11 research outputs found
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Evaluating global e-government sites: A view using web diagnostics tools
This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2004 The AuthorsSeveral governments across the world have embraced the digital revolution and continue to take advantage of the information and communication facilities offered by the Internet to offer public services. Conversely, citizensâ awareness and expectations of Internet based online-public-services have also increased in recent times. Although the numbers of the different national e-Government web portals have rapidly increased in the last three years, the success of these portals will largely depend on their accessibility, quality and privacy. This paper reports the results of an
evaluative study of a cross-section of e-Government portals from these three perspectives, using a common set of performance metrics and Web diagnostic engines. Results show that not only are there wide variations in the spectrum of information and services provided by these portals, but that significant work still needs to be undertaken in order to make the portals examples of âbest practiceâ e-Government services
Volunteer-based IT Helpdesks as Ambiguous Quasi-Public Services:A Case Study from Two Nordic Countries
In this case study we take a Nordic perspective on the tension between increased digitalisation of public services and the insufficient support for citizens with limited digital literacy. Volunteer-based IT helpdesk services in public libraries have emerged as an attempt to address this tension. Drawing on examples of volunteering in public library-based IT helpdesk services in two Nordic countries, this paper considers the IT helpdesks as quasi-public services. Based on interviews, observations and workshops, we explore: the work of IT helpdesk volunteers, the characteristics of helpdesk services offered, and the implications of these services being offered by volunteers. The services offered are of acceptable quality to the users while the ambiguity and lack of institutional support is making the service fragile. In spite of the challenges of the quasi-public IT helpdesk service we also note how it offers a potential platform for the co-design and support of new public services. Camilla Christensen and Nils Ehrenberg are shared first authors.Peer reviewe
Making e-Government Happen. Everyday co-development of services, citizenship and technology.
In a joint research project concerning the use and design of IT in public services, we are using a simple figure of on-going, design-oriented interactions to highlight shifting foci on relationships of codevelopment of services, citzenship and technology. We bring together a number of concrete examples of this on-going everyday co-development, presented from the different perspectives that we, as researchers from different disciplines and traditions, represent in the project. The article explores and discusses wokring relations of technology production and use that we see as central to what is actually making e-government happen - or not happen. The main challenge in this area, as we see it, concerns making visible, and developing supportive infrastructures for, the continuing local adaptation, development and design in use of integrated IT and public services.I det mÄng- och tvÀrvetenskapliga samarbetet kring ett forskningsprojekt om anvÀndning och design av IT i offentlig förvaltning, har vi anvÀnt oss av en enkel tankefigur för att lyfta fram designorienterad interaktion kring IT i anvÀndning och tydliggöra vÄra olika perspektiv pÄ samband och relationer mellan tjÀnsteutveckling, medborgarskap och teknik.Copyright © 2003 IEEE. Reprinted from Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2003, HICSS-36. Edited by Ralph H. Sprague, Jr. (Abstracts and CD-ROM of Full Papers.) This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission of the IEEE does not in any way imply IEEE endorsement of any of BTH's products or services Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by sending a blank email message to [email protected]. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.</p
Making e-Government happen - Everyday co-development of services, citizenship and technology
In a joint research project concerning the use and design of IT in public services, we are using a simple figure of on-going design-oriented interactions to highlight shifting foci on relationships of co-development of services, citizenship and technology. We bring together a number of concrete examples of this on-going everyday co-development, presented from the different perspectives that we, as researchers from different disciplines and traditions, represent in the project. The article explores and discusses working relations of technology production and use that we see as central to what is actually making e-government happen - or not happen. The main challenge in this area, as we see it, concerns making visible, and developing supportive infrastructures for, the continuing local adaptation, development and design in use of integrated IT and public services
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Participatory Design as the Temporal Flow of Coalescing Participatory Lines
This paper argues that the existing literature on participatory design (PD) tends to focus on frontstage design interactions (workshops, participants, methodologies, techniques, etc.) to facilitate PD âhere and nowââreferred to as the interactional approach. In contrast, the paper proposes to contribute to an evolving literature, referred to as the transformational approach, that takes a more longitudinal line and which attends to both the frontstage and backstage within an extended temporal frame. To do this the paper draws on the work of the social anthropologist Tim Ingold, in particular, his concept of the happening of ongoing life as a bundle of flowing lines. The paper argues that PD becomes possible when ongoing participation is conceived of as a set of corresponding (or coalescing) and conditioning lines of flowâeach line with its own history, attentionality, rhythms, tempos and so forth. To illustrate what this reorientation might mean for PD the paper draws on an in-depth action research study of a PD initiative that sought to develop a digital service to address loneliness and social isolation in a rural location in the UK. The paper explores how project members, individual participants, non-governmental organisation, government representatives, evaluators and funders co-responded to each other (or not) as they engaged, or became implicated, in the PD process. The paper concludes with some practical implications of what such an Ingoldian reorientation might mean for the ongoing development of PD as a transformational methodology
Keeping Information Systems alive: participation, work and maintenance-in-use in a welfare department
Through the case study of a regional welfare information system, I analize how the process of keeping information systems workable and operational unfolded
Angels in Unstable Sociomaterial Relations: Stories of Information Technology
I have explored spaces, where negotiations of border transgressions take place
and where issues of technology and politics mingle. We meet a diversity of
actors in the world of information technology (IT): political texts, people and
technology participating in numerous sociomaterial relations. Time is the end
of the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, 2000. Years, when IT
occupied the western world and created its own fuzzy discourse. Years, when IT
stole the biggest newspaper headlines and years, when IT became a mundane
everyday part of our work practices. Years, when we learned to live in
heterogeneous worlds.
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTa) provide
analytical and methodological perspectives when working with the empirical
material. I present a chronological exposé of some of the key concepts of ANT
and ANTa. I also discuss how the classical ANT perspective has changed during
the last few years from being a theory of networks to become a methodological
and analytical approach to other kinds of spaces such as fluid and fire.
The heart of the thesis consists of six empirical cases. My aim of writing
stories of information technology has been to investigate the black box of
information technology. Investigating includes also efforts of opening.
Concepts that are taken for granted, such as the very notion of information
technology in my case, can be explored, questioned, transgressed, blurred and
opened up. Each of the diffracted stories is specific and unique, with its own
actors, context, location and situatedness. But the stories are also connected
through ANT, and feminist technology and technoscience studies.
Case number one, âDiscourses and Cracks â A Case Study of Information
Technology and Writing Women in a Regional Context â, is about a project, where
questions concerning discourses of information society with a special focus on
citizenship are discussed and where global and national politics are translated
to local and situated practices.
Case number two, âTranslating and Negotiating Information Technology â,
consists of two main parts. The fi rst one is about a regional library project.
The analysis of the project is based on the classical Actor Network Theory
(ANT) approach that invites the study of the heterogeneous and negotiable
shaping of IT. The second part is about librarians developing web-based
services. The analysis is inspired by the later development of ANT (called ANTa
in the thesis) in order to include more invisible actors, relations and
negotiations.
Case number three, âNegotiating Information Technology: Politics and Practices
of The Public Sector Web Productionâ, is about work practices of a municipal
web developer, through which creation of sociotechnical relations of everyday
information technology practices is analysed and also mirrored to national and
local IT politics.
Case number four, âMaking e-Government Happen â Everyday Co-Development of
Services, Citizenship and Technologyâ, is presenting the same web developer as
in the third case, but now his everyday practices are connected with an
expanded and wider circuit of co-constructors of information technology. The
text is a co-production of a multidisciplinary research group aiming to
describe, analyse and problematise connections when creating practices, where
technology and society collaborate.
Case number fi ve, âCitizenship at the Crossroads of Multiple Layers of
Sociotechnical Relationsâ, enrols technology as an active actor in the
construction of citizenship in an IT context in Sweden. The perspective
emphasising the active agency of non-humans both enhances and challenges the
Scandinavian approach of systems development by suggesting a direction towards
a cyborgian approach towards technology design.
Case number six, âBetween Stability and Instability â a Project about
e-Democracy â, takes its point of departure from a small-scale project having
as its goal the development of e-democracy in a municipal context. In the text
the focus is on the stabilisation processes in shaping the technology (âeâ) and
democracy parts of the project. I also discuss what kinds of spaces exist in
between (the hyphen in e-democracy) and ask if integration between technology
and democracy is possible as a whole.
Finally, my intention is to step further into stories and practices not yet
existing. Inspired by the French philosopher Michel Serres, I introduce the fi
guration of an angel as a cartographer, intermediator and (co-) constructor of
sociomaterial relations. Angels are needed to sew the separate fi elds of
technology, politics and everyday practices to a rich seamless tapestry. They
are the âartful integratorsâ (Suchman)