Empowering citizens in public service design and delivery: A reference model and methodology

Abstract

The importance of public service delivery for improving the relationship between governments and their citizens has been recently recognized as a major challenge for e-Government research. In this paper, we propose a new reference model and an associated governance methodology where citizens' opinions directly impact the service delivery decision-making process. Our proposal supports iterative development of public services; starting from abstract citizen needs, and subsequently aligning them with the strategy of public bodies, laws and regulations through a stepwise process of reconciliation and refinement until they can be modeled, simulated, and evaluated. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.