Simulation Games for Collaborative Development in E-Government

Governments aim to improve service delivery to citizens and businesses and need to transform to accomplish efficiency savings and better customer orientation. This requires the coordination of dependencies among the various departments located in the frontend and backend of organizations, and might include interdependencies with external parties. Transforming this fragmented landscape requires an understanding of issues at play, and the collaborative development of possible solutions. Every stakeholder has its own perspective, background, knowledge, and interests, and with their own situation and issues in mind, they often fail to grasp the bigger picture. Simulation games refer to a situation in which human participants play a role and follow certain rules to simulate a complex real-world phenomenon. Such a game can enhance participant's understanding of the complexities involved in the big picture, which might facilitate improvement. In this paper we present and evaluate a simulation game for public service delivery. The game facilitates problem-oriented learning and collaborative improvement of public service delivery. We measured participant views on the success of the collaboration in multiple sessions, using observations and a survey. The analyses show that participants find the process of the game successful and are willing to commit resources to it.