Open AccessConsolidating Back Office with a Shared-Services Center:
Author(s) -
Mimoza Bogdanoska Jovanovska,
Natasha Blazeska-Tabakovska,
Dragan Grueski
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
central european public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2591-2259
pISSN - 2591-2240
DOI - 10.17573/cepar.2021.2.04
Subject(s) - business process reengineering , data center , government (linguistics) , information flow , computer science , originality , government office , redundancy (engineering) , knowledge management , process management , business , engineering , local government , operations management , qualitative research , public administration , social science , linguistics , philosophy , lean manufacturing , sociology , political science , operating system
Purpose: The paper points out a novel approach to e-Government back-office reengineering based on creating a Shared-Services Center at the sectorial level. Design/Methodology/Approach: To prove the Shared-Services Center as a proper solution for e-Government back-office reengineering, the authors used the case study of the Housing Facilities Sector in the Republic of North Macedonia. The research process follows Kettingers et al.'s framework of IT-enabled change with a holistic data-driven approach. Findings: The study indicates a complex information flow between stakeholders, an abundance of the same information and data collected from local stakeholders, and enormous citizen and institutional burden. The e-Government back-office reengineering solution for the specific case study based on creating a Shared-Services Center overcomes the problem of data redundancy, radically simplifies the information flow, and reduces citizen burden in line with the "Once-Only" principle. Practical Implications: The paper shows that by observing the network of all relevant stakeholders at the sectorial level, based on the information flow of core data, back-office problems can be identified, whereby the Shared-Services Center proves itself as a suitable solution. It may be a prerequisite for further studies on back-office process reengineering at the sectorial level. Originality/Value: Publications concerning back-office research at the sectorial level and, as in our case, within the House Facility Sector are almost non existing in scientific literature. Considering that there is a lack of analyses based on information flow and visualization of the information-flow network at the sectorial level (before and after the reforms), this paper will add original value to scientific literature.