Designing, formalizing, and evaluating a flexible architecture for integrated service delivery: combining event-driven and service-oriented architectures

An influx of service providers collaborate in networks to meet their clients’ demands. Integrated service delivery (ISD) is a way to let networked service providers offer services to their clients by bundling selected services offered by each provider so that clients do not have to deal with each single provider anymore. Designing such a network is a complicated endeavor as independent organizations need to collaborate and should understand how their activities are dependent on each other. Communication of events is necessary to deal with unpredictable and complex processes in such a network. In contrast with conventional event-driven architecture and service-oriented architecture (SOA) approaches, the hybrid model of event-driven interactions and SOA offers the required flexibility to realize ISD. This flexibility is realized by integrating not only services but also the processes of the different service providers to supply such services. A design science approach has been applied resulting in a detailed and formalized design of an event-driven service-oriented architecture (EDSOA). The EDSOA has been illustrated to show how ISD is realized with support of the architecture in a scenario concerning an application for a temporary residence permit by an immigrant. An evaluative workshop has been conducted which reflected that the following criteria are most important for successful organizational adoption of the EDSOA: expected usefulness, fit with organizational standards, use of trusted technology, and ease of maintenance.