Playing the telephone game in a multilevel polity: On the implementation of e-government services for business in the EU

Abstract

This article highlights the importance of user-centric design in the implementation of e-Government services in a multilevel government setting. It does so by examining the implementation of the ‘Services Directive’, which was adopted in the European Parliament in 2006 and required all member states to set up digital portals named Points of Single Contact (PSC). In this article we evaluate the Dutch PSC, and present the findings of a mystery shopping research in which we contacted 67 municipalities by using the PSC. We describe how the original requirements from the European ‘Service Directive’ have gone lost in translation and that national government, municipalities as well as businesses do not utilize the services as was intended. We propose a user-centric framework for the implementation of eGovernment services in a multi-level polity and conclude the article with specific recommendations to improve the policy process along these lines. We also propose mystery shopping as an evaluation tool for assessing user-centricity in eGovernment implementation.