Framework for expanding e- government: the eGov+ project - VBN

Copenhagen,4-5February2008
Asfor now,theoverallstrategicparadigmof e-governmentisaservice
discourse,motivatedintheneedtosaveresourcesbymovingactivityfrom
physicalservicecentersandtelephonetotheweb,therebysavingpersonal.
Becauseofthehardeconomiclogicbehindpresente-govinitiatives,user
experience, on the side of the office clerks as well as on the side of the
citizens, is rarely tested for, while customer management approaches and
other re-engineering approaches are promoted (for example Andersen and
Henriksen(2006)andhttp://www.pprgovernment.com/method.htm).Weare
goingtobenchmarkactuale-govuserexperiencewithupagainstthesenseof
identity,belonging,andcareexperienced ininteractionwithsocialweb2.0
communitysites.
In eGov+ we are going to adress the competencies going into
accomplishing transactions between citizens and municipality, such as
signing up for child day care, being referred to elder-care, filling out tax
information, and aquiring real estate information. Through action research
involving observation, interviews and workshops with service staff and
citizens wewill map out profiles of experience, goals, and competencies
involvedinaccomplishingthesetransactionasfornowbywayoftelephone,
physical desk- interaction and web-communication. Our findings will be
communicatedintothedesignprocessintheformofscenariosandpersonadescriptions.
4 Methods
Havingoutlinedtheseideasandresearchquestionsseparately,weemphasize
thatitisnottheareasapart,butthefocusonuse,design,andmanagement
together,thatmakeseGov+unique.Topracticallyhandlethecomplexityof
this interplay, we have separated out four research strands: A. Community
technologyandserviceinfrastructure,B.Workflowinteractionandadaptive
documents; C. Design methods and tailorability; and D. Public IT service
modellingandmanagement.Thestrandsareoverlappingwiththethemesof
fourPhD-projects.Ourresearchapproachisgroundedintheaction-oriented
researchtraditionthatiswellestablishedamongprojectmembersaswellas
internationally(Bødker&Christiansen,1997,Bødker,1999,Bødker,2006).
It consists of empirical, exploratory design cases that intervene into the
currentpractices ofuseontheonehand,whilebeingbased oninterpretive
qualitativemethodsontheother.Thesecasestudiesarebasedonhypotheses
and will lead to new insight to be conceptualized in these strands.
Accordingly,itisamajorprincipleofstructuringof theproject tobalance
betweengeneraldevelopmentofhypotheses,conceptsandideasinthefour
strands,andtargeted,empiricalexplorationoftheseideasinthetime-limited
design cases. The exploratory design cannot stand alone, and will be
complemented with qualitative interviews and observational studies of
procurement,designandmanagementprocessesinthemunicipalusesettings
in general, and among selected companies providing technological
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