Investigating the Users’ Approach to ICT Platforms in the City Management

CAPUTO, Francesco and Leonard WALLETZKÝ. Investigating the Users’ Approach to ICT Platforms in the City Management. Systems. Switzerland: MDPI AG, 2017, vol. 5, No 1, p. 1-15. ISSN 2079-8954. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/systems5010001.

Basic information

• Original name: Investigating the Users’ Approach to ICT Platforms in the City Management
• Authors: CAPUTO, Francesco (380 Italy, belonging to the institution) and Leonard WALLETZKÝ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Systems, Switzerland, MDPI AG, 2017, 2079-8954.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Article in a journal
• Field of Study: 10201 Computer sciences, information science, bioinformatics
• Country of publisher: Switzerland
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14330/17:00096533
• Organization unit: Faculty of Informatics
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/systems5010001
• UT WoS: 000398707800001
• Keywords in English: users’ perceptions; ICT platforms; service system; service science; systems thinking

Abstract

The increasing relevance of technology and its impact on our everyday life requires multi- and trans-disciplinary studies in order to investigate the ways in which the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools are affected by users’ features and by the external environment. In order to enrich existing contributions on this topic, the paper focuses its attention on the city as example of service systems, in order to investigate dimensions and dynamics that influence the city employees’ evaluation and satisfaction in the use of ICT platforms. By adopting the interpretative lens offered by Service Science and Systems Thinking, the domain of city as a service system is analysed and some hypotheses are formulated with reference to the relationships between environment, users, and ICT platform. The hypotheses are investigated through a questionnaire survey on a sample of 1032 municipalities in the Czech Republic and the results are tested using Structural Equation Modelling. The research shows that users’ features and external environment affect the evaluation and the satisfaction of city stakeholders about the use of ICT platforms by underlining the need for enlarging the study on informatics tools, in order to also include subjective variables. The findings are discussed from both theoretical and practical points of view.