e-governance and citizen information - Universitat Oberta de ...

E-governance and Citizen Information 61 Methodology4.3. Purpose of the StudyThe research project has been designed as a study on e-governance, based on a methodologicalapproach that, with the use of mainly (though not exclusively) qualitative tools, hasallowed us to achieve a high level of precision in the study of the transformations of the PublicAdministration. As explained above, the purpose of our analysis is the Generalitat of Cataloniaas a whole. But there are some elements that we must take into account. In the firstplace, even though the transformations linked to technological innovations in citizen interactionchannels are clearly being observed in the Autonomous Catalan Administration, thereis a unit in charge of controlling and managing the different corporate channels used to communicateand interact with citizens (mainly face-to-face support, telephone and the Internet):the General Public Service Department (hereinafter Citizen Information Department). In parallel,in accordance with the change in orientation adopted after the change in Governmentof the Generalitat of Catalonia (December 2003), this unit became responsible for leadingmost of the initiatives based on e-government. This situation led us to limit the empirical study– at least most of it – to the Citizen Information Department and the projects promotedfrom this organisation.A basic and fundamental element in this project has been its empirical base. The base hasbeen created with a vast and exhaustive amount of fieldwork that has addressed the widediversity of research techniques and different sources of information (both primary and secondary).In this sense, the dimensions of the Generalitat represented too large a scope forthis kind of study and for our rather small research team. Therefore, limiting the empiricalstudy to the Citizen Information Department has represented a practical advantage by itsdimensions, which can be handled by the team.In parallel, the interest of this research project is not simply to analyse the changes citizens'relationships with the administration, but rather to observe the structural, organisational orcultural transformations within the administration. If we focus on a single unit, we can set thelimits for our empirical work, following a series of determined projects and obtaining in-depthinformation in some cases about the branches or roots of the organisation, gathering additionalinformation from the general organisation structure. This would have been impossiblefor the set of organic units of the Generalitat as a whole.The Citizen Information Department is quite a large unit if we compare it with the Generalitat(with currently more than 50 employees) and one of its main features is its transversalnature. This function is mainly developed through the coordination of the Gencatportal, the 012 helpline and the SAC information system (used by all departments to interactwith the Citizen Information Department). Therefore, in accordance with the operation of thehttp://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic