Intentions for simplicity and consequences of complexity: A diagnostic case study of an e-government portal and its back-office processes

The reform agenda for public sector development, including e-government, contains simplification as a pivotal concern. It should be easier for the citizens to interact with different branches of the public sector. Administrative burdens should be relieved through the use of modern IT. One such constituent is egov portals (based on a life-event view) that should simplify for the citizen. This paper presents a diagnostic case study of the Swedish business link portal verksamt.se. Especially, the relations to backoffice processes of municipalities have been studied. The results of this study reveal several dysfunctions of these simplification ambitions: Low integration between front-office and back-office IT; cumbersome back-office processes; decreased service to citizens from back-office administrators; a complex IT landscape for the citizens consisting of competing IT systems with redundancies and inconsistencies.