Towards Guidelines for the Evolution of E-Service Environments

Abstract

Different domains, such as the health care domain, can benefit from an increased use of e-services. However, factors such as vendor lock-in, the lack of standardized infrastructure and quality criteria can slow down the creation and use of e-services in a domain. To encourage the development of e-services there is both a need for simplicity - to enable new actors to use and provide e-services, and a need for regulation - such as defined standards and quality levels. In this paper we present the concept of a service collaboration environment - a sustainable model for e-service evolution that facilitates the maintenance of the balance between simplicity and regulation. We use the theory of competitive market forces to define a set of service collaboration environment guidelines that aims to enable increased use of e-services by stimulating new service consumers and providers to enter the environment. The guidelines can be applied to drive the evolution of e-services in a business domain.