Towards a Public-Private-Citizens Collaboration Platform in Public e-Service Provision

Governments all over the world seek to increase the quality of public e-services offered to citizens. One way of doing this is through collaboration with private sectors and citizens in delivering the e-services. Yet, there is little discussion about their collaboration in stage models that provide a guide in public e-service development. Meanwhile, in the field of technological platform, collaboration among multi parties is discussed in the concept of platform as a medium to generate products or services. However, the concept of platform is still rarely incorporated into public e-service development. Hence, there is a lack of research in the platform development for public e-service provision. This research explores the application of the concept of platform in public e-service development. To do so, a platform development model for governments, which consists of stages, is constructed by conducting three main steps. First, stage models that represent public e-service development and platform development are synthesised by following qualitative meta-synthesis methodology. Second, each stage of the model is analysed by employing platform business model components as the attributes. Third, case studies is conducted to evaluate the model. In our findings, five stages of the platform development model are identified delineating the application of the concept of platform in delivering public e-services. Although evaluation cannot be carried out pertaining to the structure of the stages due to limited data, the five stages of the model describe alternatives for governments to collaborate with private sectors and/or citizens in improving the service provision quality. Moreover, description of the state of the art in platforms as a medium for multi parties collaboration in public e-service provision can be gained from the case studies. Yet, we suggest further research in order to refine the model. The analysis of the model can be improved through multiple-case studies for each stage of the model. In addition, circumstances under which a platform evolves from a stage into another could be identified, for example by taking into account the organization’s capabilities and needs, through case studies with more reliable research data.Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis, and ManagementICTTechnology, Policy and Managemen