Alessio Gugliotta, Francesco Niglia and Laura Schina
The analysis reveals that the Europe and the International area share the same level of implementation of user‐centric services and a wider campaign of analysis would be need to point out the technological level and the actual implementation by central and local governments.
The transfer of these cases can be actualised through the support of local and central administrations and a cooperation framework with developers: this is a boundary for the replication and implementation of cases and shall be supported by governments until the business aspects will be improved. There are four main factors that shall be taken into account to enhance the application of user centricity in eGovernance sector: the engagement of citizens; the use of new technologies and the 2.0 tools; the use of open technologies; the business perspectives.
Following this preliminary analysis, we can list some initial recommendation targeted to the Community at large, the rationale follows the analysis of those cases that have scored the highest level in our evaluation, focused on understanding the aspects and reasons why a case is more interesting when compared to another:
• The key factor is the engagement of citizens in the various phases of the service definition, development and refining. It’ s important to assess methodologies for users and citizens’ engagement, that are not only ICT‐based, but imply the active participation of users especially in the phase of the service definition. Once the service is designed around the users’ needs it will be easier to engage the same user in the refining and improvement phases rather than when a service is“ pushed” on a category of users.
• The use of new technologies and the 2.0 tools through mobile devices empowers the co‐participation of users. This is the interface that almost all citizens and users are going to use for the management of all the information of his / her daily life. All the services shall be provided also through these kind of devices. All the campaigns of users engagement shall take into account also these devices in the polls campaigns and in the data gathering( requirements and / or refining) phase.
• The use of open technologies increases the possibility to replicate the service in other environments. The service developers shall envisage campaigns of support by free‐lance programmers, thus increasing the low‐cost / high‐quality bug detection and service improvements, even through the implementation of new features. Furthermore, the open source technologies allow an easy re‐adaption of the service modules in other domains.
• It’ s important to have a business perspective for the service’ sustainability. This is not a boundary requirement, but it’ s more and more important when thinking about the need of external funds in providing the service to a group of citizens. The business is bounded with the provision of added‐value content information not referable to having any impact on welfare.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the European Commission, Information Society and Media Directorate‐General, under the ICT Policy Support Programme( ICT PSP). The results presented in this paper are based on the survey activities of the Thematic Network NET‐EUCEN( Grant Agreement N ° 250522). Usual disclaimers apply.
References
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