The Interface of Governance: Assessing the Design of Civic Apps in Indian Cities

It is estimated that 71% of India's population owns a smartphone in 2023. This rapid adoption, coupled with India's Digital India initiative, has led to a surge in governance through mobile applications or m-governance, aiming to bring civic services to citizens' fingertips. The centrally-sponsored Smart Cities Mission aims to find smart solutions to urban development, but there are challenges in meeting the objectives of good governance like efficiency, effectiveness, and citizen participation due to flaws in the product development cycle and user experience (UX). This study aims to critically analyze the m-governance tools provided by selected Indian cities to assess design, quality, inclusivity, and overall citizen experience by examining:

1. The possibility and potential of an open design environment to ensure standardization across these applications. 

2. The basic standards, guidelines and quality parameters followed by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) for developing efficient m-governance applications

3. The m-governance apps are efficient and usable ensuring a positive citizen experience regardless of digital literacy.

This study aims to assess the different mobile applications provided by select 3 to 5 cities in India, based on their design, development, quality and range of services provided, and inclusivity and accessibility of these applications to assess the overall experience provided to the citizens. 

A design-thinking (DT) approach has the potential to strengthen collaborative structures in smart cities and thus aid in building resilient urban systems. This is because the principles of DT, such as radical collaboration, experimentation, prototyping and iterative design, align with the citizen-centered, problem-solving perspective of collaborative innovation, which is the underlying objective of Smart Cities Mission.

Hence, for this study, we would adopt an interdisciplinary approach by leveraging the design thinking process and thus conduct the following activities to assess the m-governance tools provided by the selected ULBs:

1. UX Audit - analyzing the products and services and the experience they offer to citizens based on tenets to identify shortfalls pertaining to branding, ease of first use, navigation, usage of normalized patterns, ethical design, feedback loops, system statuses, grievance redressal, contextual help, task lifecycle, and range and quality of available micro-services. This assessment will help gauge inclusivity and accessibility for both, digital natives and digital immigrants.

2. Generalisation & Standardisation - identifying opportunities to establish certain standards that can be followed to make the ecosystem of apps seem cohesive and interconnected.

3. Identifying Global Benchmarks - identifying standards, guidelines or best practices followed by other countries worldwide and learning from them.

The objective of this study is to formulate recommendations for government bodies to create better m-governance tools to facilitate urban development. The findings of this study would be of interest and importance to any government or private institutions that are eager to transform cities by improving or developing m-governance tools.