4. The analysis of case: methodologies
Alessio Gugliotta, Francesco Niglia and Laura Schina
The analysis had been focused in three areas: technology, user‐centricity, socio‐political; each mapped best practice has been preliminary evaluated using a light version of the PEST analysis to which we added a SWOT analysis of user‐centric and technology aspects. These steps have been carried out by the researchers and the experts in the field through analysis masks that have been developed as ad‐hoc instruments. Additionally, a four‐levels global competitiveness mask has been introduced for the comparison with international cases, it is able to provide also a graphic positioning on the“ competitiveness reference system”. This methodology can be easily adopted in other analysis for the network studies and can be even standardised to identify the main bottlenecks, technical challenges, acceptance problematic and mass‐user needs.
4.1 The user‐centric analysis
It relates to the analysis of the key‐points that characterise the service as user‐centric example, it is a light SWOT analysis, carried out to highlight methodologies and the effective results of the citizens‐users’ involvement. Its scope is to understand how the users‐citizens have been approached to set‐up the service, from the beginning to the service run and, in a second stage, to define the methodologies of involvement that could be actually replicated and transferred to other services, cases and e‐Government domains. The user target factor has been taken into account as well for defining the easiness of use, the satisfaction, the participation / inclusion of such categories in the whole process of service delivery. The analysis is carried out by giving an answer to the strength and the weak points of two different stages of the users’ involvement: 1. Involvement of user‐citizen in the service definition and 2. Involvement of user‐citizen in the improvement of the service
4.2 The technological analysis
It relates to the analysis of the usability of the service, its long‐term lasting and viability of the provision interfaces for the user target. As the user‐centric one, this is a light version of a SWOT analysis that aims at pointing out and categorise the significant factors that can be actually used for describing the added value of the service in the e‐Government domain. The analysis provides critical information, important to match the future providers’ capabilities with the constraints of the service and give an important contribution to the potential future strategic planning process. What we look for with this analysis:
• Understand if the technologies adopted are a boundary for the development of the service, including the use of Open Source rather than proprietary software
• Understand to which extent the new technologies are taken into account, including the interface trends that characterise the handled hardware( smart‐phones and tablet)
• Understand the time and economic effort required for develop and / or customise the services
• Understand the limits of the applied technology, those that could easily led to a dismission of the service from both provider and client side
The analysis has been carried out by giving an answer to the strength and the weak points of two different stages of the technological level of the service development: 1. Adaptability of the technology to the user target requirements and 2. Capability of the technology to be re‐adapted for improving the service or transfer to other domain.
4.3 The PEST analysis including replicability
The PEST( Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analysis has been introduced in the process of cases evaluation for better understanding the market positioning, potential and direction for the business and application of selected services since it takes into account essentially external factors and it is helpful prior of completing a SWOT analysis. It is dedicated to address what are the variables that actually impact on the macro‐environment especially under a strategic perspective so to evaluate also the transferability of the case. The replicability and transfer is one the most valuable attribute that a best practice can have and, especially for NET‐EUCEN, the key‐point for an actual enhancement of the adoption of user‐centricity in large scale. According to this purpose, our PEST analysis addresses the following issues:
• Understand which are the variables that could impact on the future applicability of the service in the medium‐long term;
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