Although proactive public services are widely discussed in e-government research as government-initiated, data-driven, and automated forms of service provision, little is known about how civil servants understand the concept in practice. This paper conducts an analysis of 21 semi-structured interviews with civil servants involved in policy, service delivery, and service design. Participants were asked to provide their own definitions of proactive services and examples from their organizations. The data were analyzed through multiple coding rounds. Three core properties of proactive public services emerged. First, governments take initiative in delivering services rather than waiting for citizen requests. Second, service delivery is initiated from a broad perspective on citizens’ life situations. Third, service delivery is initiated earlier to prevent the emergence or escalation of problems. By identifying these three properties, this study contributes to the construct clarity of proactive public service delivery and broadens current understandings of what it means for public services to be proactive according to civil servants. While the first property aligns closely with existing proactive services literature, the other two properties of broader and early, preventive delivery extend current taxonomies. The findings also show that civil servants’ conceptualizations of proactive services are in line with concepts from literature on proactivity as a human character trait, thereby bridging psychological and e-government perspectives on proactivity and offering a new perspective on current discussions in public organizations on becoming proactive.
