Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
7 Citizen Engagement in ICT Design:
The Challenge
Citizen participation and engagement are recognized increasingly as essen-
tial to a mature democracy. They are also highly desirable from a design
and decision making perspective in delivering the relevant and valued out-
comes described in the previous chapters. This argues for citizen engage-
ment to become a mainstream activity in the development of ICTs (as is
already the case in many policy and planning decisions in civic society).
There are however, continuing barriers to progress in the ICT design do-
main. It appears that the learning and understanding of the role citizens can
play and the significance of their engagement has not transferred effec-
tively to the ICT professionals and practitioners responsible for the count-
less projects implementing 'e-everything' across society. In this chapter,
we review some of the powerful deterrents to this transfer of knowledge
and propose a constructive approach to overcoming these.
7.1 Barriers to Citizen Engagement in ICT Development
The list below identifies some of the most significant barriers to citizen
engagement in ICT development projects:
•
technical focus of ICT developments;
limited practice of participatory design;
•
•
role conflicts and role boundaries;
•
knowledge silos;
•
lack of appropriate skills;
•
high perceived costs.
7.1.1 Technical Focus of ICT Developments
A major barrier to effective citizen engagement in ICT developments is the
focus on technical systems rather than sociotechnical systems. Reference
has already been made in Chapter 2 to the high failure rate of large scale
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