Municipal Contact Centres: A Slower Approach Towards Sustainable Local Development by E-government

Abstract

It is Swedish government policy to use information and communication technologies to increase sustainability. This has implications for planning and local organization of communities. In the municipalities where most public services are provided, there are growing numbers of local contact centres (CCs) aiming to meet citizens' needs for information and coordination of public services. The CCs localize public services and combine different services into a one-stop practice focusing on needs and demands of individual citizens and their unique situations. The municipalities hereby have to plan for service provision in new ways to meet more individualized needs that are also in line with improved sustainability. CCs are both local offices and advanced services on-line, as e-governmental services. E-government could be considered fast government, but this article aims to turn that obvious first impression upside down and discuss how e-government can slow down and make services more local, personalized and sustainable. Theoretically we take off from a time-geographical modelling of slow processes that has implication for slower, more sustainable development. Based on in-depth case studies of municipal CCs we argue that they are tools towards improved sustainability and localism, and that they are “slowing up” administrative processes. In particular, we point out that e-government has a potential to plan for, and promote, sustainability and slow local development.

Acknowledgements

We wish to express our thanks to all those who contributed to the study described in this article, especially the interviewees. The study has been made possible by generous grants by the Swedish research agencies VINNOVA and FORMAS. We also want to thank our anonymous reviewers for their feedback, and comments given at the 14th Uddevalla Symposium 2011, Bergamo,Italy, when an earlier version of the paper was presented.

Notes

1. During 2009–2011 the author (Bernhard) studied the implementation of CCs in Swedish municipalities in a research project financed by Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova). Swedish Association of municipalities for joint development of E-services (Sambruk) was one of three parts. At the time of the study only a few Swedish municipalities had implemented CCs.