Electronic Public Service Delivery through Online Kiosks: The User’s Perspective

Abstract

This paper reports a case study of Knowsley Metropolitan Borough’s response to the UK Government’s White Paper ‘Modernising government’ [1]. It provides unique data on user behaviour in relation to electronic public service delivery through public access kiosks and highlights some of the issues relating to the ‘digital divide’, the reduction of social exclusion. It offers a perspective on the uses for which customers perceive public access kiosks to be valuable and indicates barriers to kiosk use for other functions. Some of the messages reflect issues that have been debated in consumer responses to e-commerce and communication over the Internet. This is important because it suggests some consistency in the public reaction to IT-based service delivery, irrespective of the platform.