Invoice broker broken

Updated: A careful reader have pointed out that I have completely forgot and missed the involvement of the Swedish Financial Management Authority (ESV) in this whole process. It was the Swedish Financial Management Authority (ESV) that procured and implemented the broker. See this webpage at ESV.

In an article today the invoice broker service the Swedish Government has bought is discussed (again). This service is one of the most broken design systems ever designed, and I have personally participated in I do not know how many meetings with Swedish Administrative Development Agency (Verva) where the brokerage system has been discussed.

There are in fact two design mistakes in this system.

The first that the transport mechanism to move the invoice is not separated enough from the format of the invoice. The reason why this is important to have separated is that different players have interest in moving the actual invoice in different ways. For example, the default transport mechanism specified is incompatible with SHS, the other big system design finalized by Verva. Two systems incompatible with each other. The format of the invoice is though separated more from the format of the invoice than the separate modules in SHS.

The second that they have defined a broker as a service, and require invoices to pass this broker. I.e. the defined standard is standardized by a broker system. A design I have not seen since mid 1980. This is the next millenium. And people have told Verva a brokerage system is wrong. It is the wrong way an open standard is applied. But Verva just continue to move ahead. The problem is that with a broker, anyone that want to send an invoice has to send the invoice to the broker, and then the invoice is sent to the receiver. This instead of the sender of the invoice sending the invoice to the receiver directly.

No, I completely agree with the article that the system chosen, and the brokerage system Verva has procured have to be replaced completely. First after this current project is killed we can start move forward in Sweden. We have an expression in Swedish for this: “Gör om, gör rätt”. Current system is completely broken.