Abstract

With the increasing use of the Internet, there has been considerable global growth in the development and use of e-government services. Citizen expectations based on everyday use of personalised, quick and easy to use advanced e-commerce and streaming services, bring a recognised need to improve the user experience of e-government services. Governments are increasingly looking to innovate, personalise and automate the delivery of public e-services to improve citizen experience.
Unlike e-commerce, the role and characteristics of public authorities of serving the entire population of citizens with a diverse range of public e-services required and constrained by regulations make the design of e-government more challenging. Existing technical approaches and design methods to personalise services focus on personalisation and recommendation techniques aimed to increase consumption or engagement. There is little consideration of the challenges for personalising public e-services for citizens who are occasional users, only accessing needed services when required.
This research seeks to answer the research question, “How can personalisation be applied to enable e-government service delivery for citizens?”. To answer this, an illustrative case study of a UK local government authority was used with a multimethod research approach to explore citizen and system requirements for personalising e-government services. Using data analytics, focus group and interviews, citizens’ experiences and perceptions of e-government were explored. An innovative task-based user segmentation design approach was developed where personalisation was related to task fulfilment with user segments represented as personas. eGovernment specific personalised heuristics for the delivery of personalised e-government services were identified, developed and applied, providing a novel approach for the design and evaluation of e-government services.
The integration of the techniques and methods applied to personalise e-government resulted in a new design method called PeGS (Personalisation of eGovernment Services), which is aimed at the developers of e-government to enable the delivery of personalised e-government services according to citizen needs and expectations. PeGS validation was performed through involving e-government experts highlighting its strengths and limitations, and there was a consensus among the experts on its feasibility and viability.
The design of personalised e-government is under-investigated. Personalisation is often considered as a set of recommendation and filtering techniques with no major focus on user involvement in its design. This research provides a significant contribution providing an approach for personalising e-government and improving the citizen experience.