Public process management: a method for introducing standard business reporting

Abstract

Businesses have to file many reports to show compliance with rules and regulations. Regulators try to reduce the administrative burden, by providing a standardized representation format and agreements about reporting procedures and the use of technical infrastructure. However, developing and managing such a standardized reporting scheme is hard. It involves inter-dependencies between processes, data and technology and the interests of many stakeholders. Drawing on existing practice this paper presents Public Process Management (PPM): a general method for process management in the public sector. In this paper we apply PPM specifically to the problem of introducing a standardized reporting scheme in an application domain. The method is driven by quality management and process redesign approaches, but deals with unique characteristics of compliance reporting: legal data requirements, provenance, process compliance and multiple stakeholders. In particular, PPM stresses strict adherence to an iterative development schedule, and shared conceptual models of processes, data definitions, technological infrastructure and governance agreements. The usefulness and adequacy of the method are illustrated by a case study on Standard Business Reporting, a standardized reporting channel in the Netherlands for both public and private agencies.