1.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-, et al.
(author)
A Process Oriented User Test on Public e-Services : The Swedish Municipality Case
2014
In: Proceedings of The 8<sup>th</sup> European Conference on IS Management and Evaluation – ECIME 2014 held at the University of Ghent, Ghent, Belguim. - : Academic Conferences Limited. - 9781910309414 - 9781510602762 ; , s. 39-48
Conference paper (peer-reviewed) abstract
This paper elaborates on the potential to design and conduct process-oriented user tests on public e-Services. The purpose is to use key constructs of business process orientation (BPO) to develop a basis for design and communicating the value of user tests in a public e-Service context. Our hypotheses are that user tests can provide valuable results for all actors involved in e-Service development, not only in terms of how to conduct user tests per se, but also to provide incentives for a customer driven focus and highlighting the value derived from user tests. In the municipality case, actors and stakeholders are involved municipalities in an inter-organisational collaboration on e-Service development, i.e. different municipalities, locally and regionally, as well as the supplier. Citizens partaking in a university course conduct the user tests with the eye tracking technology. In total 71 users performed in test sessions on 11 different e-Services in a standard platform provided by one supplier. In this paper, we elaborate on a BPO test design based on basic constructs in the approach compared with findings from reconstructing the test process design used with an implicit approach 2012 and an explicit BPO approach in 2013. Contributions include a generic test-process design for data collection, analysis and delivery to stakeholders in an overall e-Service development. Furthermore, findings from our test sessions and test process design will inspire and guide other universities to collaborate with practitioners. Beside the strength with a real case for the students, user test sessions in collaboration can be an eye-opener to not only for municipalities but also suppliers. Thus, the potential for impacts from test results to be applied in the further development of e-Services has thereby increased.
2.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-
(author)
Challenges in an Evolving e-Service Landscape - The Contact Centre Case : A Position Paper
2013
Conference paper (peer-reviewed) abstract
Public e-Services must be designed and made available in accordance with the demands and needs of the citizens. One way to meet these requirements is to establish contact centres in the municipalities to guide citizens and employees in their handling of public services to improve business processes and to incorporate social media and e-Services into the daily business. With an evolving e-Service landscape, new challenges arise and the role of a contact centre is likely to change from a purely advising function to being a central player in developing the service game in municipalities. The paper presents arguments and plans for using a mix of methods in data collection aimed at identifying challenges in the pre-implementation phase as well as in the handling of e-Services and in the local administrations's outsourcing business processes to the new organisational body (the contact centre). Limitations in the design of the case study include the restricted focus on challenges in communicating e-Service offerings to citizens and employees, based on the overall municipality portfolio. Expected contributions are an “e-Service Communication Map” as a modelling technique for use in service performance and e-Service development.
3.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-
(author)
Improving Business Processes and Delivering Better e-Services : a guide for municipalities from Smart Cities
2011
Reports (other academic/artistic) abstract
Do you know your business and e-service solutions? Is your IT aligned with your business to support, enable and deliver your services? Your business processes define your ability and potential to provide customers and employees with effective and high quality services and solutions. Your processes influence your performance, your service delivery and what administrative support is available for your service offerings.This document outlines a model, or framework, which can help you to improve your existing business processes to support and develop your e-services. The Common Process Model comprises a set of preconditions, directives, guidelines and templates that will help employees in different roles to identify, measure and improve the performance of the business processes that make up your e-service solutions.The Common Process Model stems from a collaborative project between Karlstad University and the municipality of Karlstad in Sweden, that began in February 2009. The project aimed to develop a simple methodology that would help the municipality to think about, to describe and to improve its business processes in a logical, strategic and self-reflective manner.
4.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-
(author)
Improving citizens’ ability to find, understand and use e-services : Communicating the social interaction dimension
2013
In: Systems, Signs & Actions. - 1652-8719. ; 7:2, s. 177-204
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
This paper focuses on the ability to communicate public e-Services, as a part of e-Service development. The purpose is to elaborate on the concept “communicability”, and to define elements and criteria useful in the evaluation and improvement of public e-Services. In terms of public e-Services, communication takes place in a context based on an understanding and relation between the public sector and the citizens using the provider’s e-Service solution. Public sectors are increasing their e-Service offers, making communicating e-Services an important part of the service delivery. The citizens’ ability to find, understand, and use the service is a return on investment. This paper combines a business process and a social interac- tion approach to e-Services. The empirical grounding is a Swedish municipality case study with a pilot evaluation, interviews with developers, and an eye tracking usability test on e- Services with citizens partaking in a university course. The research contributions include a first version of a defined concept of communicability in the e-Service context together with a conceptual basis for evaluation purposes. Findings can be used as a basis for developing an evaluation tool and a handbook to improve communicability in public e-Service solutions.
5.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-
(author)
Kontaktcenter i Karlstads kommun : En uppföljning från kundens och medarbetarens perspektiv
2013
Reports (other academic/artistic) abstract
Den 31 januari 2013 öppnade Karlstads kommun en ny verksamhet i form av ett Kontaktcenter (KC) i syfte att öka tillgängligheten, ge god service och avlasta förvaltningarnas hantering av enklare ärenden. Karlstadsborna får hjälp med information och vägledning till all verksamhet i kommunen och kommunvägledare i tre svarsgrupper hanterar delar av eller hela ärenden. Uppdrag från förvaltningar initierar KCs verksamhet och definierar dess innehåll. Rapporten beskriver en processorienterad uppföljning av KCs verksamhet som genomförts under våren 2013. Intervjuer har genomförts med 24 externa kunder (20 medborgare), 9 interna kunder (förvaltningar) och 25 utförare i KCs processer (kommunvägledare och telefonister). Syftet med uppföljningen är att nå ett underlag till verksamhetsutveckling. Uttalanden från respondenterna publiceras som resultat i bilagor till rapporten. Dessa avser upplevda problem, styrkor och förbättringsförslag som struktureras i kategorier för effektiva verksamhetsprocesser. Rapporten kan ses som ett underlag för att lära och sprida erfarenheter. Den kan därför vara intressant för andra organisationer som står inför en etablering av KC eller som redan bedriver en liknande verksamhet. Genom att publicera data i insamlad empiri öppnas möjligheter till flera och olika typer av analyser. I den här rapporten finns enbart några reflektioner kring varje uppföljning, en summering och avslutande rekommendation.
6.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-
(author)
Practice Research Design : a Channel to the Meaning of BPM Maturity in Government
2011
In: International and Inter-disciplinary Workshop on Practice Research. - : Linköpings universitet.
Conference paper (peer-reviewed) abstract
This paper describes a practice research design for studying the practical meaning of business process management (BPM) maturity in municipalities within a university course. The course design enables the identification of practitioners’ ‘questions’ (needed knowledge in BPM), actions and business issues (problematic situations). Applications from practitioners’ everyday work are used as case studies in course assignments. Thereby, it will be possible to collect empirical data to be used in the research, as well as to collect, answers and provide discussions that will give useful perspectives,concepts and methods contributing to changes (interventions) in the local practice. Moreover, it will be possible to conduct practical inquiries to develop a general knowledge of practical relevance and usefulness among course participants. The practitioners are interested in the same practical scope, i.e.BPM initiatives with process mapping as the first step. In the course a generic process methodology (the PoP model) serves as a knowledge transfer from ten local practices and is improved upon the course participants as a joint result of the knowledge development and a general practice contribution. The model can be adjusted by each practitioner’s own business context in use and thus is in everyone’s interest to share lessons learned.
7.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-, et al.
(author)
Sharpening the BPM Knowledge Transfer in a Practice Research Design : A Case Study
2012
Conference paper (peer-reviewed) abstract
The practice research in this paper is based on the common interest of Telge AB and Karlstad University to explore knowledge transfer between research results and their use in practice when applying a Business Process Management (BPM) maturity assessment model. In our case study, we explore how knowledge transfer can become explicit, based on the foundation of practice research and a mapping of the practice research process. The main idea with the case study is to contribute to the articulation of sharpening the knowledge transfer in practice research design. Our findings show e.g. the importance of enabling practitioners in finding the research results, a suitable packaging to gain understanding and guidance to the way the practitioners are supposed to use the results as well as prerequisites in the domain knowledge. Additionally, the complexity in the BPM maturity concept and challenges in the BPM knowledge transfer are findings that can lead to bridging the gap between assessment model in theory and lessons learned from the practitioners using the model in practice. Finally, the paper contributes with a snapshot of practice research design with key elements regarding pre-conditions for knowledge transfer to use in planning, specifying and evaluating practice research.
8.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-, et al.
(author)
Sharpening the knowledge domain transfer in practice research design : The BPM assessment
2012
In: Systems, Signs & Actions. - Linköping : Sysiac. - 1652-8719. ; 6:1, s. 22-45
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
The practice research design described in this paper is based on the common interest of Telge AB and Karlstad University to explore knowledge transfer from research results to their use in practice when applying a Business Process Management (BPM) maturity assessment model. In our case study, we explore how knowledge transfer can become explicit, based on components in the foundation of practice research and a mapping of the practice research process. The main idea is to contribute to the articulation of sharpening the knowledge transfer in practice research design. Our findings show e.g. the importance of enabling practitioners in finding the research results, using an explicit model package to gain understanding and guidance towards the intended way in which the practitioners are supposed to use the knowledge, as well as prerequisites in the knowledge domain. Additionally, the complexity in the BPM maturity concept and challenges in the knowledge domain transfer are findings that can lead to bridging the gap between a BPM maturity assessment model in theory and lessons learned from using the model in practice. Finally, the paper contributes with a knowledge domain transfer loop model to be used in planning and evaluating practice research between practitioners and research stakeholders as well as a snapshot of practice research design to be used to communicate key elements as pre-conditions for the knowledge domain transfer.
9.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-, et al.
(author)
Testing Communicability in Municipality e-Services
2014
Conference paper (peer-reviewed) abstract
This paper focuses on the ability to communicate public e-Services, as one part of e-Service evaluation. The purpose is to use and further develop the emerging concept of “communicability” to be used as a base in an evaluation tool in the context of public e-Services. The ability of citizens’ to find, understand and use the e-Services provided is return on investment for public sectors, governments and agencies. The point of departure in this paper is to elaborate on a test process design for data collection and analysis from an empirical driven approach. Empirical grounding is based on a Swedish municipality case with a pilot usability test with eye tracking in 2012 and a second further improved test sessions 2013 on e-Services with citizens partaking in a university course. The research contributions include a further defined concept together with a generic test process for data collection and analysis to be useful as an evaluation tool, in research as in practice. Our research design and experiences from test sessions might also work as an inspiration to other university courses. Further more, findings from our test sessions can be used as a point of departure in formulating guidelines in a handbook to improve communicability in public e-Services.
10.
Christiansson, Marie-Therese, 1966-, et al.
(author)
Testing Communicability in Public e-Services : Process and Outcomes
2014
In: Electronic government and electronic participation. - : IOS Press. - 9781614994282 - 9781614994299 ; , s. 244-253
Conference paper (peer-reviewed) abstract
In this paper, a case of testing public e-Service communicability is analysed in terms of process as well as outcomes. Key elements in test processes are defined, together with the meaning of communicability identified in terms of information-oriented metrics. The purpose of our paper is to develop knowledge about how e-Service providers should improve their ability to communicate and support users in finding, understanding and using e-Services. The reconstructed test process design is based of an analysis of gaze replays in citizen test sessions by means of eyetracking technology. Empirical findings on communicability metrics are further grounded in theory. Our main contribution to the research community and the field of practice, are a test process and a communicability framework to support the assessing of e-Service information. The use of wireframes for the e-Service five layers, together with a multifunctional template for data collection, analysis and presentation are introduced.
