Open source Business Process Management forhandling processes in the public sector

Abstract: Business processes are part of every organization, in more orless structured ways. They serve as a documentation of howwork should be performed. Business Process Management (BPM) is a set of methods and technologies to support the modeling, execution, administration, and analysis of businessprocesses. BPM aims to bridge the gap between strategy and operations in an organization. Inefficient manualprocesses in this gap introduce problems with consistency,traceability and agility. This degree project investigates the suitability of open source Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs) for handling processes in governmentagencies to address these issues. The Swedish Export Credits Guarantee Board’s (EKN’s) application process for export guarantee offers is used as case. Interviews were conducted and a proof of concept using open source BPM for EKN’s application process was implemented, which together with the literature review are analyzed to find keyfactors indicating a process’ successful execution in a processengine. The key factors found are that the process should be delimited, repetitive, not running for too long,and be predictable with regard to every possible outcome.