End-user-initiative Approach for Truly Useful E-government Systems

Applications for e-Government should be developed based on user-centered design. In the late 1990s, one-stop-service by governments became popular. In Japan, the e-Government service was promoted by priority policy programs since 2001. However, there have not been sufficient achievements. Many ministries in the central government developed Web applications with a lack of usability. On the other hand, local governments developed applications slowly because of lack of funding. The main problem is lack of end-user’s point of view. This paper focuses on Web applications supported by the government because citizens will obtain a lot of benefit in daily life by using them. Such applications should be developed by business professionals themselves since applications must be developed agilely and modified frequently in order for a local government to support Web applications of high usability for citizens in a timely fashion with low costs. The effectiveness of this approach is confirmed by feasibility studies.