Fields of Research

Being a research lab of the German Research Center of Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH), the Institute for Information Systems conducts applied research projects on a national and international level in the following four fields of research:

Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) is one of the core competencies of the Institute for Information Systems. The ARIS-House of Business Engineering (ARIS-HoBE) has been developped as a framework for a comprehensive, industry-independent management of business processes. In particular, the ARIS method facilitates detailled descriptions of business processes both from a business and a IT perspective. ARIS models are used  for information system engineering as well as business reengineering. The event-driven process chain (EPC) method is one of the flagship notations of process modelling developped at the institute for information systems (IWi).

Contact: Dr. Peter Fettke

Successful business process management goes beyond methodologically sound process modelling, optimization and controlling. Heterogeneous application systems, that have grown "organically" throughout the years, rather ask for thorough integration to allow for seamless interaction even across organizations. This requires the definition and specification not only of shared technical standards but also of semantic representation forms for the description of complex business situations. Within industry projects and research projects funded by the European Commission or the German administration, the research group works on cutting-edge research questions including flexible business modelling, enterprise interoperability, model-based system engineering and business process management. [More information]

Lifelong Learning

Within this area of research the Institute for Information Systems (IWi) works on concepts, methods and technologies that accomodate for the need to manage information and knowledge in diverse life-time situations that members of corporate and academic organizations find themselves in. It focuses on the structuring, preservation and distribution of the organizational knowledge base as well as the skills of the learners. Beyond teaching in the discipline of information systems at the Saarland University, national and international research projects deal with future forms of techngology-enhanced learning (TEL) driven by new, integrated information and communication technologies. This includes the exploitation of digital media to overcome traditional roles of learners and teachers for the purpose of an open and participative knowledge culture in academia and enterprises.

E-Government

The topic of E-Government has established as an important driver for innovative public administration world wide. Several innitiatives of public administrations but also industry and research show significant results. For many years, the Institute for Information Systems (IWi) develops new, innovative concepts for public administration that have been successfully implemented with research and industry partners. The competence center E-Govermentm (CCeGOV) has bundled and institutionalized those competencies since 2001.

Contact: Dr. Peter Fettke