Presentation delivered in the Cambridge Service Alliance "Understanding Complex Service Systems through Different Lenses" Conference

1. Understanding Complex Service
Systems through Different Lenses
22 and 23 September 2011
Cambridge, UK
Session 3B - New technologies & innovation II
The role of electronic services in transformational
government: a unified services theory perspective
and implications for trust
Dr. Luciano Batista
The Open University
Faculty of Business and Law

2. Background - London Borough of Sutton
• One of the safest (lowest level of crime) boroughs in London
• Crime (most types) rates have been falling over the past 8 years
• Fear of crime is relatively high! (MORI survey 2009)
How can LBS reduce this fear / increase trust?
Trust Competence of the government to do
things right (efficiency) and the right General
perspective
things (efficacy). (Bannister & Connolly, 2011)
Process Emerges from continuous satisfactory Specific
trust experiences (Zucker, 1986) perspective
Trust improved by structural factors, e.g.
e-government

3. Trust, e-Government and transformational service
propositions
e-gov
take-up
Virtuous
Carter & Bélanger (2005) Parent et al. (2005)
circle
trust
LBS strategy
• To seek innovative approaches t-government agenda
to empowering customers
• Service design oriented
• To become a more responsive,
to customers
listening, “in-touch” Council
• To move to web-based systems • Service process
that support self-service standardisation

4. Unified services theory (UST)
How can we better address the service dimension of the
t-government agenda?
UST seems to provide a theoretical basis that can accommodate
different managerial perspectives and approaches around
‘service’.
Key UST principles (Sampson & Froehle, 2006):
• The customer is a key supplier of service processes
• The customer provides significant inputs into the production
process
• The UST defines a service process as one that relies on
customer inputs (necessary condition)

5. Value-sensitive design
Automating technologies are not as adaptable to high-
variance customer inputs as human labour is. In services,
they can significantly damage customer satisfaction
because they fail to accommodate the uniqueness of each
customer’s inputs, i.e. they over standardise.
(Sampson & Froehle, 2006)
Importance of value sensitive design (Shankar et al., 2002; Cassell &
Bickmore, 2000; Friedman et al., 2000; Schneiderman, 2000):
• It focuses on human well being
• It requires a wider criteria for judging the quality of technological systems
• It connects people who design systems and interfaces with people who are
affected by the systems
• Technology should not be value-neutral

6. Theoretical propositions
t-government
Customer Process +
orientation standardisation Trust
+ + +
Government take-up
electronic services +
+
(e-government)
+
UST: Value sensitive design:
• Customer as a necessary • Customer preferences
entity in the service process and wants
• Management of customer
inputs
It needs empirical evidence

7. Understanding Complex Service
Systems through Different Lenses
22 and 23 September 2011
Cambridge, UK
Session 3B - New technologies & innovation II
Thank you!
Dr. Luciano Batista
L.Batista@open.ac.uk

8. References
• Bannister, F. and Connolly, R. (2011), Trust and transformational government: A proposed
framework for research, Government Information Quarterly, 28(2), 137–147.
• Carter, L. and Bélanger, F. (2005), The utilization of e-Government services: Citizen trust, innovation
and acceptance factors, Information Systems Journal, 15(1), 5−25.
• Cassell, J., & Bickmore, T. (2000). External manifestations of trustworthiness in the interface.
Communications of the ACM, 43(12), 50−56.
• Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., & Howe, D. C. (2000). Trust online. Communications of the ACM,
43(12), 34−40.
• Parent, M., Vandebeek, C. and Gemino, A. (2005), Building citizen trust through e-Government,
Government Information Quarterly, 22(4), 720−736.
• Sampson, S. and Froehle, C. (2006), Foundations and Implications of a Proposed Unified Services
Theory, Production and Operations Management, 15(2), 329-343.
• Schneiderman, B. (2000). Designing trust into online experiences. Communications of the ACM,
43(12), 57−59.
• Shankar, V., Urban, G. L., & Sultan, F. (2002). On-line trust: A stakeholder perspective, concepts,
implications, and future directions. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 11(3–4), 325−344.
• Zucker, L. G. (1986). Production of trust: Institutional sources of economic structure, 1840–1920. In
B. M. Staw, & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior, 8 (pp. 53−111).
Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.