The effectiveness of form factor adapt and platform agnostic services for increased (future) inclusion/participation and reach for e-government service delivery

Abstract

Purpose: This dissertation is intended to evaluate the effectiveness of form factor adapt and platform agnostic services for future participation and to widen the reach of e- Government service delivery channels. Design: Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were adopted for this study, constituted of a public survey, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Local Council members and a focus group organised with MITA personnel. All results contributed towards gaining a comprehensive understanding of different perspectives from a user, management and technical point of view. Findings: Different client-side methods, to achieve compatible cross-browser and crossdevice web applications were explored and thoroughly reviewed. Such approaches included the user interface, user agents, media queries, Bootstrap and CSS reset/normalize. Transforming current code-bases to HTML5 requires adjustments to the DOCTYPE declaration, Viewport META tag, rendering engines, and previous versions of HTML tags. The results obtained were used to come up with the prototype propositions, taking advantage of the web content management system, WordPress. Conclusion: Wider accessibility through various devices help to improve communication and interaction of citizens with government and Local Councils alike. Governments should invest and implement responsive web applications that are internet browser-based using open standards which are platform agnostic and form factor adapt. Thus, increasing public take-up of online government services.