In memory of my beloved mother Inger,
always near to me

this in mind, the thesis presents a configurable methodology with the
purpose to quality assure service oriented workflows found in socio-
economic-technical systems. Important building blocks for this are
information types and service supported workflows.

Our case study is of a call centre-based business called AKC (Apotekets
kundcentrum). AKC constitutes a part of the Cooperation of Swedish
Pharmacies (Apoteket AB). One of their main services offered to Swedish
citizens is the handling of incoming questions concerning pharmaceutical
issues. We analysed the interactive voice response system at AKC as a
starting point for our investigations and we suggest a more flexible
solution.

We regard a socio-economic-technical system as an information ecology,
which puts the focus on human activities supported by technology.
Within these information ecologies, we have found that a Service
Oriented Architecture (SOA) can provide the flexible support needed in
an environment with a focal point on services. Input from information
ecologies and SOA also enables a structured way of managing in- and
outsourcing issues. We have also found that if we apply SOA together
with our way of modelling a Service Level Agreement (SLA), we can
coordinate high-level requirements and support-system requirements.

A central insight in this work is the importance of regarding a socio-
economic-technical system as an information ecology in combination with
in- and outsourcing issues. This view will prevent a company from being
drained of its core competences and core services in an outsourcing

situation, which is further discussed in the thesis. By using our
combination of SOA and SLA we can also divide service bundles into

Gustavsson, from my co-supervisor Päivi Jokela, from all the members of
SoC at Blekinge Institute of Technology and from my colleagues at the
University of Kalmar. I also want to give special thanks to Lars Malmborg
for his continuous support and belief in Patrik and me. Thanks finally to
those involved at Apoteket and AKC, and to our language expert Johan
Höglund for valuable comments.

To my loving family and to my wonderful friends: thank you. Thank you
for always being there for me and believing in me. Finally, to my husband
Martin: your support is beyond words. I would never have managed to
deal with the events of the last few years without you. You make me the
happiest woman on earth.

Carpe diem.

Louise

TABLE OF CONTENTS

III
T
ABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE I
TABLE OF CONTENTS III
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1

S
ETTING THE SCENE

1.7

T
HESIS STRUCTURE
8
1.8

G
UIDELINES TO THE READER
9
CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUND 11
2.1

I
NPUT AND FINDINGS FROM THE
L
ICENTIATE THESIS
11
2.2

S
UMMARY OF CHAPTER
13
CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY 15
3.1

B
ACKGROUND
15
3.2

22
3.5

A
NALYSIS OF ERROR REPORTS
25
3.6

T
OWARDS A CONFIGURABLE METHODOLOGY
27
3.6.1

O
WN CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS AN ASSURED WORKFLOW AT
AKC 28
3.7

C
HALLENGES
34
3.8

S
UMMARY OF CHAPTER
37
TABLE OF CONTENTS

IV
CHAPTER 4 SERVICES AND SERVICE DEVELOPMENT 39


S
UMMARY OF CHAPTER
49
CHAPTER 5 THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF INFORMATION
AND COMMUNICATION 51
5.1

I
NTRODUCTION
51
5.2

R
EPRESENTATION
,
INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE
52
5.3

S
ITUATIONS
,
TYPES AND INFORMATION EXCHANGES
54
5.3.1

S
ITUATIONS AND TYPES
54

NFORMATION ECOLOGIES
65
5.8.1

W
HAT CHARACTERIZES AN INFORMATION ECOLOGY
? 66
5.9

AKC
VIEWED AS AN INFORMATION ECOLOGY
69
5.10

S
UMMARY OF CHAPTER
72
CHAPTER 6 METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES 73
6.1

I
NTRODUCTION
73
6.2

M
ODELLING PROCESS
75
6.2.1



V
7.3

I
DENTIFICATION OF TASKS AT
AKC 90
7.4

I
DENTIFYING INFORMATION TYPES
,
FLOWS AND DIALOGUES AT
AKC 90
7.5

E
NSURING INFORMATION QUALITY AT
AKC 97
7.6

A
SET OF GUIDELINES
99
7.7

S
UMMARY OF CHAPTER
100
CHAPTER 8 MODELS OF VALIDATION AND

C
ONCLUSIONS
109
8.5

S
UMMARY OF CHAPTER
111
CHAPTER 9 FUTURE WORK 113
9.1

T
HOUGHTS ON FUTURE WORK
113
GLOSSARY 117
REFERENCES 121
F
IGURES

F
IGURE
1.1

G
ENERIC ARCHITECTURE FOR SOCIO
-
ECONOMIC
-
TECHNICAL SYSTEMS
. 3

-
ECONOMIC
-

TECHNICAL SYSTEMS
. 29

F
IGURE
3.4

P
ERSPECTIVES ON A SOCIO
-
ECONOMIC
-
TECHNICAL SYSTEM
. 36

F
IGURE
4.1

W
EB
S
ERVICE COMPONENTS
[41]. 45

F

A
MESSAGE EXCHANGE WITHOUT COMMON GROUND
. 63

F
IGURE
6.1

R
EVISED
C
OMMON
KADS
MODEL
. 75

F
IGURE
6.2

M
ODIFIED TASK MODEL
(
TO THE RIGHT
)
IN RELATION TO THE SOCIO
-
ECONOMIC
-
TECHNICAL SYSTEM


F
IGURE
6.6

SOA
AS A SUPPORT FOR CUSTOMER ORIENTED WORKFLOWS
81

F
IGURE
7.1

C
HALLENGES FOUND IN SOCIO
-
ECONOMIC
-
TECHNICAL SYSTEMS
. 85

F
IGURE
7.2

D
IVISION OF
AKC’
S BUSINESS PROCESSES INTO SMALLER ELEMENTS
. 86

YPES AND INFORMATION FLOW
[4]. 92

F
IGURE
7.7

C
RITICAL HAND
-
OVER SITUATIONS IN THE OVERALL WORKFLOW
. 93

F
IGURE
7.8

A
DIALOGUE SITUATION EXTRACTED FROM THE OVERALL WORKFLOW
. 94

F
IGURE
7.9

S
ERIAL DIALOGUES
. 94

F


W
ORKFLOW GENERATED SERVICES
. 107T
ABLES

T
ABLE
1.1

O
WN CONTRIBUTIONS
. 6

T
ABLE
1.2

R
ELEVANCE FOR THE DISSERTATION WORK
. 7

INTRODUCTION

1

C

componentisation of business are driving the reconfiguration of service
value networks at a scale and pace never seen before in history. The
opportunity for innovation, research, development, realisation of business
and societal value and delivery of new information and business services
has never been greater [2].

This not only holds for the term “service” that today is most commonly
associated with Web services or Service-Oriented Architectures, (SOA);
there has been a remarkable growth in the service sector as a whole since
it has dominated the economic activity for the last 50 years [2]. Our
society today is increasingly built upon digital services and soon we will
fully enter a digital service society where these services will play a central
INTRODUCTION

2
role in our daily lives. When this happens, they will be a natural and
important part of the socio-economic-technical context in which people
and machines co-operate.

This development of the service sector and the challenges that Europe
faces is behind our interest in digital services, the main topic of this thesis.
We argue that one of the overall purposes of digital services is to mediate
information, which makes information a fundamental part in this context.
Hence the title “Information in use”. With this title as a starting point we
then chose to focus on two different aspects which we think are of great
importance, namely aspects of information quality in workflows where
digital services are a vital part and also in- and outsourcing aspects of
digital services. In this thesis we have used a customer care centre
(Apotekets Kundcentrum which from now on will be referred to as AKC)
which is part of the Corporation of Swedish Pharmacies (Apoteket AB

different tools, methodologies and theories. Figure 1.1 illustrates how
these are involved in our work, and it also shows how the methodologies
and theories have been used and how they are connected. More thorough
descriptions of the components that are shown in the figure are given in
the forthcoming Chapter 4 Services and service development, Chapter 5
Theoretical aspects of information and communication, Chapter 6 Methodological
issues and Chapter 8 Models of validation and conclusions respectively. Figure 1.1 Generic architecture for socio-economic-technical systems.
Figure 1.1 illustrates our socio-economic-technical system. In the upper
part we find the workplace consisting of people (e.g. customers,
employees) together with an idealised, normative workflow in an
organisation. The workflow is realised when a number of tasks are carried
out; some of these by humans and others by machines. We have drawn a
line around the people and the workflow that shows that this is a part of
the organisational context in which they work, i.e. the workplace. This
workplace is also our object of study, and it is supported by and closely
related to an underlying technical structure. In our effort to understand
the workplace, we are helped by different theories and methodologies. We

CommonKADS
Support-system
requirements
High-level
requirements
Support
Ethnographical aspects
Infosense aspects
Service Oriented

workflow. We have divided these into high-level and support-system
requirements. These concepts are well-known within the area of software
engineering, but are in those situations influenced by technical aspects and
are often restricted to requirements that are directly measurable. In socio-
economic-technical systems however, we see that very crucial trust-related
requirements come from the part of the figure above the dotted line, a
section we refer to as information ecologies since these requirements act
as support in the process of performing tasks correctly. The part of the
figure below the dotted line must then complete certain technical
functions to fulfil the support-system requirements, and some technical
functions are furthermore a part of the support-system requirements.

In our case, the technical part of the system is based upon an SOA. The
high-level and support- system requirements meet in a Service Level
Agreement, (SLA), which acts as an interface between the sociological and
the technical part of the system. The SLA is derived from
CommonKADS meta models and it collects different kinds of services to
something we call a service bundle, that supports and coordinates the
workflow.

In this thesis, I have chosen to focus particularly on in- and outsourcing
aspects of digital services in these socio-economic-technical systems.
These aspects are often discussed in connection with the concept of
INTRODUCTION

5
support-system services and I believe that they are often treated too
lightly. Many organisations bring this into play citing how others have
saved lots of money and increased their efficiency at the same time. This
is true for some organisations but not for all, there is no one-size-fits-all


6

Table 1.1 Own contributions.
Nr. Title Authors Way of presentation
1. Communication – a
comparative study of
Langefors, Shannon &
Weaver
Brandt, P. &
Wennberg, L.
(2002)
Systems Science – A
Theoretical Approach.
ISSN 1651-0275
ISBN 91-974341-2-4
2. Risk Analysis in Contact
Centres
Brandt, P.,
Révay, P. &
Wennberg, L.
(2003)
The 4th International
Conference of PhD
Students, Hungary.
3. The importance of
analysing communication
channels from an
information security
perspective – a case study

approach
Wennberg, L.,
Brandt, P. &
Révay, P. (2006)
Kybernetes: The
International Journal of
Systems & Cybernetics,
Vol.35, Issue 6.
7. Information Agent
Support in Life Critical
Situations
Gustavsson, R.,
Brandt, P.,
Lundberg, J. &
Östlund, L.
(2006)
Submitted to: The Journal
of the Brazilian Computer
Society – Special Issue on
Software Engineering for
Multi-Agent Systems
8. The Call Centre, a
Complex Critical
Information System – but
for what kind of
information?
Brandt, P.,
Gustavsson, R.,
& Östlund, L.
(2006)

3. +++ ++
4. ++
++

(5.)
1

6. + +
++ ++

7. ++ +++
+++ +++ ++
8. +++ +++
+++

++

The contributions listed above as well as this entire thesis is a result of our
research project where we have studied AKC for a number of years.
During the study, we have had several meetings and workshops that
involved representatives from AKC and its main organisation Apoteket.
We have also established contacts and meetings with other organisations,
e.g. Kalmar County Council. Their responsibilities include the public
medical service and they thus have a connection to Apoteket’s main
business which is pharmaceutical products. These contacts have been of
great value to us in the work with testing ideas and results. During our
work, we have found that digital services will be of great importance in
the future; especially for businesses and organisations like the one
mentioned above. Moreover, our research about and approach to digital
services and information has also created interest elsewhere. An example

validation did take place. At these occasions, new ideas were tested as they
came up. We see Apoteket’s and AKC’s role in this project as an
interesting and engaged study object, from which we have been able to
collect real examples that have an important connection to the public
welfare in Sweden.
1.7 Thesis structure
The remaining part of this doctoral thesis is structured as follows:

In Chapter 2 Background, we present the background to this thesis and in
Chapter 3 Case Study we describe the case study object AKC, together with
issues related to socio-economic-technical systems. These issues are
furthermore based on analysis of the existing interactive voice response
system and error reports. In Chapter 4 Services and service development, we
present an overview of services and their development with special focus
on digital services. In Chapter 5 Theoretical aspects of information and
communication, we discuss theoretical aspects of information and
communication by using Devlin’s theory of information (Infosense), and
in Chapter 6 Methodological issues we present methodological issues based
INTRODUCTION

9
on the CommonKADS methodology which we have also revised to some
extent. In Chapter 7 Our approach, we give further details about our
approach to the case study and how we have put theories and
methodologies into practice. In Chapter 8 Models of validation and conclusions
we discuss these models of validation as a way to bring forward quality
assured socio-economic-technical systems. In Chapter 9 Future work we
make our conclusions and discuss future work and other approaches such
as related work, which is followed by a Glossary that defines the central
terms for this thesis. These central terms are marked with an asterisk (*)

namely socio-related, technical and economic challenges.
INTRODUCTION

10
In Chapter 7 Our approach, methodologies and theories are put into
practice and are thus applied to our case study object AKC. In this
chapter, we describe our approach to business processes and how we
divide them into smaller parts, namely workflows, tasks and dialogues.
Next, the identification process of workflows at AKC is described and the
actual workflow at AKC is presented as a result of performed
ethnographical studies. Together with this, the importance of the
interactive voice response is once again discussed, since it activates AKC’s
workflows and will also have an impact on the overall work procedure. In
accordance with our division of business processes into smaller parts, the
next step is to break down the identified workflow into tasks, which are
described and also connected to the CommonKADS methodology. A
great part of the chapter is devoted to the identification of information
types, information flows and dialogues at AKC. In connection to this, the
CommonKADS methodology is used once again but this time in
combination with Devlin’s Infosense theory.

According to us, the tasks are performed by means of certain dialogues
and we have found that critical hand-over situations take place when
information is to be transmitted between these dialogues. Considering this
fact, we pursue a discussion about what takes place in a specific dialogue
situation, the complexity that occurs when serial dialogues appear and so
on. We also discuss the complexity of problems that arise as a result of
possible misinterpretations and we state how important it is to ensure
information quality in a consultative business like AKC. The chapter
concludes with previous challenges revisited, where we suggest six overall


2.1 Input and findings from the Licentiate thesis
We have in our previous published Licentiate thesis [8] emphasised the
importance of using a holistic perspective when it comes to security issues
and risk analysis processes together with larger organizational changes and
integration matters in particular. In relationship to the latter, we especially
refer to integrations of different communication channels. The holistic
approach that was used in the Licentiate thesis was influenced by the way
of thinking that is emphasised within General Systems Theory, (GST) [6].
This was applied to our reasoning on security where we accentuate that it
is not one single component that constitutes a secure organisation; instead
a number of co-operating factors put in a larger context together
contribute to increased security. In the Licentiate thesis, important
sustainable socio-economic-technical aspects, in the shape of interactions
between people, organisation and technology, are also put forward. These
socio-economic-technical aspects are important in order to be able to
offer different business related services* with support from suitable
infrastructures. The application area for the Licentiate thesis was AKC,
which at that point had just been established. Our focus was then turned
to an overall reasoning about security with a starting point in risk analyses
of this kind on “new” business within Apoteket.

BACKGROUND


from the very beginning and lately the information belonging to these
products has also been increasingly important. This importance is not
unrelated to the fact that great returns from the information on how to
use pharmaceutical products have been noticed, both from a national-
economic perspective and from a health perspective. Together with this,
invested resources have enabled the offer of preventive measures into
something that can be seen as a portal for healthcare. Here we refer to the
possibility of the customer to search for advice and help, concerning
health and self-care at Apoteket’s homepage (www.apoteket.se). Through
these main tasks, Apoteket offers a number of services, a concept which we
consider of vital importance when we study AKC and its business.

BACKGROUND

13
Therefore, we want to state that the main tasks for AKC amounts to
delivering different kinds of services, some digital, to their customers.
Considering the fact that Apoteket is active within the area of
pharmaceuticals and healthcare, it is of utmost importance that the
delivered services are of the highest quality. This can, according to us, be
maintained through the assurance of high information quality. The focus
in this thesis has thus been the assurance of central workflows in critical
business processes*, and we find examples of these kinds of flows and
processes within AKC.
2.2 Summary of chapter
In this chapter, the following is discussed:

• In the Licentiate thesis, General Systems Theory was applied, but
this theory is now left behind
• In the Licentiate thesis, important sustainable socio-economic-

presentation of three central challenges: socio-related, technological and economic.

3.1 Background
The establishment of AKC has brought with it a number of positive
effects, both for the overall organisation and for the customers. For the
customers, AKC provides an increased accessibility to some of the
services offered by Apoteket as well as independence of time and space.
Only 10 % of the incoming events* at AKC, have been redirected to the
local pharmacies [10] and AKC had up until November 2005 handled
6 280 000 events [11]. This has in turn decreased the workload at the local
pharmacies, which has resulted in more time left that could be spent on
the customers for e.g. counselling in self-care issues [10]. Furthermore, the
traditional paper prescriptions are now to a larger extent being replaced by
a new type of information management in the form of electronic
prescriptions. Their number is constantly increasing and during the
summer of 2005, over 1 million electronic prescriptions were served per
month [12]. The underlying idea of these electronic prescriptions,
according to Apoteket’s annual report for 2002, is partly to free up
resources in order to focus on the right things at the local pharmacies, to