Service Oriented Architecture Model For Integration Of E-Government Systems In Kenya.

Abstract

During the last decade, organisations in Kenya have worked to automate processes and digitize information and services using various systems. These systems have however become diverse due to the various vendors and their use of different data formats, storage types, languages and even middleware, thus the issue of heterogeneity and interoperability of systems. This has created a need for an integrated platforms to enhance sharing of information and services between organisations. The E-government platforms in Kenya are growing to a size that requires a framework that ensures an integrated platform for the e-government applications and services provided to citizens, business and other government agencies. Currently most e-government platforms are independent thus result to redundancy of efforts, inconsistency of data and lack of integration, while some platforms are peer-to-peer integrated resulting to tight coupled system, and tedious process of adding of new services into E-government systems. The aim of this research was to use the eCitizen portal in Kenya as a case study, thus understand the challenges that users and support staff have with the current e-government systems by use of questionnaires, and then use Service-oriented modelling and architecture (SOMA) to come up with a SOA Model that may be used to meet most of these challenges, and also validate this model using a prototype. The post prototype questionnaire showed an improvement of the usability of the portal from 77.5 on the current eCitizen portal, to 87.5 on the System Usability Scale, thus ultimately reducing on costs, less redundancy of data and effort, shared information and services, interoperability and most importantly better service delivery using a SOA integrated eCitizen platform.