Using a citizen language in public process models: The case study of a Brazilian university

Abstract

Increasingly information transparency becomes necessary in public organizations. Either due to the imposition of laws and decrees, or to the yearning for the society. In addition to information, business processes are equally important, responsible for all the treatment and processing of information in the organization. It is important not only know the information, but the way it was generated. Providing transparency of business processes requires presenting their operating models in which are explicit the actors involved, the activities carried out and the rules that support them, among other types of information. Currently the notations used to represent process models are extremely technical, consequently difficult to understand by ordinary citizens. It seems not sufficient to provide transparency. This paper presents a case study of using a transformation method that aims to make the process easier to understand for citizens and the result shows that laypeople understand most the citizen language than technical notations. In addition, experiences, collected during the execution of a case study, illustrate the method.