Horizontal integration of local government : the case of the citizen service unit

• The objective of this paper is to present empirical findings suggesting that it may be easier to develop a citizen service than to create more effective administrative procedures. Our starting point is a case study in which we followed a large strategically important development project in a Swedish municipality. The project aims to improve both citizen service and the municipality's internal effectiveness. Its main objective is to develop a Citizen Service Unit (CSU) that works as a one-stop-shop collecting service requests from citizens in one channel. According to the citizens the CSU clearly is a success. In the citizen survey we conducted the service of the CSU is rated very high. The answering rate has increased to 85%, every request is recorded in a document and workflow system and the citizen receives fast feedback from a handling officer at the responsible office. From an organizational perspective the CSU is not at all a success. On the managerial level there is a consensus on why and how they should change within their offices. On lower levels, however, clear roles, new work routines and routines for the communication between the CSU and handling officers to a large extent have been missing. Therefore, we suggest the following lessons to be learned: (1) Pay equal attention to the front-office and the back-office perspective. Reengineered business processes and new work routines will not show up by themselves, and (2) When developing one-stop-shops as the CSU make sure to also develop models for the relationship between the one-stop-shop and the rest of the organization.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

e-government

citizen-centric approach

case

strategic development

one-stop shop

horizontal integration

computer and systems sciences

data- och systemvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)