IMPROVING THE USER-CENTREDNESS OF
E-GOVERNMENT PROJECTS
Asbjørn Følstad
SINTEF ICT, Forskningsveien 1, 0314 Oslo, Norway
Keywords: E-Government, User-centred design, Usability.
Abstract: An important challenge for e-Government service providers is to increase service uptake among citizens.
Improved user-centredness of e-Government development projects may be an important key to increased
service uptake. In the present study, 51 representatives of the domain of Norwegian e-Government service
development provided their views on how the user-centredness of future development projects may be
improved. The findings indicate that significant improvements in user-centredness of e-Government
projects may be achieved through adherence to basic principles of user-centred design (UCD). The most
frequently suggested recommendations made by the e-Government development representatives were to (1)
clearly define and analyse users and stakeholders, (2) anchor the user-centred approach in the management
and project team, and (3) involve user in the development process. The findings are discussed in regard to
the organisational UCD maturity levels they may reflect.
1 INTRODUCTION
E-Government service provision through the Internet
is growing ever more sophisticated. In European
countries, for example, most basic public-sector
services (such as taxes and VAT, job search, vehicle
registration etc.) include one-way or two-way
interaction
i
(Wauters and Colclough, 2006). As
service sophistication has reached acceptable levels,
a major challenge for public sector services
providers is to increase e-Government service
uptake in the general population; i.e., to move a
larger proportion of citizens from traditional
channels of service provision to e-Government
service channels.
E-Government service uptake varies widely
between countries, even between countries with
similar levels of service sophistication. In 2006,
United Kingdom had an e-Government service
uptake by individual citizens of about 25 percent, in
spite of being one of the European countries with
highest levels of e-Government service
sophistication. In comparison, the Norwegian and
Swedish e-Government service uptake by individual
citizens was greater than 50 percent in the same year
for similar services (Wauters and Colclough, 2006).
In spite of this range of variation between countries,
most government service providers seem to be faced
with the challenge of increasing the service uptake
of their e-Government services.
In order to increase uptake of e-Government
services, these need to be developed and
implemented according to the needs and
requirements of their intended users. E-Government
services that are difficult to use, or that do not reflect
user needs, are likely to be used less than the service
provider wants. The OECD public management
policy brief “The hidden threat to e-Government:
Avoiding large government failures” concludes that
greater end-user involvement is one of a small
number of factors leading to successful e-
Government service development (OECD, 2001).
A user-centred approach is a suitable way to
increase the user involvement in the development
process. This approach is also helpful in facilitating
system development in accordance with user needs
and requirements. One prominent user-centred
development process is User-centred design (UCD);
a process particularly oriented towards user needs
and requirements, as well as user-feedback on
design solutions at different levels of maturity (ISO,
1999).
But how should we go about improving the user-
centredness of current and future e-Government
development projects? In this paper, I try to provide
important insight into this question by presenting the
407
Følstad A. (2008).
IMPROVING THE USER-CENTREDNESS OF E-GOVERNMENT PROJECTS.
In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, pages 407-414
DOI: 10.5220/0001514704070414
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

results of a recent investigation. The aim of the
investigation was to identify factors that experts of
e-Government service provision regard as crucial in
order to improve user-centredness.
The investigation utilized data obtained from 51
representatives from the domain of e-Government
service development who participated in one of six
group sessions during a seminar on user-centred
development of e-Government services. The data
concerned Norwegian e-Government service
development. However, since Norwegian e-
Government services hold a fair level of service
sophistication and relatively high level of citizen
uptake, the results may also be of interest for the
international community of e-Government
researchers and practitioners. The results of the
investigation provide 1) insight and inspiration
regarding how the user-centredness of e-
Government projects could be improved, and 2) a
background for reflection on the maturity of UCD in
e-Government development.
2 RELATED WORK
The sections of Chapter 2 discuss related work in
four areas of knowledge:
• User-centred design (UCD)
• Current arguments in favour of improving user-
centredness of e-Government projects
• Current status of user-centredness in e-
Government projects
• Maturity models for user-centred development.
2.1 User-centred Design (UCD)
Strictly speaking, UCD refers to a development
process according to the ISO standard 13407
“Human-centred design processes for interactive
systems”, which describes an iterative process
covering the phases of 1) context specification, 2)
user and organizational requirements, 3) design
solutions, and 4) evaluation (ISO, 1999).
However, since it has been difficult to encourage
software developers to adopt a user-centred process
model in exchange for other software process
models, UCD is currently also used to refer to any
iterative development process that incorporates
sufficient user-centred activities (Følstad and
Skjetne, 2007).
A wide range of methods that support UCD
exists for all phases of the development process;
some of the best known are presented in Table 1.
2.2 Why Improve the
User-centredness of
e-Government Projects?
When investigating how to improve the user-
centredness of e-Government projects, it is
necessary to know on which basis we make a
decision to improve user-centredness.
There are several reasons why the user-
centredness of e-Government projects should be
improved. Følstad and Krogstie (2007) have
presented the following four:
a) The Range of Relevant Stakeholders, Users and
Goals
E-Government service development is typically
associated with a wide range of stakeholders and
user groups. Examples of this was given by Følstad
et al. (2007) who presented three cases of e-
Government development; all associated with
important challenges related to the services’
multitude of user-groups and stakeholders, leading
to unclear service goal-hierarchies.
b) Socio-technical Challenges
E-Government services typically imply changes in
organisational structures and work processes
(Mansour et al., 2005). Successful implementation
of e-Government services often require that socio-
technical challenges related to the service to be
treated well. Furthermore, organisational rather than
technological issues may be the reason why e-
Government service development is slow in some
areas (Krokan and Midtbust, 2006).
Table 1: Example methods supporting UCD, distributed across the development process phases (based on Maguire, 2001).
Context specification
User and organi-
zational requirements
Design solutions Evaluation
Stakeholder
identification
Context-of-user analysis
Field study
Task analysis
Stakeholder analysis
User cost-benefit
analysis
User requirements
interviews
Focus groups
Parallel design
Storyboarding
Paper prototyping
Software prototyping
Expert evaluation
User testing
Satisfaction
questionnaires
Post-experience
interviews
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User involvement in the development process should
facilitate the socio-technical aspects of service
implementation.
c) Experience Reports
Reports from OECD (2001) and the UK
government (Pearce, 2003) concluded that end-user
involvement is a critical success factor for e-
Government development projects. In the reports,
“end-users” refers to users both within and external
to the government organisation.
d) Political Priorities
Achieving user-centred e-Government services
is a political priority in many countries. The priority
given to this issue may be seen in political
documents such as the “i2010 - A European
Information Society for Growth and Employment”
(European Commission, 2005), in particular with
respect to the aim of e-Government service
accessibility.
2.3 Current Status of
User-centredness in
e-Government Projects
Følstad et al. (2004) investigated the status of user
involvement in Norwegian e-Government projects.
The investigation indicated that e-Government
project leaders seem to be aware of the importance
of user involvement in the development process, and
that they also include a fair amount of user
involvement activities. However, current user
involvement tends to follow the practices of
democratic participation rather than methods
developed and used within the field of UCD.
Examples of such practices of democratic
participation include:
 User representatives in project group
 Reference groups with user representative
 Audits
 User meetings and other information activities.
Følstad et al. also found that e-Government
service users within the government were involved
more often and earlier than users external to the
government (the general population of citizens).
2.4 Maturity Models for User-centred
Design
Using UCD maturity models can be a useful
approach to conceptualize and improve the user-
centredness of an enterprise’s development
projects
ii
. An early UCD maturity model was
developed by Earthy (1998), who provided the
following classifications to describe an
organisation’s UCD maturity:
X: Unrecognized
A: Recognised
B: Considered
C: Implemented
D: Integrated
E: Institutionalised.
At Level A the need to improve the user-
centredness of existing services is recognized. At
Level B an awareness of the importance of
following end-user requirements is established.
Level C requires that user-centred development
processes are implemented, but not integrated in the
organisation’s quality lifecycle. User-centred
development processes integrated into the
organisation’s quality life cycle are not required
until Level D. At the highest level, Level E, a user-
centred approach is adopted for a whole range of
systems, and the user-centred approach should be of
benefit to the culture of the organization.
3 RESEARCH QUESTION
The main research question investigated in the
present study was:
“What do representatives of the domain of e-
Government service development perceive to be
crucial factors for improving the user-centredness of
e-Government projects?”
The data collected in the study of the main
research question also permitted discussions on
current e-Government developers’ user-centred
maturity. This sub-question was formulated as:
“Which user-centred maturity levels are
reflected in the factors perceived by domain
representatives to be crucial for improving the user-
centredness of e-Government development
projects?”
4 METHOD
In order to gain insight relevant to the research
questions, it was necessary to collect data from a
sufficiently large number of representatives from the
domain of e-Government service development. This
was done in conjunction with a whole-day seminar
on the topic of “User-centred development of e-
Government services”. The seminar dealt with
Norwegian e-Government services.
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In order to efficiently gather data on the
representatives’ perceptions, a group session was
conducted. Each group was asked to agree on “top
four ways” to improve user-centredness in future e-
Government development projects. This procedure
had the aim of including all the participants’ relevant
viewpoints, at least as objects for consideration
among their peers in the groups. The procedure also
allowed an analysis of the prevalence of the different
viewpoints across the groups.
4.1 Participants
In the invitation to the seminar, the target group was
described as persons displaying the following three
characteristics:
 Working on the development of e-Government
solutions
 Focusing on the end-users of e-Government
services
 Wishing to be updated on how to include user
perspectives in development projects.
Invitations to the seminar were distributed by e-
mail to more than 400 representatives of the target
group in the Norwegian public sector, private
service providers and research organisations. The
seminar was free of charge.
A total of 51 persons participated in the seminar.
Participants’ came from 1) government bodies, 2) private
service providers and 3) research organisations. The
distribution of the participants is shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Participants’ work-places.
Work-place
Number of
participants
Government bodies 27
Private service providers 16
Research organisations 8
Total 51
4.2 Group Processes
The participants were divided in six similar sized
groups. The group session lasted 45 minutes, and the
groups were self-administered. The following
process was applied in each group:
 Introduction
o Presentation
o Choose group leader and minute-taker
 Brainstorming: Possible ways of strengthening
user-centredness (20 minutes)
o Two minutes individual note-taking (1-
3 suggestions per group member)
o Individual presentations of suggestions
o Joint structuring of suggestions
 Discuss and decide: “Top four ways” of
improving user-centredness (15 minutes)
o Group agreement, through discussion,
on the “top four ways” that best reflect
participants’ viewpoints.
The stated goal of the group sessions was that
each group should develop a set of “top four ways”.
The groups were aware that they were to present
their results in plenum immediately following the
group sessions.
4.3 Data Collection
Data were collected via a plenary session following
the group sessions. All groups were given two
minutes to present their results. Each group’s written
notes were handed over to the seminar leader. Five
of the groups presented four “top ways”, while one
presented five.
4.4 Analysis
After the seminar, the data were analysed in a three-
stage process. First, each of the groups’ “top ways”
to improve the user-centredness of future e-
Government projects were analysed with respect to
whether or not they should be interpreted as
representing one single issue, or a merger of two
issues. A “top way” interpreted to reflect one issue
only was regarded as one item; otherwise it was
divided in two items. One example of a “top way”
that was interpreted as representing two issues was
“Clear definitions of target users and goals”. This
particular “top way” was split in the following two
items: “Clear definitions of target users” and “Clear
goal definitions”.
Following the first stage of the analysis, all items
were classified as belonging to a category. The
categories were developed iteratively through the
analytical process. The full set of items from the six
groups was classified in a total of 14 categories.
Each of the categories can be regarded as a
recommendation aimed at improving the user-
centredness of e-Government projects.
In the third stage of the process, all categories
were classified according to how advanced they
were judged to be relative to the state-of-the-art for
UCD. Three categories were used:
 Basic (Basic UCD principles. Awareness of,
and/or adherence to these principles may be
expected at Earthy’s UCD maturity levels A-B.)
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 Advanced (UCD principles followed by fairly
advanced practitioners. Adherence to these
principles may be expected at Earthy’s UCD
maturity levels C-E.)
 Research needed (State-of-the-art UCD does
not support this advice. Further research is
needed.)
The third stage of classification in the analytical
process was carried out independently by two
researchers. In case of disagreement on
classification, agreement was reached through
discussion. The two researchers initially disagreed
with regard to three of the 14 categories.
5 RESULTS
This section presents the 14 categories of
recommendations for improved user-centredness of
e-Government projects. The most popular category
includes items from all six groups. Five of the
categories include items suggested by one group
only. The number of groups which presented an item
relevant to a given category is indicated through a
number shown in parentheses following the category
label.
Each category is also classified according to how
advanced it was judged to be relative to current
state-of-the-art in the field of UCD. Seven of the
categories were judged as reflecting Basic UCD
principles. Six were judged as reflecting Advanced
UCD practice, and one was classified as Research
needed. The classifications are also presented in
parentheses.
Define and Analyse User-groups and Stakeholders
(6; Basic)
All groups pointed out that one should be careful
to establish a clear definition of the user-groups of a
service in order to improve user-centredness. Two
groups also made a distinction between user-groups
and stakeholders
iii
. Two groups also pointed out the
importance of including sufficient analysis of the
user groups rather than merely identifying them.
Anchoring (4; Basic)
Four of the six groups emphasised the
importance of appropriate anchoring of a user-
centred approach within management and the
organisation. Anchoring in management was
mentioned by most groups, but anchoring of user-
centredness in the development team was also
suggested as being important. In order to achieve
anchoring, measures such as cost-benefit analyses of
user-centred activities were suggested in addition to
the importance of changing attitudes and
disseminating knowledge.
Involve Users in the Development Process (3; Basic)
Three of the six groups pointed out the
importance of involving users in the development
process. One of the groups focused on initiating user
involvement as early as possible in the process.
Another group presented the importance of
involving users throughout the project life-cycle.
Define Goals (2; Basic)
Two of the groups emphasised the importance of
establishing clear goals for the e-Government
service; what the service should provide for the user
groups and stakeholders, and at which quality level.
Prioritising Among User Groups (2; Basic)
Two groups recommended prioritising among
user groups. One stated that prioritizing is important
in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness
of a project’s user-centred activities. Another group
pointed out that it is necessary to prioritise a
service’s first-time users under development, to
ensure that the resulting service is intuitive and
supports walk-up-and-use.
Document Usefulness (2; Advanced)
Documentation of the usefulness of user-centred
activities was mentioned as being important in order
to sell and maintain a user-centred approach in the
project group. It should be possible to evaluate the
user-centred activities according to pre-defined goals
and measures.
Competence in the Project Group (2; Advanced)
Two groups emphasized activities aimed at
ensuring transfer of competence in user-centred
development within the project group. It was also
pointed out that the structures for cooperation in the
project group should facilitate transfers of
competence.
Exploit Feedback on Running Services(2; Advanced)
Two groups suggested the exploitation of user
feedback on running services as an important way to
improve the user-centredness of e-Government
services. One of the groups focused particularly on
the use of beta versions; the other took a more
general approach to systematic exploitation of user
feedback in maintenance and redesign.
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Structures for Cooperation in the Project Group (2;
Advanced)
Structures for cooperation in the project group,
improving dialogue and exchange between the
project members, were mentioned as important by
two groups. No specific structures were suggested,
but one of the groups pointed out the need to
formalise new models for cooperation within the
project group.
Prepare Participants in User-centred Activities (1;
Basic)
Some user-centred activities, such as certain
kinds of workshops, would be greatly improved if
participating users and stakeholders are given the
opportunity to prepare before participation.
Budget (1; Basic)
One of the groups pointed out the importance of
establishing defined budgets for user-centred
activities in a project during project planning.
Exploit Richness in User-centred Methods (1;
Advanced)
One of the groups pointed out that there seem to
be tendency for only a few user-centred methods to
be widely used, whereas other methods that may be
more suitable in certain development contexts are
not used as much as they could. Project planning
should encourage higher levels of reflection
regarding choice of user-centred activities.
Lifecycle User-centredness (1; Advanced)
User-centredness was described by one of the
groups as something that should be included
throughout a service’s life cycle. It was pointed out
that it is not sufficient to keep up a user-centred
approach in, for example, the early phases of a
project if this for some reason - such as budget
limitations - cannot be continued throughout the
project.
Usability as Quality Criterion (1; Research needed)
Usability should be included in the most
important service quality criteria, together with, for
example, service stability.
6 DISCUSSION
The first two parts of this section deal with the two
research questions investigated through the study.
The third concerns the validity and generality of the
findings.
What do representatives of the domain of e-
Government service development perceive to be
crucial factors for improving the user-centredness of
e-Government projects?
The results indicate that representatives of e-
Government service development are in fairly high
agreement on three factors as highly important in
order to improve user-centredness: Define and
analyse users and stakeholders, anchor the user-
centred approach in management and the project
team, and involve users in the development process.
It should be noted that these three “top ways” all
reflect an absolute minimum regarding user-
centredness. It is noteworthy that as many as seven
of the 14 recommendation categories were judged to
reflect Basic UCD principles.
It is somewhat comforting that also advanced
issues, as seen from the perspective of the field of
UCD, were among the 14 categories. The
recommendation “Usability as quality criterion” was
even found to imply interesting and relevant
research challenges within the field of UCD. Even
so, the findings clearly suggest that important
improvements regarding the user-centredness of e-
Government service development may be achieved
through general adherence to basic UCD principles.
Why then are basic UCD principles not already
fully integrated into current e-Government service
development? Literature describing the principles
has been in existence for a long time, and knowledge
of the principles does seem to exist among e-
Government service development representatives.
One possible explanation suggested by Følstad et
al. (2004) is that current uses of democratic
participation practices have yet to be adequately
combined with UCD methods specifically intended
to provide systematic input to the system
development process.
Another, in many ways complementary
explanation is the current lack of UCD process
support tailored to e-Government projects. This
means that even though, as summarized by Følstad
and Krogstie (2007), there are several good reasons
for improving user-centredness, we still may be in
need of process support that can help the individual
project leader of e-Government development
projects to take the step from knowledge of general
UCD principles to implementation of actions
actually improving the user-centredness of planned
or ongoing projects.
Which user-centred maturity levels are reflected in
the factors perceived by domain representatives to
be crucial for improving the user-centredness of e-
Government development projects?
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The factors presented by most groups to be
crucial in order to improve user-centredness were
judged to reflect basic UCD issues. The three top
recommendations, along with four less common
recommendations, seem to reflect organisational
UCD maturity at no more than Level B of Earthy’s
maturity model. Level B is characterized by user-
centred activities and processes being considered,
without the implementation of a full fledged user-
centred process.
At the same time, the seven categories of
recommendations classified as either Advanced or
Research required reflect recommendations
requiring UCD maturity at Level C or higher. The
recommendation “Lifecycle user-centredness“ seems
to require UCD maturity at Level D. And “Usability
as quality criterion” may even require UCD
maturity at Level E.
It should be pointed out that the interpretation of
the current findings as reflecting e-Government
UCD maturity is only a tentative conclusion. Data
that directly reflect the development processes in
representative e-Government projects are needed to
allow strong conclusions to be drawn in this regard.
The author hopes that this study will motivate future
research on the UCD maturity of e-Government
development projects.
Validity and generality
The most important limitation on the validity of
the present study is the fact that participants were
selected on the basis of a convenience sample. This
means that we do not have full control of whether
the participants were a representative sample of the
population of e-Government service developer
representatives. The results should therefore
preferably be perceived as a source of testable
hypotheses and motivation for future studies.
The generality of the results is also limited by
the data having being collected with regard to
Norwegian e-Government development projects.
However, the results should still be of interest
outside the Norwegian context; both in other
Scandinavian countries (due to similarities in e-
Government services provision and uptake) and in
other European countries (due to the relatively high
levels of e-Government service uptake in Norway).
However, given the limitations on the generality of
the study’s findings outside the Norwegian context,
these should preferably be used as background
material for related studies in an international
context
7 FUTURE WORK
The author hopes that this study will draw more
attention to the user-centredness of practical e-
Government service development. In particular, the
finding that adherence to basic UCD principles
could lead to significant improvements in user-
centredness hopefully provides motivation in this
regard.
Future research should aim to study the findings
of the present study as testable hypotheses in
international contexts. Such studies could include
surveys of randomly drawn samples of e-
Government system developer representatives,
possibly conducted in a similar manner in countries
with varying degrees of e-Government service
sophistication and uptake in the general population.
Survey studies of this kind could be followed up by
small-scale qualitative studies that would provide in-
depth knowledge related to key findings. This would
establish a solid base for improving user-centredness
of e-Government development projects.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The paper was written as part of the research project
“Efficiency through user involvement”
(www.effin.org), which was financed by the
Research Council of Norway through its FIFOS
programme.
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i
Wauters and Colclough’s (2006) levels of one-way and two-way
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ii
An overview of UCD maturity models is provided by Jokela
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iii
User groups were understood as users both within and external
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