The introduction of mobile state-citizen interfaces: the effects of digital transformation on local governance

In the eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 the European Commission set out the ambition to make public administrations open, efficient, inclusive and user-friendly by providing digital public services to all citizens in the EU. We see the effects of this plan in local governments as well. Technological innovation is rapidly changing, offering more and more potential to incorporate in local governments’ modernization strategies. Digital public services are thought to reduce administrative burden, make interactions with public administrations transparent, faster, efficient and less expensive. In reality, this transformation to eGovernance introduces some pitfalls that should be carefully considered. In this study, we explored the introduction of FixMyStreet, a state-citizen interface that can be used by citizens to fix minor nuisances in the streets. By means of participant observations the integration with current working processes within the municipal of Schaerbeek (Brussels) were explored. The preliminary results show that apart from the advantages, quite some difficulties arise by the introduction of such a mobile city application. Historically, for example, several applications and databases were developed within different services that offer overlapping services. This led to a highly complex architecture with a lot of data redundancy and functionalities, fragmented across different services, each with their own operational processes. Introducing new state-citizen interfaces in a vuca world requires new working procedures for the administrative services that demand more attention. Otherwise these services may introduce an opposite effect: higher costs, more burden on administration, slower response times and less transparency for citizens.