A Strategic Foresight about Future Public Service Developments from the Citizens' Perspective

Abstract

Governments and public administrations face multiple challenges and opportunities for innovation in the area of public services – created by ongoing ICT developments and shifting service demands among citizens. Citizens experience advantages of ICT-driven services in all areas of life and request these advantages in their communications and interactions with public administrations. Therefore, public administrations must be aware of these and, more important, future demands to develop future services that are responsive to citizens' needs. As there is a lack of current data, the aim of this article is to identify citizens' demands, characteristics and framework conditions for future public services and public participation services based on data collected in a real-time Delphi survey of expert citizens. The results provide public service providers with initial insights into citizen characteristics that have a strong impact on citizens' demands—housing situation, size of municipality and age—and important framework conditions, e.g., the internet.