e-GIF is Electronic Government Interoperability Framework, which is a Government Enterprise Architecture portraying the overall blueprints of how government is structured and determines how government agencies can effectively achieve their desired objectives
The Architecture
Business
Application
Technology
Data
Milestones
2017
Open Group Awards
Government Enterprise Architecture, e-GIF (eGovernment Interoperability Framework) of Royal Government of Bhutan, lead by the Department of Information Technology and Telecom, under Ministry of Information and Communications was selected for the Open Group 2017 Awards for Innovation and excellence in Enterprise Architecture.
March 2014
187 Public services automated
December 2012
Transition to Full Service
July 2012
e-GIF was born
ICT provides unprecedented opportunities to realize a nation's development vision and objectives. The implementation of e-Government can significantly enhance efficiency, accountability and transparency of Government functions and service delivery. Therefore, in keeping with the priorities of the government, there was need to put in place strategic plans, policies and ICT standards to support smooth implementation of e-Government. In order to address the above challenges, the RGoB has embarked on the development of an e-GIF portal using International standards and best practices which are catered towards Bhutan’s needs.
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eHealth EA Blueprint
The Nation with the Best Health
The Royal Government of Bhutan has accorded priority to tapping the potential of ICT in various sectors. Guided by the vision “the nation with the best health”, the health sector has emphasized the importance of using ICT-enabled solutions to improve the delivery of quality care to the people of Bhutan.
The ICD is originally designed as a health care classification system, providing a system of diagnostic codes for classifying diseases, including nuanced classifications of a wide variety of signs, symptoms, abnormal findings, complaints, social circumstances,and external causes of injury or disease.
The clause 5.4 of the National Health Policy of Bhutan, 2011 states that “The Royal Government of Bhutan shall provide 100% nationwide access to a health care professional through technology-enabled solutions.
Furthermore, Clause 7.2 of National Health Policy 2011 states that “Digitised Health record and information system shall be instituted in all the health facilities for faster and effective health information generation to support decision making.”
The ICT Division was established in the ministry to spearhead, review and manage all the ICT/eHealth activities and guiding the programmes in investing in the area in 2017.
This was followed by the development of the National eHealth Strategy and Work Plan which in 2017 with support from ADB and WHO which served as a lighthouse to ICT initiatives in the ministry.
This also established the National eHealth Steering Committee which served as the governing body for any ICT activities for the ministry and eHealth Technical Working Group was established to carry out review or carry out the ICT activities.
National eHealth Enterprise Architecture Blueprint
Bhutan has successfully come out with an National eHealth Enterprise Architecture Blueprint in December 2020 to ensure all the systems can exchange data seamlessly.
Bhutan's approach to implementing HIS is to have a standard HIS system across all the health facilities in the country and also get data from other stakeholders which has been successfully tested in the COVID19 system implementation.
Another advantage Bhutan has is that the country has information of any individual residing in Bhutan be it Bhutanese citizen or foreigner.
Therefore, it is only imperative for Bhutan to adopt such a system by any means which shall be expensive in the beginning but shall soon payoff in terms of efficiency and huge health care expenditure savings.
If Bhutan can roll out this project successfully, Bhutan will be one among few countries in the world to roll out standardized integrated healthcare IT solutions across the nation that include non-allopathic facilities (Traditional Medicine Hospital/Clinics).
This shall help Bhutan in achieving the goal of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) which every nation in the world is aspiring.
The details document can be found in the link shared below:
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD)
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is a globally used diagnostic tool for epidemiology, health management and clinical purposes. The ICD is maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations System.
The ICD is originally designed as a health care classification system, providing a system of diagnostic codes for classifying diseases, including nuanced classifications of a wide variety of signs, symptoms, abnormal findings, complaints, social circumstances,and external causes of injury or disease.
This system is designed to map health conditions to corresponding generic categories together with specific variations, assigning for these a designated code, up to six characters long. Thus, major categories are designed to include a set of similar diseases.
The ICD-11 Revision
The ICD-11 is the eleventh revision of the ICD. It replaces the ICD-10 as the global standard for coding health information and causes of death. The ICD-11 is developed and regularly updated by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Its development spanned over a decade of work, involving over 300 specialists from 55 countries divided into 30 work groups, with an additional 10,000 proposals from people all over the world. The stable version of the ICD-11 was released on 18 June 2018, and officially endorsed by all WHO members during the 72nd World Health Assembly on 25 May 2019.
The ICD-11 is a large ontology consisting of more than 80000 defined entities, also called classes or nodes. An entity can be anything that is relevant to health care.
It usually represents a disease or a pathogen, but it can also be an isolated symptom or (developmental) anomaly of the body. There are also classes for reasons for contact with health services, social circumstances of the patient, and external causes of injury or death.
The collection of all ICD-11 entities is called the Foundation Component.From this common core, various subsets can be derived; for example, the ICD-O is a derivative classification optimized for use in oncology.
The ICD-11 MMS Foundation
The primary derivative of the Foundation is called the ICD-11 MMS, and it is this system that is commonly referred to as simply "the ICD-11". MMS stands for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics.Both the Foundation Component and the ICD-11 MMS can be viewed online on the WHO's website.
The ICD-11 further includes extension codes that cover medicaments as defined in International nonproprietary names, chemicals, infectious agents, histopathology, severity, mechanisms of injury, or anatomy.
ICD-11 ontological structure provides advanced user guidance and assistance in code combinations.The technology can be accessed by any software via API or by humans using the coding tool.Print versions will be made available on demand.
The ICD-11 will officially come into effect on 1 January 2022, at which time member nations may begin reporting morbidity and mortality statistics using the ICD-11 nosology.The WHO has acknowledged that "not many countries are likely to adopt that quickly", i.e. begin using the ICD-11 by the time of its launch.
Bhutan as one of the active member countries of WHO has also adopted ICD-11 by defaults and has started implementing it starting from 2020.As the nation is in the process of digitizing healthcare services using ehealth and mhealth solutions, the adoption of this health standard could not be more timely.
Since the Ministry of Health has adopted this standard, any office, agencies or system planning to use such disease either built, collect or access disease data are mandated to use these standard coding.
More details are available at the WHO ICD-11 (https://icd.who.int/en) website or else please contact officials of the Health Information Management System Team under the MoH.
eGov Governance Team
Jigme Tenzing
Director
Lobzang Jamtsho
Business Architect
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Business Architecture
The Business Architecture defines and provides detailed description of the business areas, government-wide lines of business, their associated government functions and services performed by the RGoB. It ensures strategic alignment of business functions and services to the objectives of the RGoB, and promotes collaboration amongst RGoB agencies in delivering government functions around common business areas. The Objective of this reference model is to align services and functions performed by different agencies within the RGoB with the business objectives of the RGoB.
Business Architecture Components
BRM provides a complete government-wide perspective of Lines of Business, the associated Government Functions, and the services delivered by the RGoB. The BRM does not cover National Defence, the National Council and the National Assembly, Office of the Gyelpoi Zimpoen and HM secretariat. The following is an example of a government-wide line of business, its associated Government Functions and Services. The line of business falls under the Services to Public vertical business area. Services are first categorized according to the service categorization matrix. As shown, the each quadrant indicates the value of a service in two dimensions: value to department, and value to user.
Service Rationalization
The rationalization agenda is primarily established to move away from agency centric view of the services and make them citizen-centric by taking a whole-of-government perspective. This means looking at each and every service from a point of view that considers the actual use of the service. The following aspects can be considered during this activity. Elimination of duplicates: If the same or similar service is provided by more than one agency, consider creating only one service and eliminate the redundant ones. This might mean only one agency providing the service, or two agencies co-operating to provide a single service for the user.Remove pre-requisite services: There are services that are required as a pre-requisite to other services. For example, a birth certificate may be needed to access multiple other services. A birth-certificate otherwise serves no other useful purpose. Therefore, this service can be included as an automated verification check of birth records for the dependent services; there is no need for a standalone service to issue birth certificate. This is possibly true of many other registration certificates. we should consider if they really need to be issued as certificates, or is it enough just to record the fact of registration and use this record for granting access to dependent services. Eliminate duplication of common services: If a service can be replaced by a common service, consider eliminating it and moving to the common service. The requirements of each case needs to be elaborated. There has to be certain give and take to move towards the common service because a common service may not satisfy 100% of the requirements of the existing service; but this is to be expected so architects need to persuade the stakeholders of the benefits of using the common service. Refer to section 4 for suggested list of common services.
Line of Services
These services belong to the Line of Business(LOB) financial management[5].
The above Exhibit demonstrates the Services belonging to Line of Service "FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT"
Testing the image path
The Objective of Enterprise security architecture is to provide conceptual design of security infrastructure, related security mechanism and security policies and procedures. The architecture links components of security infrastructure as a unified unit. The goal of this cohesive unit is to protect information. The enterprise security architecture must ensure Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability throughout the enterprise and align with organization's core goals and objectives.
Application Architecture
Application Architecture defines the detailed description of the application systems used within RGOB. These application systems are needed to manage the data and support the line of businesses, government functions and services. It also documents a list of reusable application components of these application systems. The objectives of this reference model are to facilitate interoperability between application systems, identify reusable application components and facilitate application maintenance.
Categorisation of Application System
COMMON APPLICATIONS: These applications are common government-wide. These applications allow for the greatest economies of scale, usually comprise of all horizontal functions that have highest potential for sharing and commonalities. A representative list of possible common applications is given below. To qualify as a common application, the process supported by the application has to be common across WoG: for example, requesting and granting of leave. Secondly, the process has to be self-contained within each department. GROUP APPLICATIONS:These applications are applicable within the confines of a cluster. A cluster comprises of a group of ministry / departments that provide services in a single domain (e.g. health, transportation, education, social welfare, agriculture), and therefore bring in some scope of shared services and common assets within the cluster.DEPARTMENTAL APPLICATIONS:These applications belong within the confines of a single ministry / department. These services are self- sufficient within the agency and require no interaction or exchange with any other agency.CROSS-CUTTING APPLICATIONS:These are functions initiated by a lead agency, but require the involvement of multiple other agencies as stakeholders to perform specific, assigned tasks and activities within the service, contributing to successful completion. These multiple stakeholders participate in the service delivery in an orchestrated manner (i.e. they are subject to rules and sequencing). Some examples of this type of application are procurement, revenue management, disaster management etc.
Technology Architecture
The Technology Architecture aims to support the E-GIF vision of delivering effective, automated and connected services of the highest standards and quality with a Whole of Government perspective. The intention is to provide a long-term view with a focus on the future technological needs. The vision sets the foundation for strategic technology planning, to provide flexible, efficient, common ICT solutions supporting citizen centric services, which enables RGoB to successfully achieve its goals and objectives and contribute towards achieving Gross National Happiness
Access Domain
The access domain is described by end user access architecture. It has four layers namely- User, device, connectivity and service layers. Typically, user layer describes the types of users accessing government services, which are broadly divided in 3 types as 1· Citizens 2· Government Employees 3· Businesses. In order to achieve real ubiquitous service access, the user should be able to access the services at any point of time, from anywhere and any device such as PDAs/tablets, laptop/desktops, Smart Phones, Service Kiosks, etc. Hence, it is very important to provide the last mile connectivity infrastructure as mentioned in the connectivity layer of the exhibit.
Integration Domain
The integration domain describes building blocks used for interaction between various system environments for seamless delivery of service. It also covers services, which are used across government agencies and delivered by common applications. Middleware in the context of distributed applications is software that provides services to enable the various components of a distributed system to communicate and manage data, acting as â??glueâ?? to connect all systems together. Middleware supports and simplifies complex distributed applications. It includes web servers, application servers, messaging and similar tools.
Server Domain
The current server infrastructure is distributed and maintained by respective departments of RGoB. All the applications run on separate physical servers leading to underutilization of resources. Hence, there is a need of consolidation and virtualization of servers and storage for cost-effective, efficient, scalable and available architecture. RGoB has a vision to move towards cloud. Virtualization is the preliminary step towards that. Server architecture is an important part of platform domain. It normally has 3 layers â?? Web, Application and DB which cater to different requirements. The proposed server architecture will enable government to migrate from traditional environment to modern virtualized environment.
Storage Domain
Information has become our most valuable asset. The challenge lies in making information available and keep it secured. To achieve this, storage becomes important part of IT architecture. As of now, different departments of RGoB are maintaining their own setup of storage infrastructure. As we move towards architecture supporting connected government, inter-operable systems and boundary less information flow, the islands of storages have to be consolidated into a centralized virtual pool of resources. This will help in achieving centralized management, cost effectiveness, faster provisioning and lesser time to rollout new services.
Network Domain
The enterprise network is another important building block of technology architecture. It depicts the connectivity infrastructure both at Data Center as well as at WAN level. TWAN is a government network, which provides a secure and dedicated environment for the RGoB to conduct its business functions. It is a high-speed network connecting all ten ministries, the Prime Minister's office and other government agencies in Thimphu. The Dzongkhag administration offices are also connected to this network. This connection is further taken to Gewogs and Dungkhags as well as Community Centres (CCs). RGoB should leverage TWAN to provide government services to agencies as well as to the public through the CCs.
Data Center Domain
The Government data centre seeks to provide services such as hosting, connectivity and managed IT services. This will enhance service delivery to the public as well as within the Government. Having a Government Data Centre will extend several benefits such as: 1· Consolidated demand and use of resources 2· Reduced cost of maintaining and managing data centre physical infrastructure and associated costs 3· Increased efficiency of data centre ICT assets 4· Improved matching of data centre ICT facilities to business need 5· Standardized ICT infrastructure architectures and sharing of resources. RGoB has a vision to provide some of the government ICT services as cloud services in future for which Government Data center will be built with the capability of providing cloud services. While upcoming BITC Data Center will cater as the core data center, there is no specific plan to build a DR facility but the government is contemplating the possibilities of using Bhutan Telecom (One of the ISPs and Mobile Ops in the country) Data center located in Phuntsholing (Southern Belt of the country) as a Disaster Recovery Site. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are closely related practices that describe a Government's preparation for unforeseen risks to continued operations. Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity and prior to selecting a disaster recovery strategy, a disaster recovery planner first refers to business continuity plan which should indicate the key metrics of recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) for various Government services.
Data Architecture
Architecture defines standards to describe, share, structure and classify data. It identifies the common data for data integration and institutes a standard data management practice. The objectives of this reference model is to enable information sharing, data reuse and enhance the accessibility and integrity of the data, with due considerations to data protection.
Data Architecture Components
The Data Architecture Components consist of Data Integration, Data Access, Data Security, Data Lifecycle, Data Migration, and Data Models
Data Access
Data access model defines data access privileges for business processes that creates, updates and deletes data in an application system. This model ensures that the data in the system is maintained in a consistent manner (i.e., ensures data integrity by applying a set of common rules when adding, changing, and deleting the data. Data Access model also defines the principles on which access rights shall be given to different roles in the database administration. For RGoB, these rights shall be defined precisely in respect of all the Core Datasets and Master Datasets.
Data Lifecycle
Data Lifecycle management is a policy based approach to manage flow of information systems data throughout its lifecycle: from creation and initial storage to the time when it becomes obsolete and is deleted. The lifecycle crosses different application systems, databases, and storage media. There is a special emphasis and detail in relation to the Core Datasets and Master Datasets from data lifecycle modelling perspective.
Data Migration
When an existing application is replaced, there will be a critical need to migrate data (master, transactional, and reference) to the new application. Data migration model identifies data migration requirements and also provide indicators as to the level of transformation, weeding, and cleansing that will be required to present data in a format that meets the requirements and constraints of the target application. Data Migration process consists of three high level phases: Plan: The planning phase involves determining the requirements of the migration, identifying the current and future environment, and creating and documenting the migration plan. Migrate: This migration phase completes data migration from source to target system. It involves the steps like data assessment, design, build, execution, transition and production. Validate: After migration is completed, the migration process has to be validated using well defined validation methodology. It includes the steps like check lists, preparing test plan, run the test plan and validation of results etc.
