Implicating Human Values for designing a Digital Government Collaborative Platform for Environmental Issues: A Value Sensitive Design Approach

Abstract

Digital technology is instrumental in designing e-government services to achieve environmental sustainability. This study aims to implicate essential human values for designing a Digital Government Collaborative Platform (DGCP), which seeks to enhance the collaboration between citizens and government officers to address environmental issues in Sri Lanka. The study adopts a value sensitive design (VSD) approach to identify human values to conceptualize the design. The results reveal 15 human values shared by citizens and officers of environmental authorities: transparency, safety, universal usability, feedback, authenticity, fairness, representativeness, accountability, legitimacy, informed consent, autonomy, awareness, human welfare, attitude, and trust. In addition to the identified human values, four system feature categories have been proposed from interviews. Thus, the study advances knowledge in designing an e-government system for collaboration between citizens and government officers, especially in tackling environmental problems in developing countries. Further, the study contributes knowledge to VSD for digital collaboration for improving environmental sustainability.

Introduction to the special section on digital government and sustainable development goals: SDGs as a key challenge for digital government research

“…Despite the acknowledged relevance of digital government in relation to sustainability, research on this relationship so far has been both underwhelming and fragmented. Only a small fraction of the body of research on digital government focuses on sustainability and sustainable development (Medaglia et al, 2021;Sapraz & Han, 2019). Some of the existing empirical studies on digital government and sustainability tend to emphasize the role of specific technologies.…”

“…Existing studies, however, predominantly concentrate on governmental strategies and policy-making (Sapraz & Han, 2019). For example, digital government initiatives play a key role in promoting the reuse, repair and recycle of manufactured products in the supply chains of relevant industries, following the model of the Circular Economy (Medaglia et al, forthcoming), in line with SDG 12 (Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns).…”

“…In addition, the comprehension of theoretical aspects related to digital government's role in promoting environmental sustainability is presently limited. The existing body of research largely lacks significant contributions to theory development (Medaglia et al, 2021;Sapraz & Han, 2019).…”

Users’ evaluation of a digital government collaborative platform (DGCP) in Sri Lanka

“…We have used the appropriate techniques of VSD to develop DGCP. In a prior study (Sapraz and Han, 2021), 15 human values were identified (Table 2) and converted into design requirements using the values-norms-design requirements method (Van De Poel, 2013). These features are embedded and represented in the developed system (Sapraz and Han, 2022a).…”

“…To facilitate collaboration between the government and the citizens to address environmental issues in Sri Lanka, a Digital Government Collaborative Platform (DGCP) is designed and developed by adopting the value-sensitive design (VSD) approach (Sapraz and Han, 2021, 2022a). A rigorous evaluation of the DGCP is required to ensure that the platform fulfills the design requirements and meets the needs of the stakeholders.…”