FIM attributes for public administration

The German Federal Ministry of the Interior created a BPMN extension for structuring BPMN-diagrams: the so called FIM attributes (translates as Federal Information Management). These attributes equip processes in departments and sectors of the public administration with reference attributes, to compare them with more clarity on a national level.

The principle of the FIM initiative is: "The same content should always be described in the same way."

The attributes refer to common activity types like receive information or decide. These are activities that occur commonly in the processes of the public administration, but different local authorities have different ideas of implementing them. For example: Many local administrations use different forms to receive information for public services, although on the basis of these information they have to decide over the same factual matters. The FIM initiative strives to standardize the processes to reduce bureaucratic expenditure, using instruments of process management.

In the BPMN extension, these processes are ordered into groups through FIM. The reference activity groups are marked with different labels in the top right corner of a subprocess activity. This makes the the FIM groups easy to recognize.

You can also use the add-on outside of the public administration context. It is a useful tool to structure subprocesses and to standardize content that belongs to the same reference group.

Adding an FIM attribute

  1. Add a collapsed sub process to the canvas.

  2. Select the subprocess and open the attribute menu.

  3. Under main attributes, from reference activity groups, select the correct FIM attribute from the drop-down list.

Overview of FIM-attributes

The attribute labels can be used flexibly, but usually they refer to:

  1. Receive information describes the arrival of new information or documents.

  2. Provide Information describes the forwarding of information or documents, especially to external participants (for example civilians or other enterprises).

  3. Check formally describes proving something on the basis of procedural law.

  4. Check materially describes proving something on the basis of substantive law.

  5. Decide refers to a decision based on an expert assessment.

  6. Create , for example a new document.

  7. Execute participation involves an external participant into the process.

  8. Execute other activity is optional, and can be used if no other type applies.

More information on how to create subprocesses is available in the section Create subprocesses.

Creating attributes for FIM reference activities

  1. In the explorer, select Setup > Define notations/attributes.

  2. Select Business Process Diagram (BPMN 2.0) as the modeling language and Collapsed Subprocess as the element type and click Add in the Custom attributes section.

  3. You can define the attribute name and type.

Read more in section Add and manage notation subsets.