=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-285/paper-3
|storemode=property
|title=Automation and E-government Services – A Widened Perspective
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-285/paper02.pdf
|volume=Vol-285
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/interact/CajanderE07
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==Automation and E-government Services – A Widened Perspective==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-285/paper02.pdf
DEGAS 2007 | Proceedings 10 September 2007 | Rio de Janeiro y Brazil
Automation and E-government Services – A Widened
Perspective
Åsa Cajander Elina Eriksson
IT/HCI Uppsala University IT/HCI Uppsala University
PO Box 337, SE-751 05 Uppsala PO Box 337, SE-751 05 Uppsala
asa.cajander@it.uu.se elina.eriksson@it.uu.se
ABSTRACT mentioned as a driving force, however, the authors do
This short paper questions the focus on automation of e- not describe how a service within a government should
government processes, and efficiency in e-government, be changed to meet the need of the citizen, and which
which is prevalent in both research and in practice in types of services are suitable for the Internet. In their
Swedish governments. We argue that this focus on model, the highest level of maturity is when there is a
automation and efficiency might cause unhealthy work horizontal integration of government services, which
for civil servants, and services that do not meet the means that services are integrated between
demands or needs of the citizens. Hence, the role of the governmental agencies. This is further elaborated in the
civil servant must be reconsidered, from a mere article of Punia and Saxena [4] who has developed a
“overseer” of an automated process, to a highly skilled framework for handling inter-organisational workflows.
worker that provides complex services and works
efficiently with information. Moreover, research on e- The aim of the e-government is automation of existing
government should elaborate more on the changes that services or processes, which we have experience in our
needs to be done in the services provided, as well as research [5, 6]. This is further stretched by the study by
which services that are suitable for the Internet and Krokan and Midtbust [1] in which their aim was to
other media. understand why a governmental agency in Norway did
not automate. Automation and inter-organizational
Author Keywords services is also mentioned in an article by Arendsen and
E-government, user involvement, healthy work. van Engers [7], they see the reduction of the
administrative burden as one of the larger goals of e-
ACM Classification Keywords government.
H.5.2. User Interfaces---User-centered design. General Another dominant discourse found in contemporary
Terms: UCSD, Management, Design, Human Factors. research concerns the user, and user involvement;
Additional Key Words: Participatory Design, Studies of however, they often have a high focus on the citizen.
Organizations and Usability Studies Følstad et al in their study [8] has interviewed project
leaders in e-government projects, asking them about
INTRODUCTION user involvement. Their result shows that the project
This short paper addresses issues on automation and leaders think they have good user involvement,
efficiency in e-government which is prevalent in both although too little HCI-methods.
research (for example [1]), and in practice in Swedish
governments.. Results presented in this article describe However, poor usability and a stressful work situation is
and reflect this focus on automation and efficiency in a still a significant problem in computer supported work,
case study made at three large government despite years of research efforts to increase focus on
organisations in Sweden. The aim of this paper is to these issues [9]. We must not forget that the user of
motivate a discussion where snap shots from reality are governmental services is both the citizens, and the civil
used as exemplifications to illuminate our position. servant, i.e. the civil servant that work within the
government. e-Government applications risk causing
According to Grönlund [2], e-government is still an even more health problems as the strong focus on the
immature research area with a majority of papers on automation and efficiency results in applications with
case stories and product descriptions, and few articles poor usability causing a bad work environment for civil
on theory building and theory testing. Furthermore servants. Moreover, the above-mentioned articles do not
Grönlund reports a high focus on IT, and the elaborate on the changing role of the users, neither have
organization as such, and less on the role of the they elaborated on the change of the services.
organization in society.
This position paper aims at discussing and interpreting
The maturity of e-government is a whole research area, the high focus on automation, and the problems this
and governments can be in different stages of maturity, focus might lead to. We claim that research within e-
as described by Layne and Lee [3]. Efficiency, government must widen the perspective to include a
effectiveness and meeting the citizens needs are
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DEGAS 2007 | Proceedings 10 September 2007 | Rio de Janeiro y Brazil
discussion about services and users and not only focus people working in the organisation monitor computers
on different ways of integrating governmental systems that process all the case handling work.
or on the processes per se.
“My vision of the future is three men in a bunker inside
a mountain.”
RESEARCH SETTING
We are involved in research projects together with three Even though the manager cited above have an extreme
public authorities in Sweden. The projects are partly view of the level of automation, there is indeed a strong
funded by the Swedish Development Council for the focus on automation of case handling in all authorities
Public Sector (Utvecklingsrådet) where focus is at participating in our research projects. Automation is
computer-supported administrative work and health seen as a way of increasing efficiency in the
factors. The project goal of the organization is to get organization. Increased automation of case handling has
better systems for their civil servants and by this healthy top priority, and all the authorities but one have
work and more healthy workers. All of the authorities implemented electronic case handling at least to some
are developing enhanced e-governance. The research extent. Visions about the future are based on the idea
goal is to understand how an organization understands that citizens (customers) fill out and send forms and
user centered system design, implements the methods, applications, etc, electronically, the main part of the
and make use of them. We are also interested in case handling will be done automatically and computers
understanding what are the obstacles and beneficial will “make” the decisions. When deciding on what
factors of the implementation process. Our research aspects to automate in the computer systems, the work
group has been involved in these projects, as situation is seldom considered and consequently
researchers and to support the organizations’ work. consists of what is left when the computer has done its
Our research aims at influencing systems development best:
in practice; hence research is carried out in real life “We automate things, and the rest is a bunch of tasks
settings with an action research methodology [10]. Data for users. And these are closely connected to how we
is gathered and analysed with a qualitative research have developed the automatic process. And what is left
approach with interview studies, meetings with there is something I feel we have no control of”
stakeholders, analysis of documentation, observations
and field studies. One of the systems development projects that we have
followed as a part of our action research project has the
Our research is based on a constructivist and aim to improve the decision process with a better GUI
interpretive perspective, where we create and for texts and decisions sent to the customers. The main
understand our reality by using language through reason for this is to make the process more efficient, as
communication. Interpretations are flexible, situated, it has been quite time consuming with the old system.
and socially constructed. Research based on case The project also aims at automating parts of the case
studies leads to contextual in-depth knowledge, and handling. However, as the project manager is very
should not be generalized. We as researchers, the interested in usability, and a good work environment, it
context, the organization and the conditions under has been important to include civil servants in the
which the research takes place, color the results. system development project. After the first iteration,
However, the organizations and the findings are not where the new decision text system was tested with
unique or unusual and therefore we hope that the reader users we had a meeting with the project manager. The
will find the knowledge gained applicable in other civil servants testing the system had spent minutes
settings, and as a background to create a discussion reading and controlling the automated decisions made
about the focus of e-government reserach. by the computers. They did not trust the computer, and
were not willing to send decisions to customers without
SNAPSHOTS FROM REALITY reading and understanding them first.
In our research we have found that some stakeholders to
systems development, as for example the unions, and Furthermore, our studies have revealed that there is a
the human resource department discuss the future work gap between the civil servants’ work and work
of civil servants in terms of it being more complicated situation, and the way this work is described in the
and complex due to automation of services and systems development. In the systems development
processes. From their perspective the role of the civil projects, the civil servants’ work is frequently discussed
servants in the future e-government where processes are in terms of simple steps and operations, that may be
automated will be to take care of complicated cases and predefined and automated in accordance with clearly
to “support” the computer when it fails to process a defined rules and regulations this is also discussed by
case. Boivie [11]. Little attention is being paid to such issues
as routinisation and repetitiveness of work tasks, control
However, there is also a discussion where the civil over work situation, control over pace and order of
servants are seen as less skilled workers that can be tasks, social support and deskilling, all of which are
replaced by an automated system. An example is the well-known risk factors for occupational health
view of the future organisation described by several complaints.
managers in one of the organisations. In this vision of
the future, there are no civil servants and the only It was seen as a problem that civil servants have to
make decisions in complex cases where the computer
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DEGAS 2007 | Proceedings 10 September 2007 | Rio de Janeiro y Brazil
fails to generate a decision and where “human” and the user, as in use-cases1 for example. However,
judgement is required. These “human” decisions were work has a purpose and is driven by goals or intentions
seen as subjective and open to interpretations – which is and that work is specific to the context and shaped by
the reason that the computer fails to make them in the circumstances of the situation as it evolves – i.e. it is
first place – and the civil servants making the decisions situated and contextual [14]. Thus the engineering-
were seen as incompetent. oriented perspective on users’ work and work practices
as well-defined models ignores the situated and social
The design and development of computer systems are
nature work. The engineering-oriented perspective does
based on information flow models the case handling
not address users’ practical knowledge about their
process in the organisations that we have studies. This
work, their understanding about “what-to-do” as well as
results in IT systems that do not support the situated
“how-to” in a specific situation [16].
nature of work. One example of this is that the system
does not support that the civil servant works with It is essential to understand users’ current work
several cases at once, and there is no possibility to save practices, and how these practices may be affected and
the work done so far in a case if you want to move on to improved by new technology. A fragmentary
another case or if the telephone rings. Moreover, this understanding of the work situation, and the perspective
perspective may lead to inflexible and rigid computer on work as procedures and sequential steps or
systems that shape and confine work situations, as is operations, may result in IT systems that are poorly
illustrated by this comment: adapted to the users’ needs, causing frustration and
strain in the work situation. The system built does not
”The new computer system forces you to do things in a
support the situated, contextual nature of the work. In
specific way. Previously we had different alternatives”
our studies, we have seen that systems development is
often based on an engineering-oriented view of problem
CONCLUDING REMARKS
solving, where the system forces the users through a
In the previous section we have described a few
workflow divided into a number of windows on the
snapshots from our research projects, and in this section
screen. Each window containing only what is believed
we would like to direct the reader to a couple of
to be relevant information for the specific task, and with
interpretations and implications of this focus on
no possibility to go backwards or forwards or to save or
automation of e-Government services.
pause. This engineering-perspective is closely related to
One of the basic values underpinning automation of the systems theoretical perspective, which places
work in the governments included in our studies is the emphasis on technical and formal aspects of the
notion that human decisions are objective and based on relationship between man and machine [17, 18]. In an
facts. This means they believe that decisions can be engineering-oriented perspective, users are primarily
translated into computer code based on computer logic defined by their relation to a technical system.
with if- and else-statements etc. There is little
What will be the role of the civil servant when more and
recognition that decisions may involve judgements, and
more services will be automated? Layne and Lee [3]
that case handling might include subjective and
describe a situation where systems are integrated and
contextual elements that will be impossible to transfer
automated the “government employees are now
to computers. It seems that the thoughts of Lucy
becoming more an overseer of the process than a simple
Suchman have not yet reached these governments [6].
task-oriented assembly-line worker”. In our experience
In the perspective on work and automation presented in
it is of utmost importance to include the users in the
the results section, humans and their work are often
change of an IT-system, and consider the work that will
thought of as rational and predictable. Our studies
be the result of the new IT-system.
indicate that there is a tendency to elevate the rational
and structural dimensions of work, as in Morgan’s Another problem is that the user in the form of citizens,
machine metaphor [12]. The official and structured way are not making decisions or using the service in a way
of representing work in the organisations in our studies that the government anticipated, as in one of the
is through explicit models, such as described by [13]. examples mentioned above. When automating, or
This perspective on work obscures human aspects of putting a service on the Internet, the behaviour of the
work as a complex, situated and social process [14]. user might change, and they might pose different, or
new demands on the government. This can already be
However, work is more than procedures that can be
seen in other e-service markets, for example banking
defined and fully understood. Work is also a complex
and travel agencies as shown in the work of Värlander
social process, and civil servants constantly
[19]. Värlander shows in her work that there is an
communicate and interact with each other to solve
overflow from e-services that affect the physical world
problems and to make decisions. From the engineering
oriented perspective these aspects are blurred and
ignored. Instead computer supported work is seen 1
almost as a flow of information between the computer use case is a technique for capturing requirements of
systems that is used in Rational Unified Process
15. Kruchten, P., The Rational Unified Process: An
Introduction. 2003: Addison-Wesley Professional.
5
DEGAS 2007 | Proceedings 10 September 2007 | Rio de Janeiro y Brazil
in that face-to-face meetings become more important. 5. Cajander, Å., J. Gulliksen, and I. Boivie,
E-government research can learn something from this Management perspectives on usability in a public
research, and try to find out which kind of services are authority: a case study, in Proceedings of the 4th
more suitable for virtualisation, and which should be Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction:
kept in the physical world. Moreover, the role of the changing roles. 2006. p. 38-47.
civil servant will change and the work will not merely 6. Cajander, Å., Values and Perspectives
be “overseeing” the automated process, rather it will be Affecting IT Systems Development and Usability Work,
focused on meeting the new kinds of demands from the in Department of Information Technology. 2006,
citizen, where efficiency regarding time will be less Uppsala University: Uppsala.
important, and information efficiency more important 7. Arendsen, R. and T.M. van Engers, Reduction
[19]. of the Administrative Burden: An e-Government
Perspective, in Electronic Government. 2004, Springer
AUTHORS EXPERIENCE IN THE FIELD Berlin/Heidelberg. p. 200-206.
Åsa Cajander and Elina Eriksson are PhD-students at 8. Følstad, A., H.D. Jørgensen, and J. Krogstie,
Uppsala University, with Jan Gulliksen as supervisor. User involvement in e-government development
Both authors are involved in a research project with projects, in Proceedings of the third Nordic conference
three Swedish governments as partners. The aim of the on Human-computer interaction, NordiCHI'04. 2004:
research project is improving usability and health in Tampere, Finland. p. 217-224.
computer-supported administrative work. 9. Åborg, C., How does IT feel @ work? And how
to make IT better.: Computer use, stress and health in
The HCI-group at Uppsala University has been
office work. 2002, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis:
involved with e-government related research for the
Uppsala. p. 50.
past decade. One major concern is that too much
10. Avison, D., et al., Action Research.
emphasis is put on the user experience of citizens using
Communications of the ACM, 1999. 42(1): p. 94-97.
e-services, before the civil servants and their changing
11. Boivie, I., A Fine Balance: Addressing
work. When moving more services to the Internet, the
Usability and Users Needs in the Development of IT
work of civil servants will also change. The issues
Systems for the Workplace. 2005, Acta Universitatis
around healthy work and civil servants are important
Upsaliensis: Uppsala. p. 85.
and perhaps not that prevalent in e-government
12. Morgan, G., Images of Organization. 1997,
research. Even though the aim of the project is not first
London: Sage Publication Ltd. 485.
and foremost e-governance, the presented perspective
13. Sachs, P., Transforming work: collaboration,
plays an important role for all research in the area.
learning, and design. Communications of the ACM,
ACKNOWLEGEMENTS
1995. 38(9): p. 36-44.
The authors would like to thank the public authorities, 14. Suchman, L., Plans and Situated Actions: The
and all the people we have been in contact with in these Problem of Human-Machine Communication. 1987,
projects. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
15. Kruchten, P., The Rational Unified Process:
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