DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden E-government HCI: a genuine research field? D. L. Scapin INRIA Domaine de Voluceau 78153, Le Chesnay, France +33 (0)1 39 63 55 07 dominique.scapin@inria.fr ABSTRACT This papers aims at surveying current issues regarding e- DEFINITIONS OF E.GOV. government through the literature in order to assess current “e-Government (short for electronic government, also state and research avenues concerning e-government HCI known as e-gov, digital government, online government or research as a genuine research field. Included are the needs transformational government) is a diffused neologism used for efficient software tools for mass-production of e- to refer to the use of information and communication government software, for security and trust, for personal technology to provide and improve government services, information management, and for internationalization. transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E- Government . Keywords E-government, HCI, usability, research “e-Government: refers to the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) by governments as applied to the full range of government functions. In INTRODUCTION particular, the networking potential offered by the Internet The goal of this paper is to establish some grounds, after and related technologies has the potential to transform the looking at available scientific literature, to discuss the structures and operation of government” question: is e-government HCI a genuine and specific http://web.worldbank.org/. research field? This attempt being in the form of a position So far, it sounds very much like an application domain for paper, the opinions presented are to be viewed as material existing technologies. However, let us look further at what for stimulating the discussions, and, hopefully, for helping are the main characteristics of e-gov. studies. to establish a research agenda for e-gov. HCI research. For assessing whether e-gov. HCI is a field of research or It must be also noted that, even though current applications another application domain, a number of issues should be are mainly on internet, further developments may be discussed, including: envisioned for a larger set of devices including phones (with or without “smart cards”), kiosks, interactive voice - What are the characteristics of e-gov.? response, etc. - What are the specifics of e-gov. HCI, particularly for research? CHARACTERISTICS OF E.GOV. IN THE LITERATURE - Which salient topics can be selected in e-gov. HCI When surveying the topic “e-gov” on internet, on as part of a genuine and specific research domain? bibliographical databases, and in papers co-referencing, the - And what are potential specific research topics for domain appears to be rather recent (< 10 years), but also the the future? contributions seem multifaceted (e.g. This paper, after looking at definitions of e-gov., attempts http://www.1105govinfo.com/events/), crossing various to provide initial answers to these questions, and discusses scientific topics. However, some dedicated conferences do implications for future research. exist (e.g., EGOV which has its 8th. Conference in 2009; ePart - International Conference on eParticipation; International Conference on Electronic Democracy), as well as journals (e.g., International Journal of Electronic Governance (IJEG); Electronic Government, an International Journal (EG); International Journal of Electronic Government Research (IJEGR) ; Journal of 33 DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden Information Technology & Politics ; Electronic Journal of - HCI architectures, models are not very different e-Government). from other areas of computer-based systems, There are, of course, many studies on e-gov. that concern including web. important topics beyond the purpose of this paper, for Overall, it is similar for usability and accessibility issues: instance: legal and policy matters, democracy, governance, - Usability for form-filling dialogues is well known, economics, social and organizational issues, etc. even standards do exist (see [30]; most ergonomic On the more technical side, several topics are investigated, guidelines apply as well (e.g., Ergonomic Criteria for instance: various statistics, software architectures, case [31], applied to a specific e-procedures tool: e- studies, ontologies, digital preservation, etc. (e.g., [1] , [2], Citiz [32]). [3], [4]). - Accessibility is also well known and well Often mentioned characteristics (e.g., [5]) are: lots of documented (e.g., [33], [34]). Albeit issues may stakeholders (final users/ clients/ design team), as many not be specific, they are crucial: not only such type jargons and viewpoints. While it may be true, it is not that of software will need to comply to national and specific compared to other domains in HCI. international regulations, e.g. [35], especially for What are the types of HCI-related studies in the literature? government web sites, even though conformance demonstration and enforcement varies a lot, from Many “local” studies, focusing on a regional or national one country to another. state of things regarding surveys, standards, successes and pitfalls of e-government, e.g. [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], Having said that, there seems to be some topic areas that most of them in industrialized countries. may be viewed as specific to e-gov HCI research. It may be an excellent field for applying, testing, and improving some ideas, knowledge, models, and tools, for instance: E-GOV. HCI STUDIES - Providing fast, efficient, and usable (including for Overall, (including local studies) very little is found non-specialists) software tools that will allow specifically in HCI (for instance, only 20 papers retrieved mass-production of software design of e- when checking HCI bib: http://hcibib.org/). government procedures applications, quickly, HCI studies identified deal mainly with: efficiently, and reliably, in order to face the very large demand of dematerialization of - User needs and accessibility, e.g. [12], [13], [14], administration paper. This has to do with the effort [15], [16], [17], [18]. Accessibility seems indeed of providing new software tools (see, for instance: to be the main topic in current literature on e-gov. http://genibeans.com/cgi- HCI, including studies on older people. bin/twiki/view/MyCitizSpace/PresentationDuProjet). - The applicability of HCI results to e-gov., e.g. - Ensuring data protection, security, privacy, which [19], has a strong impact on the users trust and therefore - Ad hoc interaction novelties, e.g. animated faces willingness to interact with such systems. In [11, [20]; ad hoc methods, e.g. [21], [22], on document op. cit.], it is clearly stated that, (although only a exchange and scenario planning. national survey) internet is not seen as an - Overall user involvement, and requirements, e.g. accountable channel. « Users feel less comfortable [23], [24], [25], [26]; user acceptance, e.g. [27], with internet-based transactions where accountability and formal response is required. - Patterns, e.g. [28], [29]. Excluding online payments, users feel that form submissions often appear to go ‘into the ether’, DISCUSSION especially as most provide no way to track the Very little, so far, seems to be really specific to e- request. ». Sometimes, ensuring good old usability government HCI. may help, such as sending immediate email confirmations, and providing receipts and Indeed, from a technical point of view, this field shares a reference numbers upon submission of forms. lot with other well-established fields. - Other topics can benefit from the combined A view is that e-government HCI may not constitute characteristics of the e-government context, for currently a specific field of HCI, but simply another instance: domain of application. For instance: o Improving users minimal actions - Security issues are also key in other areas such as (reducing the redundancy of form-filling e-commerce or safety-critical systems; operations) through the use of micro- - Safety issues are also key in other areas such as formats, an approach that allows safety-critical systems, e.g., control rooms; information intended for end-users (such as contact information, geographic 34 DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden coordinates, calendar events, etc.) to also personalization, low literacy users and be automatically processed by software universal access. applications, see for instance: o Going further, software applications for http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/artic e-gov. systems could be more pro-active, le.cfm?articleid=1247; which may trigger interesting research on o Providing new underlying models to recommender systems (e.g. [39]), and allow combined modeling of tasks and suggest, for instance, procedures for workflow, e.g., [36]; detecting eligibility from citizen, for o With the increasing development of new various e-gov. measures (e.g., social platforms, of mobility, of ubiquity, support). plasticity, i.e., the capacity of an In addition, for future research, our view is that the domain interactive system to withstand variations of e-government HCI has also some interesting research of context of use while preserving potential in the area of EUSI, acronym introduced here to usability, will be of prime importance in mean End User Self Individualization. Indeed, it is not the future dissemination of e-gov. straight EUD or EUP (end-user design or programming) as procedures, e.g. [37]; the application types are sometimes quite simple and o With the widespread of e-gov services, limited in their behavior, from the users’ end. However, (combined or not with non-government due to the extensive combinations resulting from both the services), one can envision the possibility large variations in e.gov. procedures (lots of different areas, of creating personal citizen information administrations, taxes, health, education, professional, spaces, which will require further leisure, etc.) and the large variations in the users progress on the personal information populations (age, skills, roles, etc.), one can forecast, in management systems (PIMs), term which addition to system-generated users profiles, the possibility refers to the research field addressing the of user-driven individualization (also called tailoring, way people manage their physical personalization, etc.), on limited aspects of the e-gov. user documents (books, notebooks, sheets, interfaces. This constitutes quite a challenge for future etc.) as well as their electronic documents research to provide appropriate (i.e., useful, usable, and (files, emails, Web pages, etc.) with the accessible) means for end users to perform their e- aim of designing tools that support the government interactions, with their own set-up. This will management of electronic documents also make use of existing standards being developed, such (PIM tools), e.g., [38]. as [40]. o The demand of dematerialization, which Another reason for that topic to be interesting and started first locally and nationally (e.g. important is the view that sooner or later, end-users will regions, countries), will eventually spread own their personal data storage, shared partly with the internationally, which will require lots of providers (with, of course, the issues of privacy and trust). effort in the area of internationalization. A complex issue will then concern the capability, for end- This area goes beyond the usual linguistic users, to ultimately being able to apply different roles in questions, and includes: nationality their interactions, in a “personal information space” issues: language; laws and regulations; context, for instance, dealing with several software systems of units and usual formats; applications with roles such as consumer, head of collective and cultural aspects: household, business transactions, leisure transactions, etc. technological environments in place; conditions of use; professional and social CONCLUSION traditions; type of work organization; In this position paper, we have looked at existing literature conventions, symbols and practices; on e-gov., focusing on HCI, with a user-centered modes of reading and writing; personal perspective, attempting to answer the question: Is e- and cultural aspects: users’ government HCI a genuine and specific research field? characteristics, in particular anthropometry, education, values, In short, while many aspects are shared by other application preferences, expectations, etc. A domains, we feel e-gov. constitutes a genuine and specific particular topic of interest could also be HCI field as software application for e-gov. concentrate the differences in HCI requirements for design and evaluation constraints, from a user-centered different cultures and countries; for perspective, both concerning users population and software instance, developing countries have a application characteristics. particular research agenda that include - The potential e-gov. users will eventually be all content management, plain language, citizens. This will include the so-called “average 35 DEGAS 2009 | Proceedings August 24th 2009 | Uppsala, Sweden user”, but also span from a highly educated 6. Bednar, P., Furdik, K., Kleimann, M., Klischewski, R., technical person to my grandmother in the Skokan, M., Ukena, S. Semantic integration of countryside ... and other locations in developing eGovernment services in Schleswig-Holstein, in: countries. This is not a characteristic shared by all Wimmer, M.A., Scholl, H.J., Ferro, E. (eds.) EGOV computer-based applications. 2008 LNCS 5184, 314–327. Springer, Heidelberg, - The nature of e-gov. interactions is rather simpler 2008. than others, which makes it similar in some way to 7. Bekkers, V. The governance of back office integration the consumer products field, including walk-and- in e-government: Some dutch experiences, in Wimmer, use products (even though my grandmother has M.A., Traunmuller, R., Gronlund, A., Andersen, K.V. still trouble with her VCR user manual!). (eds.) 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