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1 Introduction
There is a long tradition within the information systems (IS) research field of emphasizing user participation in IS development projects. User participation and user involvement have earned great research interest for several decades, not at least within a Scandinavian research tradition ([12] Bjerknes et al. , 1987; [20] Ehn, 1993; [11] Bjerknes and Bratteteig, 1995; [36] Iivari and Lyytinen, 1998; [42] Kyng, 1998), but also in general social-technical design approaches ([44] Land and Hirschheim, 1983; [49], [50] Mumford, 1979, 1983). Inviting users to take part in development teams have been made for both quality and democratic reasons, such as distributing workplace power ([40] Kensing and Blomberg, 1998). User participation has, by many scholars, been viewed as necessary for successful IS development, but there have also been many studies questioning the effects of user participation regarding system success ([45] Lynch and Gregor, 2004). Studies have also highlighted the paradoxes of participatory practices ([34] Howcroft and Wilson, 2003a). [31] Heeks (1999) questions, for example, the view of participation as a silver bullet in IS development by discussing its different shortcomings and constraints. [16] Cavaye (1995) reports on an extensive review of studies showing both positive and negative relationships between user participation and success. Regardless of a majority of positive or negative consequences, user participation in IS development has mainly concerned situations where the future users are known in advance and consequently a rather well-defined group. The users are usually working within an organization that will use the future system - developed or adjusted to fit a particular organization in-house or by a system supplier; e.g. in an enterprise system (enterprise resource planning system) situation dedicated to a certain industry or market segment.
In electronic government (e-government) policies and strategic steering documents, there has often been a strong rhetorical emphasis on the citizen perspective. In many governments' national strategic action plans for their e-government agenda, citizen aspects, as a part of "customer orientation", are distinctly put forth. The ambition to ease citizens' authority contacts, provide better public services, make governmental internal decision processes and other internal processes more efficient, and increase possibilities to participate in democratic processes are a few examples of intended citizen benefits to be found in many strategic governmental intentions and documents ([27]...