Citizen Centricity

Citizens are users of systems created primarily by governments to cater to their needs. To date citizen aspects of user centricity evolved primarily around digital relations between citizens and governing institutions, aiming to facilitate interaction and make processes and information more accessible to citizens, within the framework of existing paradigms.

Designing interactive egovernment systems based on understanding the citizens as consumers of digital communication with the governing bodies, is not enough for enhancing trust in governments. It exceeds  functionality. Governing systems, just like commercial ones, must be attentive to their users. In the face of political and economic unrest around the globe, a need arises to redefine the balance between the governing parties and their constituents, in a citizen centered paradigm that will bring back the human factor into the center of the equation and will focus on the citizens and their well being.  It’s about changing the priorities and opting to put the citizens and their well being at the center of the system.

Sovereignty should be based on trust. Trust is enhanced by transparency. Both are rare goods these days. The internet and user centered web culture are among the main powers that will ignite and feed tectonic shifts, as citizens will proclaim their rightful place in their relations with their institutions and states.

A state’s ecology is manifested by its social conscious, considering the human aspects of its officials’ operations and not losing the human touch in executing its policies. Citizens, in many countries, in many different ways, are claiming an affordable human centered life, demanding new orders, values and regulations that adhere to the people’s voice and needs in new pacts tailored around their central place and needs.

 

 

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  • Iris Kalka, Ph.D

    The current protest again the government has deep roots in Israeli culture and history. We have always had a very special kind of bureaucracy, one that leaves room for public service people to turn people down, so that one needs to ‘seduce’ in order to get something. This kind of ‘freedom’ apparently turns each citizen to a sort of criminal. Everyone lies, so as to improve its seduction value. People will say, for example, I am a friend of so and so (in order to jump the queue), I live there and not here (in order for their child to enroll to a specific school). Once people lie, they are bound to be weak, or at least weaker, vis-a-vis their protest potential. Deep in their hearts they are sort of worried….. if I demonstrate, raise a voice, someone will….

    Fortunately, young people in Israel have little experience with corrupted bureaucracy. This is one reason why these huge demonstrations of summer 2011  start with them.

    Hopefully, once other citizend are exposed to this kind of hidden mechanism, they might find the way  to express their opinions, to join the protest..