E-government design research: Towards the policy-ingrained IT artifact

Abstract

This paper investigates whether design research in e-government should be conducted in some special way compared with standard models for design research. It reviews literature in e-government and design research in order to generate an answer to this research question. The result of this review affirms that the policy character of e-government should determine the way that such design research is conducted. A tentative e-government design research model, consisting of different activities is formulated. This model consists of the following activities: theorizing, policy analysis, workpractice analysis, co-design and co-evaluation of IT artifact and workpractice. Three specific e-government design research principles are formulated: The policy principle, the co-design principle and the theorizing principle. One important result from this paper is the formulation of the concept of the policy-ingrained artifact as an important empirical outcome from e-government design research. A design research case study on social welfare allowances has been used for the generation as well as the validation of the proposed e-government design research model.