22 International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 10(2), 22-42, April-June 2014 Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ABSTRACT This paper posits the idea that conversations about public services encourage society participation in public issues and establish closer ties between society and government service providers. It is argued that by making society aware of how a service is provided – its process - citizens (clients) may develop a better attitude for interacting with government and other service users, by discussing problems, correcting previously-available information, increasing their knowledge about the processes. This paper presents a tool designed to support conversations about public service processes and the results obtained with a case study of its use. The results suggest that conversations have stimulated interaction among citizens and government services providers as well as allowed identifcation of service improvement opportunities. Encouraging Society Participation Through Conversations About Public Service Processes Bruna Diirr, Graduate Program in Informatics (PPGI), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Renata Araujo, Graduate Program in Information Systems (PPGI), Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Claudia Cappelli, Graduate Program in Information Systems (PPGI), Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Keywords: Clients, Collaboration Support, Process Improvement, Public Services, Social Software INTRODUCTION The practice of Democracy has continuously evolved in order to include changes in the way society and government relate to each other. Many discussions enforce the need to increase society involvement and participation in public issues and decision-making through the use of ICTs (Grönlund, 2009). It is expected that ICTs allow government to be open to citizens, offer new channels for disseminating information, increase citizens’ awareness and participation, and improve operations and integration within and between governments (Allen, 2004; Bryant, 2006; Hague, 1999; Oates, 2008; Shirky, 2008). E-Democracy and e-Government initia- tives argue that society involvement through ICT follows an increasing scale of participation and relationship between government and citizens (Arnstein, 1969; Femers & Wiedemann, 1993; DOI: 10.4018/ijegr.2014040103