13th European Conference on eGovernment – ECEG 2013 1 | Page 310

Luc Lagrandeur and Denise Fortier

resources and financial savings. There has also been a shift in participation in e‐initiatives, in the decisionmaking process, in roles and responsibilities within the city and the IT department, and in access to technical expertise. These have sometimes transformed the IT department’ s strategic positioning as a business unit. Research participants claimed that internal forces have had the following consequences:

“ Increased ability to provide personalized and flexible customer service.” – Ipswich

“ To manage content, we have set up a procedure where we have review dates on everything that is on the Web with a signoff form.” – Geelong

“ In 2008, Helmond partnered with 25 other cities( for a total of 1.2 million citizens) to create a joint corporation, Dimpact, to develop standard product / e‐services on one platform. All participating cities have the same“ look and feel” but their content is different.” ‐ Helmond

“ No hiring or firing of resources happened; responsibilities have been changed or resources reallocated.” – Golden

“ Change from the‘ glass house’ mentality of the IT department to a‘ business entity’; The IT department is not just a support function, it must plan funding, prepare strategies, leverage all the business units of the City together to come to a common goal.” – Chattanooga

The resulting external forces on their communities

Finally, for participating communities the following external changes were observed: citizens have improved access to information and e‐services are more convenient for them. Citizens therefore have increased knowledge of city’ s e‐services and there are more communications or e‐interactions between citizens and the city with an increased use of social media. Some participants even observed a change in the relationship with the citizen‐client, noting improvements in their citizen engagement level and their satisfaction level. In many cases, it was explained that the city’ s web presence improved transparency in the operations of the city and changes in the fiscal burden of citizens.

“ We don’ t have long lines at City Hall any longer; so there’ s been efficiency there because they [ citizens ] can do most of their business over the Internet.” – Riverside

“ One impact is the increase in the type and the amount of services that are requested, especially from citizens who interface with departments like the treasury, the parks department, the library and the permit office. You do one thing for them, they want more.” – Arlington

“ Convinced of the impact of Technologies on our everyday life, the city introduced tools to reinforce citizen participation in local democratic life. Since 1997, the Interactive City Council has allowed inhabitants to take part in live sessions, thanks to cable and the Internet, and to ask their representatives questions.” – Issy‐Les‐Moulineaux

“ I think it provided much better customer service. The volume of contacts made to our 311 call center has gone up 4 times over the last 5 years. It shows our ability to solve their issues as quickly as possible.” – Riverside

2.2 The identification of managerial problems

Throughout the course of the interviews, respondents freely expressed challenges or problems, either internally or externally, with regards to offering e‐services. Respondents from eight communities presented different managerial problems that can be categorized as external and internal challenges or issues. A list of the type of challenges or managerial problems faced by the communities is presented in table 1.

Table 1: List of managerial problems External challenges

Internal challenges

Improve customer experience

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