Project leader: Jörn Christiansson, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Project duration: 2020-2023
Participating countries: Sweden, Denmark and Finland
Funding from NordForsk: 99,9993 EUR
Project website: cape.itu.dk
The aim of the CAPE research project was to investigate how to increase user involvement in the development of public e-services. The project explored a new approach to public e-service design in collaboration with public libraries, where citizens engaged in co-design of improvements to existing public e-services and co-design of new service innovations. Results showed that the public libraries, with their strong tradition of democracy and civic participation, can bridge the gap between public service delivery and citizen needs and capabilities. In so doing, they help to reduce the inequalities in society.
Key Findings
- The case study from the Danish site demonstrated how a volunteer-driven IT helpdesk, hosted by the library, can act as a buffer service bridging the gap between elderlies’ capacities and public service delivery. The IT helpdesk supplemented the IT support provided by public citizen offices by offering unlimited time, patience and learning opportunities. Over time, it also accumulated valuable knowledge about the needs and access capabilities of elderly IT users. A link was created between the IT help-desk and a public service provider as a means for service improvement.
- A second case study on the Danish site investigated a transformation process of public sector organisations and public libraries, showing how service design can be a vehicle of organisational and societal changes. Using a wider context of a growing role of design and service design (SD) in change processes, the study demonstrated how design helped to gradually expand the visions, theories of change, mindsets, and new ways of designing in the organisation, helping to achieve more agency in transforming, impacting the organisation and the local community. This work contributes to the growing body of knowledge connecting design with change.
- On the Swedish site, case studies at two libraries developed protocols for how libraries can identify local needs, engage citizens through interviews and workshops, analyse results thereof, communicate findings to relevant public sector stakeholders and provide feedback to citizen participants. At one of the libraries, workshops with unemployed elderly migrant women revealed that their problems of finding employment were rooted in a broader set of social issues faced by migrants, and a lack of sufficient and accessible information from public service providers. These findings were reported to the unemployment office, and the library organised a job fair. Thise event brought together representatives from the unemployment office, social services, study programs and community organisations, with information provided in Arabic.
- In Finland, a case study explored libraries’ capabilities to infrastructure digital innovation in a collaboration between two universities, a city library and two library networks. A project developing a virtual reality environment to recommend literature for various library client segments was evaluated. Strengths identified include libraries’ commitment to democratizing digitalisation, and flexibility to accommodate collaboration and trust on bottom-up initiative of their personnel.
- A handbook was produced to aid libraries in developing their potential role in bridging the gap between public service delivery and citizen needs. The handbook is available for download in English, Danish, Finnish and Swedish from cape.itu.dk.
Impact story
A large part of the help with digital services available already exists in the public sector. But the umbrella provided by public services is not sufficient to grant the accessibility of some citizens to digital services; they also need a different type of assistance to solve the tasks and challenges they encounter. A significant part of this support work is already carried out by volunteer IT support staff at the local libraries.
The IT volunteers have a lot of experience about the needs of vulnerable citizens, as well as the elderly and other groups, which is valuable for developers of digital services. Consequently, CAPE has taken the initiative to build a bridge between the IT volunteers and the Danish Agency for Digital Government to collaborate on MitID, a new personal identification system in Denmark, which many citizens have had challenges in using. Among other things, the co-operation has resulted in workshops with software developers from the Danish Agency for Digital Government and the IT volunteers, during which the Agency for Digital Government informed the IT volunteers about the further development of MitID, while the IT volunteers spoke about the typical experiences and challenges that the vulnerable groups have faced.
Key output
Boztepe, S., Christiansson, J., de Götzen, A., Hepburn, L.-A., & Keinonen, T. (2024). “Rethinking Design in the Public Sector: A Relational Turn”. International Journal of Design, 18(3), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.57698/v18i3.01
Boztepe, S., Linde, P., & Smedberg, A. (2023). “Design making its way to the city hall: Tensions in design capacity building in the public sector”. In IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. Design Research Society.
Camilla Christensen, Jörn Christiansson, and Joanna Saad-Sulonen. 2024. “\”But will they listen?\” Learnings from a design after design experiment in civics”. In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ‘24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2173–2182.
Christiansson J, Grönvall E, and Saad-Sulonen J. (2024) “Mapping User Participation in the Design of Digital Public Services: Is PD Relevant?” Proceedings of the 18th Biennial Participatory Design Conference (PDC). New York: ACM.
Ehrenberg N, Hergatacorzian C, Keinonen T. (2024). “Public Libraries and Digital Service Development: Bridging the Gap in Company Collaborations”. International Journal of Design, 18 (3), pp. 61-72.
Starostka J, De Götzen A, Morelli N. (2022). “Design thinking in the public sector – a case study of three Danish municipalities”. Policy Design and Practice, 5 (4), pp. 504-515.
Ylipulli, J., Pouke, M., Ehrenberg, N., & Keinonen, T.. (2023). “Public Libraries as a Partner in Digital Innovation Project: Designing a Virtual Reality Experience to Support Digital Literacy”. Future Generation Computer Systems, pp. 594-60.