Applying an Ethical Perspective on Stakeholder Participation in Public E-Service Development

Abstract

In order to balance between citizen and agency aspects' importance and visibility in public e-service development, the question how to involve different stakeholders is often raised. However, identifying and analyzing several internal as well as external stakeholders in relation to e-government development raises some ethical questions: Who should participate and who should not? For what reasons do we involve stakeholders? What will the result of stakeholder participation and involvement be? In this article empirical findings from an e-government project are revisited and discussed from an ethical perspective. The main conclusion is that we need to consider ethical aspects of stakeholder participation in e-government projects more thoroughly. The ethical discussion in stakeholder participation rhetoric has often been shallow. An important task for e-government researchers is therefore to address this discussion in public e-service development,as the results in terms of quality of the e-services as well as citizen benefits are at stake.