The quality of governmental service provision can be increased by raising the level of proactivity of public services, however only few best practices have been identified. This master thesis will try to fill this gap by developing a framework of design principles for proactive public services in the Netherlands. Case studies of governmental service delivery will be combined with interviews of information system architects and an academic expert to provide the necessary information for the development of a mock-up of a public service with a raised level of proactivity. The design science framework of (Hevner et al., 2004) will be combined with the Principle-Based Design methodology of (Bharosa & Janssen, 2015) in order to extract principles from the design process. The main contribution of this thesis will be the developed framework of design principles for proactive public service design in the Netherlands, which could guide governmental organizations in raising the level of proactivity of their public services.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the dependence on digital public service delivery in many nations. The intensified use of digital public services also shifted the spotlight to accessibility and reactive design of digital public services. Inspired by the high level of proactivity provided in commercial digital services, policy-makers are looking for guidance on employing the vast amount of (personal) data available at various public agencies to proactively aid citizens during important life events. Proactivity, however, is a very complex multi-level concept with a myriad of case-specific forms and conditions and is not always desired. Moreover, there is little guidance in the literature on how to classify the level of proactivity and design more proactive public services. The objective of this paper is to provide guidance for classifying, understanding, and designing proactivity. Drawing on previous conceptualizations in literature, this paper introduces a proactivity classification framework that is substantiated using empirical cases from the Netherlands. We found that fully proactive services are not always desired or possible due to public service characteristics. The two key variables in this framework - service eligibility and service delivery - were used to propose design principles for increasing public services' proactivity. The principles were validated and prioritized by four public service innovators. Policy-makers looking to enhance inclusivity through service proactivity can start by classifying current services and integrating the design principles in their innovation roadmap.