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 3 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 4 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. 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