Standardization of Service Descriptions, Process Models and Forms in Public Administrations: Results from a Survey in Germany

Public administrations face a high need for service orientation, process efficiency as well as digitalization of documents. Thus, service descriptions, process models and forms are relevant artifacts of administrative procedures. Due to their interrelation, an integrated standardization regarding these information artifacts is promising. Our overall research objective is to analyze initiatives that aim at a standardization regarding service descriptions, process models and forms in German public administrations. This article provides a first step of ongoing research to reach this aim by investigating initiatives that deal with forms. It builds upon interviews with public managers of 15 IT standardization initiatives and describes those concerning criteria such as supported standardization features, targeted federal levels and number of application domains. Given the lack of standardization found in practice, this article raises the need for an instrument that enables the integrated standardization of service descriptions, process models and forms in public administrations.