Citizen Centred e-Government:an HCI approach

Leonardo Sandoval

A meme introduction to e-government

Example: e-FOIA system (US)• 1 citizen request• 29 Agencies• 285 Offices• 285 Websites!!!• All with different forms!!!

• Delivery of government information and services to citizens through the Internet(UNDESA, 2001; West, 2003)

• Bureaucratic paradigm(Ho, 2002)

• Low adoption after 20 years (OECD, 2009; Verdegem et al., 2010; Eurostat, 2014; Wang, 2014)

Citizen Centred Approach• Promoted by International Organisations since last decade

(OECD, 2005, 2009; UNDESA, 2012; European Commission, 2013)

• Focuses on integration and rationalisation of e-services• Flagship initiative: One Stop Portals (e.g. GOV.UK)

“Before we came along, there were more than 1,700 different government websites in the U.K. Each one had a different look and feel. Each one had a different user experience. In each one the language was different.”

Ben Terret on GOV.UKbusinessweek.com20th March 2014

How User Centred areCitizen Centred Services?

• Gap: few references to HCI in the e-government literature(Van den Haak et al., 2009; Sørum et al., 2012; de Róiste, 2013)

• Citizen centred solutions may still miss user needs• Pilot study

– 4 tasks on 2 One Stop Portals (Canada & UK)– 16 Citizens & 3 HCI Experts– 3 HCI Methods (CVP, CHE, AI)Results– Usability problems: Canada.Ca = 43 | GOV.UK = 69– UCDE: + 10 heuristics violated according to experts– UX: Aesthetics did not affect perception of usability– Perception of usability was related to objective usability measures

(number and severity of problems)

My research

• Understand the role of interaction in egov UX• Focus on different

– Types of users– e-gov areas and technologies– HCI methods

• Aims– Increase the body of knowledge on e-government– Integrate HCI approaches in e-government evaluation– Develop a method for comparative studies on citizen centricity

Thanks

References• de Róiste, M. (2013). Bringing in the users: The role for usability evaluation in eGovernment. Government Information Quarterly, 30(4), 441-449.

• Eurostat. (2014). Individuals using the Internet for interacting with public authorities. [Online]. Available at: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=isoc_bde15ei&lang=en

[Accessed 31 August 2014]

• Ho, A. (2002). Reinventing Local Governments and the E-Government Initiative. Public Administration Review, 62(4), 434–444.

• OECD. (2005). E-government for Better Government. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Public Management Service (OECD). Paris, France: OECD Publishing.

• OECD. (2009). Rethinking e-government services (user-centred approaches). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Public Management Service (OECD). Paris, France: OECD Publishing.

• Sørum, H., Andersen, K. N., & Vatrapu, R. (2012). Public websites and human–computer interaction: an empirical study of measurement of website quality and user satisfaction. Behaviour & Information Technology, 31(7), 697–706.

• UNDESA. (2001). Benchmarking E-government: A Global Perspective : Assessing the Progress of the UN Member States. New York, NY, USA: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)

• UNDESA. (2012). United Nations Global E-government Survey 2012: E-Government for the People. New York, NY, USA: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).

• UNDESA. (2014). United Nations Global E-government Survey 2014: E-Government for the Future We Want. New York, NY, USA: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).

• van den Haak, M. J., de Jong, M. D., & Schellens, P. J. (2009). Evaluating municipal websites: A methodological comparison of three think-aloud variants. Government Information Quarterly, 26(1), 193-202.

• Verdegem, P., Stragier, J., & Verleye, G. (2010). Measuring for Knowledge: A Data-Driven Research Approach for eGovernment. Electronic Journal of E-Government, 8(2), 227–236.

• Wang, F. (2014). Explaining the low utilization of government websites: Using a grounded theory approach. Government Information Quarterly 31, 610-621.

• West, D. M. (2003). Global E-Government, 2003. (Centre for Public Policy Brown University, Ed.). United States.: Princeton University Press.