches, for a long time I could not get close to analyzing the topic touched and the conjugation of these polar positions. How to fill the soulless e-cabinets - the well-being of citizens, overjoyed by high-quality and timely service?

Ii. Analysis of the phenomenon of electronic services

Working with people is easy. It’s hard to work with real people.
Alexander Kulich.

What is e-service, in a good sense of the word?

1. Electronic service and the process of its provision

Go through the definitions. And let's start with the service in general:

A service is the result of at least one action that is necessarily carried out with the interaction of the supplier and the consumer, and, as a rule, is intangible (1).

And now let's start the virtuality:

Electronic service is a service to meet the information needs of the user, having a computer or electronic form of provision.

And here is another interesting clarification:

Electronic services are a type of information services. Electronic form means the ability to visualize a product or service using automated or computerized visualization tools (2).

So how can interaction with an e-service flow alive?

Usually, everything starts with the emergence of a sharp (or not so) need for a service to be received by a potential client. But pretty often everything is not so simple. Sometimes a person wants something badly, but even for himself he cannot formulate this. But if someone offered him options, he would probably understand his feelings, and perhaps he could make a decent choice. Or it happens that in order to achieve a goal a person needs to take such steps that he has in his head can’t combine with this goal.

Therefore, the client must first articulate his expectations clearly, especially for himself. However, in such cases the service provider can help him deal with his inner world, he has long been on this topic, he has seen everything and has already eaten a dog in this matter. By asking leading questions, without interrupting you and not grumbling in your ear, the electronic assistant will assist you in forming a request for the fulfillment of your desire. In essence, this is already the first step in the provision of a service. Moreover, this step may be the most important of all subsequent ones. After all, it all can end. A person may simply realize that he already has enough of everything and he is quite happy and without any of these services.

As a result of all these preliminary maneuvers, it would be good to receive confirmation that the executor of the request accepted the request, the request met the client’s expectations, and ultimately the obligation arose: to provide a specified service for a period of time, for money or out of interest. This is the first stage. In fact, a contract arises with the obligations of the parties.

Figure 1. The process of ordering an electronic service

Figure 1 schematically shows the process of ordering an electronic service. Blue arrow-shaped rectangles indicate functions in the order in which they should occur. Top and bottom show important elements of the process. Arrows with labels between elements and functions show their association.

After that, to implement the agreements reached, the service provider will have to fulfill the obligations assumed. But in the course of the performance, the situation may develop so that he himself will be forced to request “the help of the hall”, in those procedures in which he does not have sufficient competence. Other authorized electronic collaborators of the service will join the process.

And now, after committing a chain of actions, provided that everything goes smoothly, a certain product will appear to the world. Ideally, the one that was originally required by the customer of the service. Well, or at least you can hope that it is this result that will not upset him. But this is a topic for specialists in quality management, and we will leave it for analysis.

The final stage should be the transfer of the product of the service to the consumer, after which the parties will be able to confirm the acceptable achievement of their goals.

If the consumer’s goals are clear and transparent, then the contractor may have a wide variety of them: from commercial to virtuous.

Thus, we have the following algorithm:

1. The consumer of the service determines for himself what he expects to receive;
2. The consumer is looking for an offer that can satisfy his wishes;
3. The consumer formulates an application indicating all the nuances of his wishes in order to get exactly the result that is expected and transferred to the performer;
4. The contractor provides a service to the consumer;
5. The parties evaluate the result.

With the process briefly sorted out. Let's get to the point.

2. Environment e-services

So what do we have?

Actors: Consumer of the service and its Contractor.

Both can be both persona (person) and a robotic system (service). A robot (service) can act as a Consumer of a service if, for example, it is the executor of some activity in the chain, and in order to fulfill its obligations, it is necessary to request an additional service from other services of the services.

In the previous section, we have not for nothing focused attention on the fact that the customer of the service must first correctly formulate his need. And in this he often needs help.

Surely you had to contemplate public humiliation of a person - by an electronic queue terminal, in a bank, at a post office or at the MFC. By choosing clues - classifiers, a person is painful, step by step, and sometimes backing away on the screens back, formulates his interest, in the good sense of the word. This happens because the words he sees on the terminal screen do not always coincide with those with which he describes the need for his head. And now he was told the right combination a couple of times, and now he, coming up to the terminal the next time, deftly pokes his fingers in certain places on the screen, in a certain sequence. And even the words in his head are already selected. But over time, it turns out that software developers, going to meet the wishes of customers, of the best of intentions, have changed everything drastically, and walks in the maze of screens are renewed.

In a broader sense, the user of the Internet space can search for various kinds of inquiring requests, the corresponding service in the vast global network and pick up their due.

Thus, the first rule of the electronic service emerges - it should be available to consumers for use in the digital space. It is worth making a reservation that this does not apply to everyone, everyone, but only to those to whom the service itself is intended. In other words, each electronic service must have an addressing - a certain point of contact with itself in the virtual space. Some services may be grouped together with a single access point, which is also equipped with a user interface. Most often, this manifestation is called the Portal.

Here we are finally smoothly getting to the moment I mentioned in the introduction. Place of service. In fact, it looks like a kind of wish fulfillment node. Each such node executes only one conforming wish. But from different nodes of simple wishes, you can add up a whole factory for the implementation of complex multi-pass requests. But let's get everything in order.

Further. When the electronic service itself is selected, in order to render it appropriately, it is necessary to properly describe it. After all, to perform actions you may need some essential information, without which it is impossible to achieve a result. Consequently, the e-service should be equipped with a mechanism to ask the customer the right questions that are vital for its provision. And this is the second rule. We call this mechanism - the formation of applications for the provision of services.

As a joke, remember?
- Fairy give me a spell please ...
- I'm not a witch, but a fairy.
“Well then, let's go on ...”

As befits any application, it must indicate the very required attributes that must be filled, regardless of any circumstances. Most often, such details emit an asterisk. Required details are not filled, application is not valid.
And in order not to be mistaken with the filling of such attributes, the bid generation mechanism should provide the consumer with a certain Format regulating the rules for filling it out, as well as defining the composition of those very correct clarifying questions.

And, of course, an integral part of the electronic service should be the mechanism itself for converting a valid application to the result promised to the consumer. This mechanism can be either fully automated or using human intervention. All listed elements and associations of their interaction for clarity are presented in Figure 2.


Figure 2. E-service environment

Recently, I was fortunate enough to become a participant in an action to provide me with an electronic service. Well, as electronic, let's say semi-automatic. That is, in the MFC, a girl of pleasant appearance, just filled out my application related to the paperwork. The application had obligatory requisites, for which I had no relevant data to fill in, and in my opinion, they were absolutely not important in essence. I persuaded the girl, persuaded the good, to skip these details under my receipt that I am aware of all the outrage of my act and warned about the possible consequences. And what? Having lost more than a week of time, I received the answer that there is not enough data to provide the service. Who did I want to fool?

It is appropriate to mention a quote from the film "Citizen X":

"The strength of the bureaucracy is determined by its ability to deny a special approach to anyone else."

3. Ways to interact with the electronic service

So, we found out that one of the most important characteristics of an electronic service is the place of access to it and the format of presentation of information for it. This is perhaps the only bridge that lies between its real and virtual side.

Explaining more precisely, the electronic service must necessarily have an interface, that is, a way to interact with itself. And not necessarily - a visual representation of this method. For example, the form to fill in the data by the user from some site, in Figure 3 - the Service Portal.

The request for the provision of the service received from the portal is received in the form of an application through the service interface to the mechanism for its processing. Ultimately, the result is generated in this very mechanism, which is returned back to the portal in the form of information for the consumer.
As mentioned above, an electronic service may not have a visual way of interacting with users, if it is used exclusively by other electronic services, as an auxiliary one. Figure 3 - Service number 2.


Figure 3. Interaction with the e-service

For example, if you send a postal address to the Yandex Map service (available on the Internet), you can get its geographic coordinates in response. Or let's say you need to clarify the index for someone's application, without disturbing the applicant once again. In this case, the electronic service should determine that the application does not contain an index, itself request it from the Postal Codes service, to the postal address filled out in the application and enter the result in the application, without unnecessary red tape and inquiries. This is an example of the use of the very node we mentioned earlier for the fulfillment of wishes.

In the next part, Part 2. E-service, we will talk about e-cabinets and institutions.