Att identifiera sig är något vi gör i många olika vardagssituationer; exempelvis när vi ska styrka vår ålder i krogkön, uträtta bankärenden eller bli insläppta av vakten på en bevakad arbetsplats. För att identifiera oss i dessa situationer använder vi oftast någon form av fysisk identitetshandling; ett körkort, pass eller ID-kort. Samtidigt har vi idag ett samhälle där allt fler ärenden går att utföra via nätet, där såväl offentliga som kommersiella aktörer erbjuder elektroniska tjänster (e-tjänster) i ökande omfattning. Vi blir därmed alltmer beroende av informationsteknik (IT) i samhället för att samverka och kommunicera effektivt och enkelt. Vår riskexponering och sårbarhet ökar i takt med att vi utför allt fler ärenden via e-tjänster. Känslig information kan utnyttjas av obehöriga eller missbrukas på olika sätt.

Elektronisk identifiering blir i dessa sammanhang en viktig komponent och förutsättning för att kunna erbjuda och använda effektiva och säkra e-tjänster. När man identifierar sig på nätet och i IT-system kan man göra det på många olika sätt; man kan logga in med användarnamn och lösenord, använda elektroniska ID-lösningar (eID) med dosor och koder, scanna fingeravtryck, använda e-tjänstekort och kortläsare eller RFID-teknik. Man skulle kunna betrakta dessa identifieringslösningar som rent tekniska landvinningar, som bara syftar till att man ska kunna nå den e-tjänst man vill använda. Likt en nyckel som används för att låsa upp dörren så att man kommer in i sitt hus. Vi menar dock att det är en alldeles för snäv syn på elektronisk identifiering – den behöver vara vidare än så för att vara fruktbar och kunna sättas i meningsfulla sammanhang av exempelvis design, utvärdering och vidareutveckling.

Även om det är en teknisk lösning (en artefakt) med en begränsad uppgift vi avser, så kan dess utformning och sättet den införs och används på få stora konsekvenser för hela användningssituationen. Med artefakt menas här konstruerade föremål i form av olika tekniska lösningar och människors meningar kopplade till dessa. Identifieringslösningen påverkar både säkerheten i sig och den bild vi får av den e-tjänst eller det IT-system där vi identifierar oss. Dessutom påverkar den också bilden vi har av det sammanhang där vi använder identifieringslösningen. Om vi använder en e-tjänst som erbjuds av exempelvis den kommun där vi bor, påverkas också vår tilltro till kommunen och samhället av hur vi uppfattar identifieringslösningen och e-tjänsten. Samma resonemang gäller om vi köper en vara av ett privat företag på nätet. Med andra ord påverkas samhällets såväl som företagens legitimitet av hur vi som medborgare eller kunder uppfattar olika IT-lösningar.

Den här boken handlar därför om de möjligheter och utmaningar som elektronisk identifiering kan innebära för individer, organisationer och samhället. Vi talar inte om isolerade tekniska problem i första hand, utan anlägger ett vidare perspektiv på de möjligheter och problem som kommer med e-tjänster och elektronisk identifiering.

Vi har skrivit den här boken för att dela med oss av en del av de tankar och insikter som vi fått under projektet. Syftet med boken är att sätta ljuset på ett antal teman som framstår som centrala för utveckling och användning av elektronisk identifiering. Vi beskriver tre exempel som hämtar inspiration från våra studier inom projektet. Utifrån dessa exempel lyfter vi fram ett antal teman och diskuterar dessa samt sammanfattar utmaningar som vi sett i våra studier. Vår förhoppning är att Du som läser vår bok kan använda våra resonemang för att diskutera frågorna vidare i det praktiska sammanhang som Du befinner Dig i. Oavsett om Du finns på ett kommunkontor, i ett landsting, i en myndighet eller i en privat livssituation. Vi har inte haft ambitionen att skriva en vetenskaplig, teorirelaterad text, men Du som vill läsa forskningsbaserade publikationer från projektet hittar lästips i slutet av boken.

In order to balance between citizen and agency aspects’ importance and visibility in public e-service development, the question how to involve different stakeholders is often raised. However, identifying and analyzing several internal as well as external stakeholders in relation to e-government development raises some ethical questions: Who should participate and who should not? For what reasons do we involve stakeholders? What will the result of stakeholder participation and involvement be? In this article empirical findings from an egovernment project are revisited and discussed from an ethical perspective. The main conclusion is that we need to consider ethical aspects of stakeholder participation in e-government projects more thoroughly. The ethical discussion in stakeholder participation rhetoric has often been shallow. An important task for e-government researchers is therefore to address this discussion in public e-service development,as the results in terms of quality of the e-services as well as citizen benefits are at stake.

The Social and Cognitive Impacts of E-Commerce on Modern Organizations includes articles addressing the social, cultural, organizational, and cognitive impacts of e-commerce technologies and advances on organizations around the world. Looking specifically at the impacts of electronic commerce on consumer behavior, as well as the impact of e-commerce on organizational behavior, development, and management in organizations. This important new book aims to expand the overall body of knowledge regarding the human aspects of electronic commerce technologies and utilization in modern organizations and to assist researchers and practitioners to devise more effective systems for managing the human side of e-commerce.

The main purpose of the paper is to explore and discuss the influence of product type on customer interaction in electronic commerce. We have conducted two qualitative case studies in distance selling companies to inductively explore how the product characteristics of garments and music-CDs influence customer interaction. We apply a product classification scheme built on product theory to characterize and classify these products. By classifying product types according to this scheme we focus certain aspects; e.g., in which situation the customer uses the product and, thus, experiences potential satisfaction. By applying product theory to the electronic commerce context we are expanding this theory into a new area. Knowledge about product characteristics- influence on customer interaction in various phases of electronic commerce enriches and specifies the existing product theory. In order to put this theory contribution into practice, a set of focal questions with the aim to increase product understanding in an electronic commerce setting is formulated. The questions highlight product related issues that are important to consider when deciding communication media in electronic commerce.

This thesis deals with the problem of how to create an information systems architecture which is in concert with the organization, its goals and strategies. The aim is to explore the problem area and develop knowledge about how to avoid some of these problems. In a qualitative research project, case studies were performed at six organizations. The studies focused on the process of realizing an IS strategy and the results of these activities. The organizations studied had either realized a data-driven strategy emphasizing data integration and central administration of information (Information Resource Management - IRM) or a strategy advocating decentralization and local responsibility for information (Verksamhetsbaserad Systemstrukturering - VBS). The data collection was based mainly on interviews, but also contained observations and studies of written sources. Ale data analysis method was inspired by grounded theory.

The data analysis resulted in the categories of "Information systems structuring conditions", "Actors" and "User participation", which together form the core category of Factors affecting the information systems structuring. The categories of "Business language", "Distribution of responsibility", "User acceptance", "Systems understanding", "Business adjustments", and "Maintenance and changes" together form the core category The information systems' degree of organizational support. Each category consists of elements that were only observed in one of the IS strategies and elements that seem to occur independently of the chosen strategy. This indicates that the chosen IS strategy implies some influence on the organization but other effects seem to be strategy-independent. his fact has been interpreted to the effect that the actual course of action when realizing an IS strategy is of great importance. The course of action could be very much the same even if two different strategies are realized.

As a result of these findings, a human and business perspective on information systems structuring was formulated. The case studies showed that even if organizations realize an IS strategy, and therefore deprecate ad hoc-based structuring, they do not treat the structuring activities as separate from system development. The architecture design was integrated with system development and architectural issues were treated mainly from a technical point of view. The perspective formulated in this thesis implies that choices made during the information systems structuring process should be well-grounded. Decisions should be made from a holistic point of view rather than merely a technical one. As a result of this belief, the perspective does not advocate any common IS strategy (such as IRM or VBS). Instead the starting-point for the analysis is a strategy-independent analysis of the organization and its information systems. Only after this analysis is it possible to choose or to formulate the IS strategy best suited for the organization. During an action research project a method for information systems structuring was developed and tested. The method is based on the perspective discussed above.

This article focuses on core ideas behind an information centric approach concerning stability in databases. We investigate if and how data stability is obtained when an information centric approach is implemented in practice. The results of our two case studies reveal four tactics focusing on actions conducted in order to obtain and maintain stability in databases: (1) change avoidance, (2) anticipated generalization, (3) constructive standardization, and (4) expansion to new application areas. Based on our empirical findings, we argue that data stability is a result of social construction in organizations rather than just an effect of structured information systems planning. The contributions in this paper can be used to explain IS design effects in organizations and analyze organizational situations from a data stability perspective.

This paper questions the idea of data stability. We focus on core ideas behind an information centric strategy concerning stability in databases (created through enterprise-wide data modeling). We investigate if and how data stability is obtained when an information centric strategy is implemented in practice. We claim that, even though there are many research contributions about information centric strategies, there are still few papers focusing on problems concerning consequences of the strategies’ practical implementation. This is, however, an important issue since data integration is a key element of strategic management in, e.g., ERP-systems, data mining applications, and service-oriented architecture (SOA). It is, thus, most important not to neglect existing experiences, when developing the IT systems of tomorrow. The result of our two case studies reveal four tactics focusing on actions conducted to obtain and maintain stability in databases. The tactics are 1) change avoidance, 2) anticipated generalization, 3) constructive standardization, and 4) expansion to new application areas.

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.

In January 2008, the Swedish Government launched a new eGovernment action plan which was formulated to serve as “a new basis for IT-based organisational development in public administration”. The main objective in the plan was formulated as “as simple as possible for as many as possible”. The definition of eGovernment used in the action plan is the one agreed upon by many other European countries: “eGovernment is organisational development in public administrations that takes advantage of information and communication technologies (ICT) combined with organisational changes and new skills”. Behind the suggested course of actions there is a rhetoric that Sweden was now entering a new path regarding eGovernment development. Taken together the declarations in the plan made it and the expressed expectations of profound changes in public administration an interesting target for critical review.Having identified the importance in critically discussing and analysing the action plan, the Swedish Researchers Network in eGovernment (www.egov.nu) arranged a network meeting at the national conference for public sector in Sweden June 2008. The theme for the meeting was “Reflections on the Swedish action plan for eGovernment”. Several researchers and practitioners shared and debated their reflections during this meeting. In order to continue this very interesting discussion after the conference, we then invited authors to submit an article on the same theme, i.e. analysing different aspects of the Swedish action plan for eGovernment. This call for papers was directed both to participants at the network meeting and others, who wanted to contribute to this on-going debate. The call was to encourage authors to communicate and share their insights and opinions regarding the action plan in order to provide knowledge to decision-makers and other practitioners.

Fragmentation and isolated development are main problems that hinder successful e-government. This paper has an inter-organisational perspective on challenges in one-stop government. We present a conceptual framework that characterises an inter-organisational relationship and its dimensions. The conceptual framework is used for analysing data from an inter-organisational one-stop government project. When applying the framework we focus on some interesting issues and explain some of the challenges that our interviewees identified. By addressing these inter-organisational aspects we reached further understanding of the problems associated with this case, which can provide added value to discussions of e-government challenges, barriers and problems in general.

This paper reports from an action research project where focus groups have been used as an approach for taking citizens’ requirements into account during public e-service development projects. In the paper we use theories from the area of user participation in the information systems (IS) discipline in order to discuss and enhance the specific aspects of citizen participation and involvement in the eGovernment context. The main purpose of this paper is to enrich the eGovernment field in general, and to facilitate the citizen perspective in eGovernment development projects in particular, by using notions from the user participation tradition in the IS discipline. Our empirical findings from performing focus groups are discussed and compared to well-known user participation theories from the IS discipline. This results in an emergent framework for better understanding of citizen participation and involvement in the eGovernment context. The emergent framework consists of a set of questions that can be used in order to put an increased focus on the citizen perspective in future eGovernment development projects.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference, EGOV 2012, held in Delft, The Netherlands, in September 2012. The 23 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from more then 80 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on foundations; adoption and diffusion; open government and transformation; infrastructure and technology; evaluation; and citizen perspective, social inclusion, and social media. 

In this paper, we approach the field of critical success factors (CSF) by analyzing a successful case of IT implementation within the public health sector. The purpose of the paper is to gain further understanding of if and how well CSFs can explain a successful case. The main conclusion drawn is that even though the studied organization shows signs of common CSFs, this alone cannot explain the success. An important contribution from this study is thus the focus on contextual factors when trying to understand what makes an implementation project successful.

This study illustrates how students view the role and meaning of learning outcomes. We have conducted a focus group with students who attended the course “Enterprise (ERP) systems and organizing” within an IS bachelor program in Sweden. Our study shows that students, as a course’s main stakeholder group, regard the multi-functionality of learning outcomes. What they still miss is knowledge about the role and meaning of learning outcomes as control instruments for the entire educational process. When teachers formulate learning outcomes in a transparent and clear way, students will be able to use them actively prior to courses, during courses and after courses. In order to better use the potential of learning outcomes in practice, we need to find ways of not just formulating learning outcomes in a standardized manner, but also practicing them in our courses. When this learning outcome model has been accepted and applied in teachers’ course activities, not just their syllabus writing, we have possibilities to use the full potential of learning outcomes.

In this paper a longitudinal case study of an e-government development project is reported. The authors have followed a development project during three years, from its initiation to its end. The purpose of the paper is to identify and analyze important decisions made and external factors that occurred during the project and discuss their consequences. The findings are presented as seven key lessons that other e-government projects can learn from. The contributions are, thus, both a reflective analysis of an empirical e-government development example and normative statements about how to conduct successful e-government projects.

In this paper we analyze a public e-service development project from its initiation to its end and reflect upon the process as well as its results. The purpose of the paper is to develop knowledge about how e-government projects should be managed and performed in order to be successful. We do this by identifying and analyzing important decisions made and external factors that occurred during the project and discussing their consequences. The findings are presented as six key lessons for e-government projects. The novel knowledge contribution is that the lessons combine aspects from established CSFs of IT projects with e-government-focused issues. Together these six lessons can be more useful in e-government projects than previous sets of general CSFs for IT projects.

This paper focuses deficient understanding of citizens’ needs regarding public e-services. In Sweden e-government efforts are motivated by dual goals of citizen benefit and agencies’ internal efficiency. Rhetorical, this is a persuasive ambition, but in practice it seems to be easier to focus agency efficiency and redesign of business processes and information systems than to find out what citizens really want. Citizens, i.e. the future users of the e-service, are in best case represented in the project by citizen organizations. More seldom do individual citizens take part in the project. User needs are, thus, sometimes “guessed” instead of analyzed. We report from an e-government project which started with little understanding of the future users. To overcome this we introduced focus groups as a method to meet and talk to citizens and find out their needs regarding the e-service. The paper discusses how focus groups can be used in e-government projects.

This article reports from an empirical study of young Swedish university students’ attitudes towards electronic identification (eID). Three focus groups were conducted with students, as a main target group, who were asked to use a public e-service at the Swedish Board for Study Support which demanded secure electronic identification. After having conducted the assigned tasks the students’ attitudes were discussed in the focus group. Our findings show that usability and security are two main themes that the respondents found to be important in order to trust eID and e-services. This example of how citizens’ attitudes towards electronic identification can be explored in focus groups is related to the on-going national development process of a new eID solution on a strategic and artifact level. In this process no citizens are participating or involved so far. We conclude the article by discussing what might be the consequences of neglecting citizens’ attitudes in this kind of development and implementation processes.

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.

This paper discusses how several stakeholders in a public e-service development project consider a future e-service and expected changes in administrative processes and working routines. Our findings indicate a much more multifaceted view than the common win-win situation, with increased quality for citizens and increased efficiency for agencies, which is rhetorically put forth as an effect of public e-service implementation. We have studied a development project resulting in an e-service for handling student anonymity when marking written exams in higher education. In this case we have identified five distinct stakeholder groups related to this e-service; students, teachers, course administrators, exam guards, and the university at an agency level. All of them having certain expectations and fears about the new situation. By presenting this diversity in opinions we add further understanding to the notion of e-services as being more or less beneficial for certain stakeholders.

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate if, and in that case, how and what the e-government field can learn from user participation concepts and theories in general IS research. We aim to contribute with further understanding of the importance of citizen participation and involvement within the e-government research body of knowledge and when developing public e-services in practice.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The analysis in the article is made from a comparative, qualitative case study of two e-government projects. Three analysis themes are induced from the literature review; practice of participation, incentives for participation, and organization of participation. These themes are guiding the comparative analysis of our data with a concurrent openness to interpretations from the field.

Findings – The main results in this article are that the e-government field can get inspiration and learn from methods and approaches in traditional IS projects concerning user participation, but in e-government we also need methods to handle the challenges that arise when designing public e-services for large, heterogeneous user groups. Citizen engagement cannot be seen as a separate challenge in e-government, but rather as an integrated part of the process of organizing, managing, and performing e-government projects. Our analysis themes of participation generated from literature; practice, incentives and organization can be used in order to highlight, analyze, and discuss main issues regarding the challenges of citizen participation within e-government. This is an important implication based on our study that contributes both to theory on and practice of e-government.

Practical implications – Lessons to learn from this study concern that many e-government projects have a public e-service as one outcome and an internal e-administration system as another outcome. A dominating internal, agency perspective in such projects might imply that citizens as the user group of the e-service are only seen as passive receivers of the outcome – not as active participants in the development. By applying the analysis themes, proposed in this article, citizens as active participants can be thoroughly discussed when initiating (or evaluating) an e-government project.

Originality/value – This article addresses challenges regarding citizen participation in e-government development projects. User participation is well-researched within the IS discipline, but the e-government setting implies new challenges, that are not explored enough.

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.

In this article we discuss in what ways an e-government project can give both expected and unexpected effects for agency employees and their working tasks. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the fact that, besides the aim to increase agency efficiency and citizen benefit, e-government implementation might also change the salience of involved stakeholders. We do this by focusing on one stakeholder group which was reluctant and hesitating in the beginning of the studied project; marginalized, passive, easily convinced, and old-fashioned. After the e-government implementation, this group had turned to satisfied, proud, influential, active, powerful, and modern IT users. The case shows how stakeholder salience might change over time in an e-government project. Stakeholder influence aspects and IT driven change aspects are intertwined. This makes it necessary for any e-government project to address the notion of stakeholder involvement in decision-making during the development and implementation phases, but also to acknowledge e-services force to change how things and people are perceived during these phases.

This paper discusses critical success factors (CSF) and best practice in relation to IT implementation in the health sector. We have studied a University Hospital’s implementation of a health information system (HIS) and particularly one clinic which implementation process was described as very successful compared to other units at this hospital. The purpose of the paper is to gain further understanding of if and how well CSFs and best practice solutions can explain this successful case. We do this in order to explore if CSFs and best practice offer any shortcuts to successful IT implementation. By understanding the reasons behind this case’s success we can identify if CSFs and best practice potentially can explain the success, or if there are other explanations in this case. Based on our findings we discuss and question the sometimes overestimated belief in CSFs and best practice as shortcuts to success performance. An important contribution from this study is that situational and contextual factors are very critical to understand and acknowledge during HIS implementations.

Är det bättre med stora än med små kommuner? Kommer folkrörelsepartierna att bli mer kampanj- och väljarorienterade i framtiden? Hur formas en boendepolitik för det goda åldrandet? Lokala transportstrategier – hur och för vem? Hur påverkas kommunledningars samverkan om gymnasieskolan av att det finns friskolor? Är kulturekonomi framtidens lokala tillväxtmotor?</p><p>Dessa och andra frågor behandlas i denna bok. Den är ett led i Centrum för kommunstrategiska studiers, CKS, arbete med att bygga en dialog – utveckla goda samtal – mellan Linköpings universitet och medlemskommunerna i CKS. Den innehåller fjorton olika artiklar, inlägg, som forskare författat för att förmedla sina resultat, men också för att stärka en dialog med politiker och tjänstemän i kommunerna. Inläggen spänner över många olika ämnen och frågeställningar. De är i vissa fall konkreta och koncisa i andra fall beskrivande och reflekterande. Alla är de av kommunstrategisk karaktär.</p><p>I en kommun fattas en mängd olika politiska beslut kring de mest skiftande ämnen. Det kräver kunskap, reflektion och gedigna beslutsunderlag. Då kan forskares analyser och kunskapsproduktion vara till nytta. För att en fördjupad och samhällsrelevant forskning ska komma till stånd behövs emellertid reaktioner från politiker och tjänstemän. Det finns alltså ett ömsesidigt beroende. Det kan hanteras genom samtal i vilka forskare, politiker och tjänstemän kan utbyta erfarenheter, tankar och kunskaper. Inläggen i denna bok visar att samtal pågår

This paper adopts a communication perspective on public electronic forms (e-forms). By doing so we define forms as instruments for communication and, thus, also instruments through which citizens perform different communicative actions towards government agencies. As such instruments, the forms might be more or less useful. The purpose of this paper is to explore what features of an e-form that increase the communication quality. We conduct a theoretical synthesis of three existing approaches for designing information systems. The result is a combined theory on key features of an e-form that make the establishment of communication quality more likely. The result consists of four key concepts, each of which give rise to one set of design principles for communication from the issuer of the e-form to the user (citizen), and one set of design principles for communication from the user (citizen) to the recipient of the e-form.

E-service development has grown to become a daily practice in most public organizations as a means for realizing digital agendas and e-government initiatives on different levels (local, regional, national and transnational governmental levels). Public e-service development is often an inter-organizational (IO) effort with multiple actors and organizations involved in the multi-faceted dimensions of design, development and delivery decisions. Still, there is a lack of research focusing on IO public e-service development practices in particular. In order to address this lack we elaborate on reported challenges and their implications for IO public e-service development in practice. By returning to two empirical cases of IO public e-service development, the IO dimension is evolved. Our purpose is to highlight challenges in IO public e-service development with implications for research and practice. Findings are presented as eight emerging lessons learned from an inside-out perspective related to phases in IO public e-service development processes.

In order to deliver services to citizens, public sector agencies of today offer various types of channels for interaction. In this article we aim to develop an understanding of the reciprocal relation between multi‑channel services and work prac tice. By showing how actors at different organizational levels in an agency differ in their interpretation of multi‑channel services we have generated knowledge that is essential in multi‑channel strategy formulation. The study illustrates an example of a n agency that works actively and in a mature way with e‑government and e‑services. This qualitative case study illustrates that the top level management, middle management and the case officers need to confront and discuss their understanding of e‑governm ent and their work practice in order to reach a situation where strategies actually are influencing daily work more explicitly. An important aspect is the decision to adopt an internal or external perspective on multi‑channel service management. The resul t of this decision might be to view multi‑channel service management as a way of reaching either internal agency efficiency or external citizen benefits.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the consequences of citizens' increased use of public e-services for agency employees' work situation.

Design/methodology/approach – In order to accomplish the purpose of the paper the authors focus on the way in which the increased use of public e-services also implies internal process and routine changes in public administration. The authors analyze work conditions for case officers at a government agency in Sweden by applying occupational ideal types to identify the specific work conditions in the studied case. The case study is based on qualitative data collected with a back office perspective.

Findings – The findings indicate a new hybrid organization where the increased use of e-services challenges earlier demands for competence. The transformation of e-government has implications for job codification, rule observation, job specification, and interaction with the general public.

Originality/value – The paper extends the knowledge on how the increased use of public e-services affects back-office work conditions, with an increased high level of complexity in work content, but with low level of work autonomy. It argues that studying back-office work conditions is an important management issue in public administration research as well as practice.

ICT potentially plays an important part in achieving sustainable urban development. Subsequntly, ICT could be expected to have a central role in the general discourse of urban development, and in specific development projects, both as a means in the planning process itself and as an end product, i.e. smart city solutions. By exploring a case study of a local urban development project (Urb@n) in Sweden, we explore different characteristics given to ICT and how they can be understood as different discourses of sustainable development. By studying how ICT is spoken of in the planning phase of urban development we can understand how different stakeholders interpret and incorporate (or not) the technology in the design and development of urban areas, and how they collaborate in order to achieve goals. Our findings show that there are discrepancies between how ICT is spoken of on a policy level and in practice. A conclusion is that technology is both taken for granted and black-boxed at the same time. This indicates rather naïve conceptions and understandings among stakeholders of what characterizes ICT and how it can be used for different purposes to support sustainable development.

This reflection note is part of the special section focused on smart cities. The note puts contemporary smart city research into a societal context and elaborates on the role of a Scandinavian perspective in this domain. The authors reflect upon how Information Systems Research can contribute to smart city research and what additional value a Scandinavian perspective can bring. The note is focused on two topics: 1) participation and involvement, and 2) privacy and security.

For the last decade e-government research has underlined the importance of an external user perspective in public e-service development and there have been numerous attempts to provide guidance and directions for government agencies in this matter. Individual research studies show little progress in this matter, but a more generalisable picture of the current state of external user inclusion is missing. The aim of this paper is to provide a better and more generalisable understanding of Swedish government agencies’ current practice of external user inclusion in public e-service development. In order to do so, we have interviewed Swedish government agencies regarding their perceptions on external user inclusion. Our findings show mixed results regarding attitudes towards and current practice of external user inclusion. It is clear that organisational size and previous experience of public e-service development matter. At the same time challenges such as a general lack of resurces and a lack of time are seen as general barriers, regardless of agency level and size.

E-services hold the potential to innovate how the public sector operates, and to increase the transparencyof public services. Numerous research initiatives have illustrated the innovation power of eservices;with new technology and new solutions to existing problems. Research on this topic also emphasizesthat in order for public e-services to reach their full potential, they need to be designed in away that users find useful and beneficiary. Interestingly, in practice, only fragments of this claimedinnovation seem to take place. Today, most public e-services launched are merely electronic versionsof existing services with no, or very low, degree of innovation. In this paper, we analyse empirical datafrom local government e-service providers. The aim is to explore the current practices in local governmente-service development with respect to how aspects related to innovative and high quality serviceprovisioning are handled. In doing so, we analyse what basic motivators there are for local governmentsto offer e-services in the first place, and how such motivators influence innovation in localgovernment e-service development. The analysis concludes that local governments are facing a challengingsituation in terms of a general lack of resources regarding time, competence, and skills, aswell as a dispersed user segment where needs and wills often are hard to grasp. Furthermore, localgovernments are facing conflicting interests and agendas. At the end of the day, the heights of innovationare then hard to achieve. We call for further research on the applicability of previous researchfindings in other research areas in order to promote more innovative e-service provisioning.

User participation is seen as an important enabler for successful public e-service development. However, at the same time development of public e-services is still often characterised by an internal government perspective with little consideration for external users’ perspectives. This paper challenges the overly positive attitude that is surrounding user participation in e-government research. The paper aims to illustrate and problematize various aspects that influence why, how, and in whose interest user participation is conducted in public e-service development. First, via a literature review, we identify a set of dimensions for critically exploring how, why, and in whose interest user participation is conducted in public e-service development projects. Second, we use these dimensions in order to characterise and analyse three empirical public e-service development cases in order to test the utility, usefulness, and feasibility of the identified dimensions. Our findings highlight the importance of questioning and elaborating on the motives behind user participation (the why) in public e-service development. We also identify two basic forms of how user participation is addressed in public e-service development projects: 1) veneered participation, and 2) ad-hoc participation. Furthermore, we argue that any decisions made regarding user participation in public e-service development should be based on conscious and informed choices concerning why user participation is needed and what it may bring for different stakeholders and their interests.