Tobias Giesbrecht

Smart advisors in the front office: Designing employee-empowering and citizen-centric services

Abstract Civil servants in government front offices frequently lack subject matter expertise as well as necessary skills to meet modern citizen-centric service demands. Using design research, we discuss how front offices can change the service paradigm from administering government-centric and transaction-oriented services to providing truly citizen-centric services. We demonstrate that by means of “advisory information artifacts” civil servants can become expert advisors and eventually provide citizens with superior advisory services. Advisory information artifacts consist of a knowledge base, “counseling affordances” offering advisors moderation material and “service encounter thinkLets” covering the corresponding work practices. Such advisory information artifacts have the capacity to effectively support civil servants in acquiring the necessary advice-related skills while concurrently providing superior citizen-oriented services.

Empowering front office employees with counseling affordances

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the face-to-face citizen service encounter in public administrations’ front offices, and present a novel qualification approach to empower service personnel on-the-job, and thereby deepen the knowledge on the role of information and communication technology for advancing governmental reforms. Design/methodology/approach – The presented study follows a design science research methodology, conducted in collaboration with the public administration of a major German city. Data were collected using multiple quantitative and qualitative methods, including questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and video analysis. Findings – A novel on-the-job qualification approach for empowering public employees in their job-related skills, building on the concept of affordances, is developed. Thereto, six design principles for equipping artifacts with counseling affordances are presented. Evaluations in real-world environments provide first evidence that “learning with...