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How to meet liquid expectations in digital governmentThe three key questions public service agencies must ask to drive seamless user experience
As service design agency Fjord puts it people now have ‘liquid expectations’1 and for governments this means the digital consumer is now the digital citizen. As agencies race to adopt digital to improve public service delivery they face users that now demand the simplest, most enjoyable and rewarding experience they see elsewhere.
For public services to be embraced by citizens (and for digital investments to be realised), agencies must ask themselves what their services would look like if the likes of Apple delivered them – and then build services to that ideal. To do this, public service leaders need to continuously ask three important questions.
Do we really know our users?Citizens want services organised around them, not around government departments: in a recent Accenture survey, personalisation was the change citizens wanted most from government services (61%)1. The movement from one-size-fits-all to a personalised approach begins with knowing end users well enough to understand and respond to their needs – not just at a single point in time but continuously.
This may seem daunting, given a potential user bases in the millions. An effective step which some government departments, have borrowed from private companies is the creation of “user personas.”
At New Zealand Inland Revenue user personas were created based on information already held, as well as extensive research. Each has a distinct set of attributes that typify particular users. For example, there is Fred, an older, emotionally distressed and vulnerable reluctant user of technology and Nikki, a confident young woman who is ingenious at maximising her benefits from services2. Effective service design then involves crafting relevant provision that meets the needs of all the personas rather than just a single, notional user.
In the UK, the National Health Service’s Friends and Family Test asks patients in every hospital to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 “How likely are you to recommend our ward or department to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?” Respondents are then asked why they gave that score. The aggregate answers are published for each facility and staff. Within a year, this straightforward technique led to greater emphasis on patient experience in 78% of hospital trusts3.
What did we break today?Changes in both user demand and expectation levels also call for a new approach to designing, testing and optimising services. Extensive long-term planning needs to be replaced with prototyping, experiments and iterative improvements that allow problems to be spotted before resources are wasted.
For example, one of the goals of the US Digital Service – a White House unit that works with government departments to redesign user experiences – is to ship a minimum viable product within at most three months of a project’s initiation. Usability testing is helping inform improvements to software that are meant to come out several times per month4.
Another example is the ‘cardboard hospital.’ In 2012, before building an extension, Finland’s University Hospital of Tampere worked with researchers from Aalto University to create a 200-square metre “prototyping space” with cardboard walls and props. In a three-day workshop, patients and medical staff gave their views on the experience of different mock-ups of the facility. Researchers’ observations of the interaction informed not only the design of the new wing, but helped streamline treatment pathways and processes, and save money5.
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In an increasingly digital world high standards of service are becoming the norm and are being set by the best of breed providers across all of our experiences – regardless of sector.
Can users do what they want, when they want?Seamless user experiences also rely on service continuity between channels and how to blend the physical and digital experience. As users move through any given interaction with government they should always be able to start and stop on any device or in person without going to the back of the queue or having re-enter information.
This is key to Denmark’s highly successful Borger.dk platform which operates under the principle of ‘one solution, several devices’. Accessible with a national ID across multiple channels, the service takes users to a personalised page which uses government data fragments – such as the user’s age, location, and gender – to provide content organised around life events rather than the different government departments. Traffic to the site rose by roughly 50% between 2011 and 2013 and Copenhagen saw the proportion of online service transactions nearly double, from 19% to 37% between 2009 and 2012, which led to savings of €3.2m per year6.
Accenture research found that 57% of the Australian population want to speak with someone in conjunction with their online services7. As this shows, there will always be a need for human contact, particularly in areas such as pensions, child support and social security. The challenge is to find creative ways to blend the digital and human elements of a service into a coherent, relevant and efficient experience.
One private sector example is Amazon Kindle’s Mayday feature. This lets a user connect with a human customer support worker directly from their digital device. On average their human assistant appears within 10 seconds and the feature has been used by about 75% of those with enabled tablets, making it the most popular way to contact customer service8.
Digital government initiatives are essential to cut costs and boost efficiency, while also making for faster, more convenient public services. However, success depends fundamentally on their usability and take-up among citizens. Ultimately, asking the three key questions above will not just help governments improve their services, they will be fundamental to the long terms success digital government transformation – delivering public service for the future.
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References1 2015 Citizen Pulse – Australia Survey, Accenture, 2015
2 Result10 Blueprint A strategy for digital public services, New Zealand Government, 2014 (http://www.dia.govt.nz/vwluResources/Result-10-Blueprint-v2/$file/Result%2010%20Blueprint_FINAL.pdf)
3 Review of the Friends and Family Test, NHS England, 2014 (http://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/fft-rev1.pdf)
4 U.S. Digital Services Playbook, U.S. Digital Service, 2014 (https://playbook.cio.gov/)
5 Cardboard Hospital, Design for Healthcare, 2012 (http://designforhealthcare.blogspot.fi/p/spring-2012-cardboard-hospital.html)
6 Borger.dk - Danish Agency for Digitisation, OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, 2012 (https://www.oecd.org/governance/observatory-public-sector-innovation/innovations/page/borgerdk.htm)
7 2015 Citizen Pulse – Australia Survey Report, Accenture, 2015
8 Amazon’s Mayday button average response time is under 10 seconds, Don Reisinger, CNET, 2014 (http://www.cnet.com/au/news/amazons-mayday-button-average-response-time-is-under-10-seconds/)
Contact usCatherine GarnerManaging Director, Health & Public Service, Australia and New Zealand [email protected]
Bronwyn van der MerweDirector, Fjord Australia and New Zealand [email protected]
Connect with us to learn more on Twitter @AccenturePubSvc, @AccentureDigi and @fjord
Find out more at www.accenture.com/digitalgovernmentau-nz.
About Delivering Public Service for the FutureWhat does it take to deliver public service for the future? Public service leaders must embrace four structural shifts—advancing toward personalized services, insight-driven operations, a public entrepreneurship mindset and a cross-agency commitment to mission productivity. By making these shifts, leaders can support flourishing societies, safe, secure nations and economic vitality for citizens in a digital world — delivering public service for the future.
About AccentureAccenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 358,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$31.0 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2015. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
