Exploring the importance of citizen participation and involvement in e-government projects Practice, incentives, and organization

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to investigate if, and in that case, how and what the e- government field can learn from user participation concepts and theories in general information systems ( IS) research. It aims to contribute with further understanding of the importance of citizen participation and involvement within the e- government research body of knowledge and when developing public e- services in practice. Design/methodology/approach - The analysis in the paper is made from a comparative, qualitative case study of two e- government projects. Three analysis themes are induced from the literature review; practice of participation, incentives for participation, and organization of participation. These themes are guiding the comparative analysis of our data with a concurrent openness to interpretations from the field. Findings - The main results in this paper are that the e-government field can get inspiration and learn from methods and approaches in traditional IS projects concerning user participation, but in e-government, methods are also needed to handle the challenges that arise when designing public e-services for large, heterogeneous user groups. Citizen engagement cannot be seen as a separate challenge in e-government, but rather as an integrated part of the process of organizing, managing, and performing e-government projects. Analysis themes of participation generated from literature; practice, incentives and organization can be used in order to highlight, analyze, and discuss main issues regarding the challenges of citizen participation within e-government. This is an important implication based on this paper that contributes both to theory on and practice of e-government. Practical implications - Lessons to learn from this paper concern that many e- government projects have a public e-service as one outcome and an internal e- administration system as another outcome. A dominating internal, agency perspective in such projects might imply that citizens as the user group of the e-service are only seen as passive receivers of the outcome - not as active participants in the development. By applying the analysis themes, proposed in this paper, citizens as active participants can be thoroughly discussed when initiating (or evaluating) an e- government project. Originality/value - The paper addresses challenges regarding citizen participation in e-government development projects. User participation is well researched within the IS discipline, but the e-government setting implies new challenges that are not explored enough.