Designing serious games for citizen engagement in public service processes

Abstract

One of the challenges envisioned for eGovernment is how to actively involve citizens in the improvement of public services, allowing governments to offer better services. However, citizen involvement in public service design through ICT is not an easy goal. Services have been deployed internally in public organizations, making it difficult to be leveraged by citizens, specifically those without an IT background. This research moves towards decreasing the gap between public services process opacity and complexity and citizens’ lack of interest or competencies to understand them. The paper discusses game design as an approach to motivate, engage and change citizens’ behavior with respect to public services improvement. The design of a sample serious game is proposed; benefits and challenges are discussed using a public service delivery scenario from Brazil.