Reducing Administrative Burden in Remote Subdistrict Services: A Theory-to-Practice Review for Citizen-Centred Administration
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62951/ijss.v3i3.720Keywords:
Administrative Burden, Citizen-Centred Administration, Public Service Delivery, Remote Subdistrict Services, Theory-To-Practice ReviewAbstract
Citizen-facing public services can require people to discover eligibility and procedures, assemble documents, travel or wait, navigate digital channels, and manage uncertainty or stigma. These demands are particularly consequential in geographically extensive or remote subdistrict settings, where access conditions and administrative capacity may intensify citizen–state interaction costs. This conceptual review reconstructs Administrative Burden Theory and translates it into a practice-oriented framework for citizen-centred administration. A Theory-Focused Narrative Literature Review with a Theory-to-Practice orientation was conducted using Scopus as the sole bibliographic database. Five documented search runs yielded a final analytical corpus of 26 eligible peer-reviewed journal articles, all verified in full text. The synthesis confirms learning, compliance, and psychological costs as the theory’s diagnostic core, while later applications identify frontline interaction, digital task transfer, administrative capacity, cross-agency coordination, burden distribution, and state reflexivity as important conditioning mechanisms. These findings are organized into six domains: navigational clarity and assisted access; procedural simplicity and documentary continuity; respectful frontline interaction and human assistance; inclusive digital and multichannel service design; administrative capacity and cross-agency coordination; and equitable, proportionate, and reflexive burden governance. The review contributes a source-traceable conceptual and translational framework linking theory mechanisms to diagnostic questions, conditional design options, implementation conditions, risks, and monitoring needs. The framework supports structured inquiry for Kecamatan Sebuku and comparable settings but does not establish local burden prevalence, causal effects, or intervention effectiveness without local empirical evidence
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