Many of today's city planning projects aim to realize smart city ambitions. In order to plan and build a smart city district, where ICT is integrated in critical infrastructure and used to control and govern city functions in innovative ways, new ways of working in city planning are needed. The purpose of this article is to develop a framework that takes into account stakeholders and smartness dimensions in city planning. We have studied a city district development in Sweden where a new planning approach was implemented. The developed framework was used to analyze the complexity of this city planning process. By defining which smartness dimension each stakeholder primarily focus on and analyzing the consequences of this, the framework pinpoints each stakeholder's contribution and/or hindrance to the process and outcome. A recommendation from this study is that new stakeholder groups are important to involve in smart city planning, but this also adds complexity that must be acknowledged when setting up this kind of projects. The developed framework can be useful when organizing and staffing city planning processes as well as when evaluating project outcomes.

Smart cities have been studied for many years, but smart homes and the citizens' actual living in these smart homes are less researched. We argue that for digital government research, and for governments to be successful in smart city development in practice, it is necessary not only to understand living on a societal level, but also living aspects in the narrow context of homes. Citizens populate the smart city and are the ones who are supposed to use the services provided by the government. In this article we explore and analyze digital and analogue services in smart homes developed in a new city district. We have conducted observational studies in 53 apartments during an urban living expo which we analyze by applying a set of socio-technical design principles. The research question that guides the analysis is: “What tensions between values in digital and analogue services for a smart living can be revealed by a socio-technical perspective?”. We identify five tensions between: 1) being in control and being controlled, 2) intended and undesirable use of personal data, 3) digital and analogue smartness, 4) smart home visions and practices, and 5) environmental and social sustainability. By revealing these tensions, we contribute to an understanding of the complexity of smart living. We also contribute by highlighting the importance of applying a perspective that captures both technology and citizen and user issues (i.e., social aspects) when developing services in the smart home context.

The main goals of e-government are to increase agency efficiency and offer benefits to citizens. These goals have often been addressed as two interplaying outcomes of public e-service development, which are possible to achieve in parallel. This article shows that the two frequently applied stakeholders of e-government (agencies and citizens) are much too extensive and heterogeneous in order to be meaningfully addressed in public e-service conceptualization and development. We conduct a stakeholder centered analysis of a public e-service development and implementation process in order to identify stakeholder groups and discuss how they differ in their perceptions and, consequently, also in their feelings of relevance and need related to the e-service. By adopting a multi-faceted perspective on stakeholders, public e-service development can be analyzed and understood in a way that takes several stakeholder groups into account. Our study contributes with deeper insights about a situation where stakeholder salience changes over time, while some stakeholder groups have low salience during the entire process. The result of conducting a stakeholder centered analysis is that we, by visualizing the stakeholder groups' differences, are better prepared to meet and combine different needs related to a planned e-service. Thus, we argue that a stakeholder centered analysis of expectations and opinions concerning the e-service help to develop e-services possible to succeed in offering both external service and internal efficiency.

We present a multidisciplinary methodology for E-Government project planning. The set of expertise needed for the design of E-Government systems includes social, juridical, economic, organizational, and technological perspectives. To properly address such a broad range of influences requires a unique vision. Our long-term aim is to use an integrated approach to examine a number of issues which currently present challenges in many E-Government projects. This paper in particular focuses on social and technological aspects of E-Government. The methodology has four phases: (1) state reconstruction, (2) quality assessment, (3) new quality targets definition, and (4) preliminary operational planning. A case study provides evidence of the feasibility and effectiveness of the methodology.

Citizens are oftentimes the central unit of analysis in e-government research and treated as one of the stakeholders receiving the most benefits from public sector digitalization. Still, they are mostly described in generalterms, and it remains unclear what roles they can assume in relation to e-government. Different understandingsof the citizens’ role in e-government may impact research, because they entail different axioms mainly in relationto the technological frame for e-government but also for the citizens’ relationship to public sector organizationsin general. The aim of this article is to investigate and conceptualize the citizens’ role in e-government based onpublic value positions. We depart from Rose et al.’s (2015) framework of value positions for managing e-government. After reviewing and analyzing extensive research on e-government, we use this framework tocontribute a clarification of the citizens’ role in each value position. Our analysis shows that the ideal citizen isconceptualized differently across the four value positions; ranging from an external entity that should servicethemselves using digital self-services, to an engaged agent that should be actively involved in policy making andservice delivery. In addition to this new perspective on the citizens’ role in e-government, we contribute with anextension of the public value positions framework. The extended framework presented in this article makes thesedifferences visible and we discuss consequences of the citizens’ role in e-government for other dimensions of theframework. 

This paper investigates whether design research in e-government should be conducted in some special way compared with standard models for design research. It reviews literature in e-government and design research in order to generate an answer to this research question. The result of this review affirms that the policy character of e-government should determine the way that such design research is conducted. A tentative e-government design research model, consisting of different activities is formulated. This model consists of the following activities: theorizing, policy analysis, workpractice analysis, co-design and co-evaluation of IT artifact and workpractice. Three specific e-government design research principles are formulated: The policy principle, the co-design principle and the theorizing principle. One important result from this paper is the formulation of the concept of the policy-ingrained artifact as an important empirical outcome from e-government design research. A design research case study on social welfare allowances has been used for the generation as well as the validation of the proposed e-government design research model.

It has been argued that user participation is important when public authorities develop e-services. At the same time there is limited research on the usefulness of existing user participation approaches in public e-service development. In this paper we, therefore, analyze how the three user participation approaches – participatory design, user-centered design, and user innovation – meet the strategic e-service goals of the EU and the US. In doing so, we identify three challenges that need to be considered when choosing among these approaches: 1) unclear user target segments can impede the fulfillment of usability and relevance goals, 2) the nature of participation can impede the fulfillment of democracy goals, and 3) lack of adequate skills can impede the fulfillment of efficiency goals.

Automation of public service provision has gained renewed attention as emerging technologies are said to enable automation of tasks that were previously seen as requiring human involvement. However, the merits of these automation technologies are often exaggerated. More knowledge is needed on public service automation, and much can be learned from adjacent research fields studying human-automation interaction. To lead by example, this work applies Bainbridge's (1983) concept of ironies of automation. The purpose is to (1) present ironies of automation, (2) explicate how these ironies can come into play when implementing automated systems in the public service context, and (3) outline implications that follow for public service automation. This is achieved by relating ironies of automation to contemporary studies on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) developments in Swedish local government. The analysis results in five ironies and a set of implications for public service automation. The ironies and implications for public service automation direct attention to key challenges that must be acknowledged in future automation implementations and show that further investigations and theoretical developments are needed on e.g., problems introduced by automation; tasks, roles, and responsibilities that follow on automation; how to design the interface between humans and automated systems in a way that facilitates monitoring, take-over, and maintenance; and, tools and methods for assessing the impact and quality of automated systems. This paper thus provides a foundation for future empirical investigations and further theoretical development on public service automation.

Electronic services provided by governmental organizations, here referred to as public e-services, are frequently discussed in the e-government literature. There is, however, little consensus on the meaning of the concepts used to describe and discuss these e-services, and hence, the literature is full of synonymous terms and concepts. This paper is conceptual and presents efforts to understand e-services in the public sector domain by unpacking the public e-service concept into three dimensions; as being (1) a service, (2) electronic, and (3) public (as contrasted to being private). Based on a hermeneutic analysis, these dimensions are discussed in a number of combinations, illustrating that a multi-dimensional take on public e-services must be adopted in order to capture the complexity of governmentally supplied e-services and contribute to theory development, as well as practical utility.

This paper contributes to e-government research by presenting a review and discussion on how digitalization of public services has affected the interaction between citizens and government. We argue for a conceptualization and critical reflection on the nature of the underlying interaction between citizens and public officials - the public encounter - that digital public services are developed to support. We apply a qualitative and hermeneutic approach and illustrate that digital public services change public encounters concerning when, where, and how interactions occur, what each actor does, and the skills required of them. By relating these changes to emerging digital technologies (e.g. data mining, machine learning, sensor technology, and service automation), we illustrate that while these new technologies carry the potential to further digitalize service provision and fulfill the democratic goals of digital government, authorities can apply the same technology to restrict, control, and surveil citizens. Based on a critical discussion on what digitalization might entail for society, we identify problem areas arising from this development and propose a research agenda for understanding this phenomenon further. We raise questions and ethical concerns regarding accountability and reskilling of citizens and public officials as public service provision becomes citizen self-service.

Following a large worldwide uptake of digital public services, several countries have turned to mandatory digitization, whereby citizens or companies must use digital self-service applications to apply for public services. However, previous research on the adoption of digital public services has predominantly focused on simple, or even hypothetical, services and situations. We identify a knowledge gap concerning citizens experience of actual interactions with digital self-service for more complicated social services and benefits. Therefore, we explore digital self-service from the perspective of citizens using the concept of administrative burden as a theoretical lens. Specifically, we analyze data from in-depth empirical studies encompassing observations, interviews, and focus group discussions with single mothers who have applied for public benefits following divorce or family separation. We present a descriptive process model for citizens application for public benefits. Next, we illustrate how digital self-service influences citizens administrative burden throughout this process. An important contribution reveals that citizens administrative burden increases-they must learn how to complete tasks that professional caseworkers previously conducted and comply with government demands concerning digital selfservice applications and specific data formats. However, digital self-service can also reduce citizens administrative burden through the online provision of information and automatic data transfers. Further, digital selfservice offers an anonymous application process that may reduce the psychological costs and stigma associated with receiving public benefits. Finally, our research contributes new insights at the theoretical level, linking the concept of administrative burden to complex digital self-service use from a citizen perspective.

Public organizations are looking for new ways to use digital technologies to increase the efficiency of their internal processes and improve their interactions with clients, whether citizens or businesses. In response, scholars suggest that public organizations be proactive in digital public services such that the organizations approach their clients, rather than the other way around. In the most extreme form of proactivity, clients do not have to do anything to receive a public service. Although various examples of proactive public services are in use, how proactivity changes the conceptual understanding of digital public services remains unclear. Therefore, we derive the changes that proactivity causes in a conceptualization of digital public service by means of a conceptual analysis through the lens of a seminal theoretical work on proactivity. The results indicate that proactivity can ensure equal accessibility to a subset of public services, rely on more comprehensive integration of IT systems on the back end, and change how value is co-created in the service process. We formulate the changes as propositions that future work can investigate empirically and discuss proactive digital public services as a way to reduce clients administrative burden. We contribute to theory by clarifying the conceptual changes in digital public services that proactivity invokes and call for joint research by scholars of public administration, information systems, and service management to relate the research streams of administrative burden and proactive digital public service.