Nalini Kotamraju, assistant professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, gave an excellent talk yesterday at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society on the lack of user centricity in e-government services.
Individuals and institutions are slower to adopt e-government services due to a lack of user centricity in design and development. Work with PortNL, an integrated e-government service for expatriates in the Netherlands, suggests the core of governments’ difficulty in creating user-centered services lies in a fundamental tension between the needs of users and those of governments. In this talk, Nalini Kotamraju — an Assistant Professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands — explains how the purposes of e-government services can be met through a user-centered design approach, and how site builders can put the needs of users ahead of the ideas of governmental clients.