Kamalia Azma Kamaruddin, Ariza Nordin and Nor Laila Md Noor
centric viewpoint does not embrace the whole citizen‐centricity concept, it is still worth studying since it can promote better understanding of citizen preferences aimed at increased citizen‐centricity( Blakemore 2010). However, the core of public sector ICT framework in many developing countries mainly stress on delivery system on a supply‐side perspective( MAMPU 2011; Darwish 2008; Bhuiyan 2010; Shareef 2012). It does not focus on citizen participation to uphold democratic principles where citizens are allowed to contribute ideas through requirement gathering and e‐government services design and evaluation. These ICT roadmaps are fundamentally not a citizen‐focused one, which will be resulted by low level of take‐up for e‐services( Borras 2011). Government’ s attempts at eliciting citizen demands can be seen through requirements studies that were done on project basis based on opinion surveys, consultants’ experiences and reflections of previously implemented systems, but at its best, these attempts does not build a cohesive model for future developments. Policy makers and systems developers have no means to conduct empirical research to understand citizen’ s needs due to limitations of time, resources and environment. Thus, it is the intention of this research to produce a realistic model that can represent the principles of citizen‐centric demand requirements to support development of transformational government.
According to Janssen and Shu( 2008), models and frameworks are facilitating instruments that enable the realization of t‐government, and there is hardly any formal model available that can operate at abstraction level. Although Janssen and Shu’ s study was done five years ago, still until now we couldn’ t find any framework to guide requirements modeling for t‐government application development, especially in the context of developing countries. Thus, it is the aim of this research to propose a citizen‐centric model that can be incorporated in requirements engineering framework for t‐government applications, in order to support the implementation of transformational government in developing countries. The research will address and manage demand of citizens that needs to be integrated in t‐government system design in order to deliver an effective solution for better services provision. It will address citizen‐centricity at operational level where the interface between citizens and government lies. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: section 2 describes the definitions of transformational government by various authors, as well as presenting a table to show its characteristics and approaches. Section 3 discusses the research findings ‐ a citizen‐centric demand model for transformational government and explanation of its components. Concluding remarks and an outlook for future works are provided in section 4.
2. What is transformational government?
When discussing transformational government, various researchers have offered different definition to explain the concept( Ho 2002; Janssen and Shu 2008; Borras 2011; Dwivedi and Janssen 2011). For instance, Ho( 2002) explains transformational government in terms of the way such governments operate; Janssen and Shu( 2008) define it based on its fundamental characteristics while Borras( 2011) and Dwivedi and Janssen( 2011) view it with a focus on process of transformation and back office reengineering respectively. Realizing that these definitions are context and focus dependent, lack of clarity of the precise meaning is indeed similar to e‐ Government where it has been claimed that there is an absence of a universal definition( Filho and dos Santos 2009). Nevertheless it has been found that countries today are experiencing a progression of e‐government maturity level towards realizing t‐government( Reinwald and Kraemmergaard 2012; Weerakkody and Dhillon 2008). It is the maturity level that distinguishes clearly between e‐government and t‐government in that the former is a traditional, agency‐centric in vertical‐silos model while the latter has transformed to a one‐stop, citizen‐centric model driven at whole‐of‐government level( Al‐Khouri 2011; Borras 2011). Therefore according to Borras( 2011), the four major ways t‐government evolves from e‐government are; it transforms services around citizen and business user, it aims to e‐enabled the frontline of public services, it empowers the citizen, and finally, it promotes cross‐government efficiency. For another perspective of e‐government maturity, the failure of various e‐government projects has triggered the necessity of having t‐government as a remedial justification in order to improve the level of competency and cost saving of the delivery system in the public sector, which was initially anticipated through electronic service delivery( Dwivedi and Janssen 2011). The emergent of terms such as“ e‐Government 2.0”,“ Government 2.0” and“ eGov. 2.0” have been stated as another paradigm( Osimo 2010; Silvarajah and Irani 2012) within the practice community, which consequently leads to increasing efforts of transformational government. However there is yet an impending need for research to focus on t‐government theory in order to enhance clarity on the definition and principles of transformational government.
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