The communications technologies of the late twentieth century enabled widespread access to government services through web portals. And since then, e-governance has only grown with the ubiquity of smartphones and the proliferation of algorithms in every facet of our lives. Both blockchain and AI technologies promise to further broaden the scope of e-governmental services, as do the ongoing efforts in the EU and Canada to provide citizens with digital identity wallets.
It comes with its conveniences: I was able to apply for and receive a New Zealand electronic travel authorization from the airport with my smartphone while waiting on my flight to Auckland (not the suggested timeline, of course). On the other hand, Benefits.org still fails to connect Americans to the benefits they need twenty-two years after its conception; Mangala Kuppa, the Department of Labor’s Director of Technology, Innovation, and Engineering, likens the web portal’s failure to a library when its visitors need a bookstore.
The digital divide between citizens deepens the problems posed by the deployment of e-government. Rural pastoralists in Kenya, for example, do not have ready access to the technologies necessary to use Kenyan e-governmental services. And there is a noted divide in digital skills among the citizens of developed nations, a burden often borne by members of lower socioeconomic brackets. For example, the digital identity wallets mentioned previously shift more responsibility to users because they require a certain level of digital literacy among citizens.
But the question is no longer whether governments are going to deploy e-government services, rather how governments will do so. One approach is a so-called user-centric design, whereby governments co-design e-government services with the public, but according to Walton College professor Tamara Roth, many of these user-centric plans “assume an ambitious level of digital skills.”
And while user-centric design does consider the user’s experience and needs paramount, it is worth noting that when applied to governance, this approach collapses the distinction between citizen and user. Since the values of a user and the civic values by which we organize our societies are not always in agreement, Roth and her coauthors Linda Weigl (University of Amsterdam/University of Luxembourg), Alexandre Amard (University of Luxembourg), and Liudmila Zavolokina (University of Zurich/University of Lausanne) sought to understand what these conflicts between values were and why they arose.
They recently published their findings “When Public Values and User-centricity in e-Government Collide – A Systematic Review” in Government Information Quarterly. There were three main insights from their work: decision-makers can inadvertently override citizen representation by their ability to impose norms; highly institutionalized environments can stifle user-centric innovation; and designs can undermine pluralism within diverse societies when e-government presumes users are overly similar.
What is User-Centricity?
The goal of user-centric design is to foreground user needs, expectations, and preferences in what researchers call co-design. Governments and policymakers now make this user-centricity a primary goal of their e-government services.
Researchers have constructed user-centricity as four, interrelated pillars. One, it focuses on the user; two, it is work-centered; three, it encourages user involvement; and four, it allows for system personalization. Not every user-centric project uses each pillar, but they highlight the ways these projects develop.
Roth, Weigl, Amard, and Zavolokina note that user-centric design certainly helps governments achieve their democratic mission, especially in terms of maintaining, improving, and providing services and policies. The researchers also note that information systems implementation, with its emphasis upon efficiency and effectiveness-maximalization, does not necessarily align with public values.
As citizens are further treated like users or customers, e-government risks undermining the goals of democratic governance when neo-liberal managerialism conflicts with public values.
The Conflicts between Citizens and their Governments
To better understand how the values of user-centric design and e-governance interact, Roth and her colleagues surveyed 71 papers that deal with user-centricity and public policy. The meta-study included papers with a variety of geographic scopes, from local to worldwide considerations. Their study identified four main areas of conflict. These fall into two types: user focus conflicts, based on the scope or kind of citizen e-government is created for, and user involvement conflicts, when digital access does not translate to the engagement policymakers expect. The researchers called these representation, pluralism, accountability, and inclusiveness conflicts.
Citizens and governments may also have different needs and interests for e-government, but government and policymaker interests can dominate those of citizens. This means that e-government services might not be adequately compatible with users’ needs. Part of this conflict comes from the fact that governments tend to view their accountability to citizens by narrow, legally definable standards, which distracts designers from broader, society-wide concerns especially as they increasingly focus on individual citizens.
User-centric design, however, needs to be far more flexible and dynamic than rigid bureaucratic institutions allow. Roth and her colleagues also point to research that suggests service designers downplay the normative power of e-government.
Another user focus conflict also arises from the kind of citizen designers create e-government services for. This is a pluralism conflict, highlighting the e-government's fault in supporting diversity in society. Policymakers may neglect socio-economic issues or overlook skill discrepancies. Specifically, e-governmental services tend to be created for young, educated, and technology-conscious people. This problem can be exacerbated in multilingual societies when e-government is not designed for minority language communities.
These pluralism conflicts tend to have the greatest negative impact upon lower socio-economic communities and citizens who suffer from other forms of discrimination. They dovetail directly with representation conflicts when designers and policymakers fail to consider whom they also believe to be the “normative” citizen.
E-government assumes digital tools will make it easier for citizens to be engaged with their services, but the researchers noted an accountability conflict that may undermine this goal. Users need to be protected from legal ramifications while using e-government services, which necessarily limits user engagement. Moreover, citizen users may not have the knowledge or the skills to engage with decision-making on digital tools.
These conflicts in user involvement mean that e-government’s user-centric designs do not necessarily lead to greater citizen engagement. Digital services will merely be the veneer atop the bureaucratic structures, and there may be deeper, societal problems and questions of access that e-government alone simply cannot address.
Finally, Roth, Weigl, Amard, and Zavolokina also identified an inclusiveness conflict. Digital service designers often overlook citizens’ access to digital literacy. By comparison, imagine how much of our lives are mediated by written documents, digital or otherwise. It is such a normal aspect of our lives, that it is difficult to see literacy as the skill it is. In fact, the drop-off in elementary students’ literacy abilities due to COVID-19 disruptions to schooling may be the first time in generations that affluent people were reminded that literacy is not an inherent ability.
Likewise, citizens’ demographics can impair their inclusion in e-government services. For example, older people may not have these skills, having not been brought up in digital environments. Older people are also more likely to be impoverished, meaning they do not have the funds to pay for training in digital literacy or simply lack access to the devices to use digital services. This conflict strikes other communities as well, such as immigrant and rural communities.
Digital technologies are often championed for their ability to broaden access to services, but if we do not address systematic inequalities, this broader access may in fact be an illusion.
Paths to Improving Digital Services
Roth, Weigl, Amard, and Zavolokina argue that user-centric design is still desirable despite these conflicts. Further research, which they advocate for, could help governments and policymakers manage their assumptions.
They suggest, for example, including civil society representatives in the design process to help build consensus and trustworthiness into these e-government projects. Similarly, they also suggest governments consider offering more support for digital public services or ensure that non-digital options continue to be offered.
They call for future research on other potential conflicts that arise between public values and user-centric design. The user-focus and user-involvement conflicts are all interconnected; they highlight the presumptions many people bring to digital services in terms of access and ease of use.
Roth and her colleagues challenge our assumption that user-centricity naturally aligns with public values. It is always worth identifying where our high-minded, democratic goals fall short, so we can better provide services and support to all members of our societies.
