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citizen/user participation and the rewards associated with delivering what
people want. The challenge therefore is to find innovative and compelling
ways to radically change mindsets and working arrangements so that ICT
design can benefit from contributions of citizens/users. Breathing excite-
ment and interest into new ways of doing things which enable businesses,
governments and citizens alike to reap the rich rewards offered by success-
ful ICT developments must surely be worthwhile. This is the challenge
that this chapter addresses in the following sections:
•
drivers for action;
•
the rewards for changing the focus of ICT design;
leading the way;
•
•
enabling the transition;
•
roles of key stakeholders;
•
scaling the process;
•
conclusions.
10.1 Drivers for Action
The drivers for citizen engagement have been considered at length in
Chapter 3 so will not be repeated here. Clearly a number of them are also
drivers for a shift in design approach. One particularly powerful catalyst
for change is the financial incentive to increase significantly the return on
investment in public sector ICT developments. A current example of the
problem is provided by the limited success so far with implementing local
e-government in the UK. The evidence suggests that the public is not
buying in to this on the scale required to make the efficiency savings an-
ticipated. Nor are citizens gaining the projected benefits of the enhanced
services developed for them.
We know that this pattern of high investment and disappointing return is
nothing new. We have noted earlier that over several decades such out-
comes have been attributed in part to inadequate user involvement and
consequent poor user requirements specification (Kearney 1984). The au-
thors suggest that the costs of allowing this pattern to continue are be-
coming prohibitive both in economic and in social terms. Investment in
achieving new ways of designing ICT products, systems and services can
reasonably be expected to pay for itself over the medium to long-term.
This would come about as a result of delivering ICT design outcomes
which successfully meet the needs of the public and fulfil the objectives of
other stakeholders. Some savings are also likely from increased knowledge
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