Designing for all and no one - practitioners understandings of citizen driven development of public e-services

ABSTRACT

The notion of citizen driven development of public e-services has been vivid for a number of years in eGovernment research, practice and policies. There are however, less conceptual analyses resting on a critical stance analyzing how this notion is translated in practical settings, leaving a gap in between for practitioners to solve. This paper presents explorative work made in a Swedish authority by using conceptual disentanglement (as in identifying extensions of the concept, noting regularities and reveal relevant features) as a methodology. The results show that besides difficulties in creating systematic work processes, what surfaces is the complex task of estimation. Estimating who should be participating (when designing for almost all citizens), how many citizens are needed as a base for a design decisions, who decides what should be an objective for a design initiation and on what grounds and legitimacy?

The picture evolving is that of an overreliance and an uncritical acceptance of the notion of citizen driven development of public e-services on a policy level, that fails both the practitioners and the citizens; highlighting the need for critical analysis in order to deconstruct the taken for grantedness of the notion of user involvement and deal with the ignorance regarding the details and performance in this specific setting.

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