Techniques for effective government service delivery

Abstract

Background: This article discusses techniques for effective government service delivery using e-participation to engage with citizens. It highlights the lack of literature detailing these techniques, despite previous initiatives to use information and communication technology (ICT) for citizen engagement. The study used institutional theory to describe the government’s environment. Objectives: The objectives were to investigate techniques for effective government service delivery using e-participation, explore open government initiatives in South Africa and propose a framework for open government alignment. Method: The method used was an interpretive inductive qualitative case study. Data were collected through open-ended semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic and content analysis. Results: The results indicate that the South African government still uses unstructured communication methods to engage citizens, lacks policies for open government initiatives and offers some services through the website, call centre and imbizo’s. Conclusion: The study concludes that developing ICT applications for real-time interaction between government and citizens could improve engagement and participation. Contribution: The study suggests that using the proposed framework for open government alignment can enhance citizen-government engagements.

Keywords

• service delivery
• open government
• e-participation
• collaboration
• transparency