From one-stop shop to no-stop shop: An e-government stage model

Abstract

This paper responds to two observations about current government service delivery. First, despite reasonable efforts to improve the design of forms and to establish single points of contact in one-stop shops, citizens still perceive forms as cumbersome. Second, citizens expect governments to act proactively by initiating appropriate government services themselves, instead of relying on requests for services from citizens. To address these two issues, this paper proposes a transition from a one-stop shop to a no-stop shop, where the citizen does not have to perform any action or fill in any forms to receive government services. The contribution of this paper is an e-government stage model that extends existing models. Stage models are suitable tools with which to inspire future developments, and ours extends previous models that guide progress toward the one-stop shop by describing two further stages: the limited no-stop shop and the no-stop shop. We define three dimensions along which to progress: integration of data collection, integration of data storage, and purpose of data use. We provide a first test of the model's validity through three case studies: the e-government practices in Austria, Estonia, and an Australian state government. Our work complements existing research on e-government stage models and proactive government service delivery.