Service transformation towards citizen-centric government? The evolution of a smart card application in UK local government

Governments around the world have far reaching expectations of service transformation to create citizen-centric government. New Identity Management (IDM) systems are acknowledged as the sine qua non for establishing ‘Transformational government’. Whether the introduction of IDM-enabled service transformation will bring us the desired service state, or in fact a surveillance state, as proponents claim, is an important topic of an emerging public debate in the UK. In this chapter we empirically explore what IDM-enabled service transformation means by focusing on the introduction and use of a multi-functional smart card application in UK local government. Although we conclude that service transformation has happened in this particular case, with government-centric, instead of citizen-centric, government as the outcome, it turns out to be a much less revolutionary experience in practice than expected. Instead, we observe an evolutionary development of the smart card: a gradual, difficult and complex process in taking the smart card scheme forward.