Online Service Manifesto

1The online public service manifesto Statement #1

ACCESS

OWNERSHIP

LOOK/ FEEL

CONTROL

DISCUSSION

TRANSACT

WHAT WE WANT FROM ONLINE PUBLIC

SERVICES:

THE MANIFESTO

Introduction /

2 What we want from online public services

A bROAD RANgE OF CONSUmERS FROm DIFFERENT PARTS OF bRITAIN HAvE

PARTICIPATED IN THE RESEARCH FROm WHICH THIS mANIFESTO IS DRAWN. IT IS WRITTEN FROm THEIR POINT OF vIEW. THE EIgHT

STATEmENTS THAT FOLLOW ARE INTENDED TO DESCRIbE AND ILLUSTRATE WHAT CONSUmERS WANT FROm ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICES IN THE FUTURE. THE ACCOmPANyINg ImAgES ARE bASED ON THEIR IDEAS. THERE ARE RECURRINg THEmES AND, TAKEN TOgETHER, THEy PRESENT A vISION FOR THE FUTURE OF

ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICES.

The manifesto is for the attention of public service providers, policy makers and organisations from other sectors who offer

online public services. It is designed to help bring the voice of the consumer into their design processes and to ensure that their services are more effective in meeting users’ needs.

This document is part of a range of outputs that includes a full report of the primary research. To find out more visit

WWW.EXAMPLE.COM

The services illustrated in this manifesto are visualisations of ideas participants discussed.

All of the services and names used are fictional.

3The online public service manifesto Introduction

The Manifesto : Eight Statements /

WE WANT ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICES THAT:

1. HELP US TO gET ON WITH THE REST OF OUR LIvES

2. ARE EASy TO UNDERSTAND AND USE

3. LOOK CLEAR AND SImPLE

4. ALLOW US ALL TO EASILy REgISTER OUR OPINION ON ANy PUbLIC SERvICE;

AND ON THE AgENCIES AT WHICHEvER TIER OF gOvERNmENT THAT ARE RESPONSIbLE

FOR THEm

5. SUPPORT US WHEN WE WANT TO mAKE A CONTRIbUTION TO PUbLIC SERvICES

AND gOvERNmENT

6. ALLOW US CONTROL OF OUR ONLINE IDENTITIES AND OUR PERSONAL DATA AND STILL gET THE mOST

OUT OF PUbLIC SERvICES

7. ARE PROvIDED by WHOEvER’S gOINg TO DO THE bEST jOb

8. ARE mORE TRANSPARENT

THE mANIFESTO

What we want from online public services4

Statement #1

WE WANT ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICES THAT ALLOW US TO gET ON WITH THE REST OF OUR LIvES

Public services are not a destination or a goal in their own right, we want to use them to help us achieve outcomes in the real world. Everything about an online public service should be designed to help us live our lives more easily. We are busy and we need you to help us, not to burden us with information we don’t need, or to re-create the problems we already experience when dealing with you offline. The main reason we use online public services is to help us get things done more quickly. Online public services should understand what they can provide most effectively and what we use them for; and then concentrate on making those things easy for us to find and achieve.

This means that transactions and interactions with online public services should be light-touch, intuitive and focused on achieving a task, helping us to accomplish what we are trying to

do. Whether it’s registering for our driving licence or applying for Housing Benefit we want to be able to focus on that task online and then to know exactly what the next steps are going to be.

Online public services feel like a barrier to achieving our goals when they are slow and seem disconnected from real life. This results in us phoning services up a lot or mistrusting the information that we are viewing. Online public services should never feel like a barrier to accessing information, services or goods. They should make your services more accessible to us; and feel like the best way to get in touch, to get the right information in an up-to-date form, and to have responsive interactions. They should be powerful tools for achieving real-world action.

“ONLINE [PUbLIC] SERvICES SHOULD mAKE LIFE bETTER AND mORE EFFICIENT” Katherine, 27, Tooting


5Scenario No. 1.0

What you need to do:

Integrate online and •offline services as fully as possible.

Enab• le us to undertake tasks online which make life easier and lighten the load on services’ offline counterparts.

Understand what we want to •do when when we come to use your service.

B• ase the service around who is using it and what they are trying to achieve.

M• ake it clear what can and can’t be achieved using your service.


Statement #2

WE WANT ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICES THAT ARE EASy TO UNDERSTAND AND USE

Online public services should make it easier for us to access the information and outcomes we want. Most of us prefer to use the Internet rather than phone you up so we’re generally keen to give online public services a try.

Many of us don’t want to have a conversation with someone delivering the service, we are happy to find the information we want, or undertake the transaction without help. You can support even those of us who are less confident by helping us through transactions step by step and not confusing us with additional information that’s irrelevant to what we’re trying to achieve.

The language you use needs to be clear and provide reassurance, especially if we lack experience or are less confident online. Please don’t use acronyms or language only

Internet by people working in public services or IT. Use the words we use such as ‘noise’ rather than ‘environmental disturbance’. We are used to searching for things online. Nearly all of us use Google as our starting point and we will often use it to search within public sector sites, so you should think about how your information will appear in search engine results.

When we’re undertaking a transaction it can often be easy to get lost and not know what to do next. You should help us to avoid this by not giving us more information than we need. We don’t want to have too many steps in the process. Most of us have had great experiences of transacting with other online services and we expect online public services to be just as good as the best we’ve experienced anywhere else online.

“yOU SHOULD PUT yOURSELF IN my POSITION, PUT yOURSELF IN THE USER’S POSITION, I THINK THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN ENOUgH”.

Isabella, 53, Penge


7Scenario No. 1.0

Make sure your service and •the information we want is easy to find with search engines.


The language used should be •written for us not for you.

Navigation has to make it •really easy, or we’ll try to use the phone, or another channel instead, or worst of all may give up entirely.

We might not read all the •information on the page, so be careful about giving us too much information.

If we’re transacting with •you, help us focus on the task in hand, help us to understand what we need to do next.

Visualisation of a service that helps users keep track of their student loans and repayments


Statement #3

We want online public services to make us feel reassured and confident that we’re in the right place: we like clear navigation that helps us know where we are and who we’re dealing with. Many public service websites we have used are frustrating and appear complicated. We want online public services to feel approachable and make us feel comfortable. We want them to be clear about what they are there to do and who they provide services to. We want to feel confident that we can use them properly from the first click.

Complicated looking websites can make less experienced users doubt our skills and abilities

online and can sometimes result in killing our desire to engage with public services in this way. None of us like clutter. We like websites that present information to us simply and don’t over-complicate things.

We trust public sector brands such as the NHS so it’s important that online public services are branded as public sector so we can know who we’re dealing with. We want government websites to look professional and official, this helps us trust them and make us feel safe. We like bold, clear designs that let us know we’re in the right place and help us focus on what we want from them.

“I ExPECT UN-jUmbLED WEbSITES WHICH ARE CLEAN AND CLEAR”

WE WANT ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICES THAT LOOK CLEAR AND SImPLE

Tiago, 24, Edgware


What you need to do: Design your service to look clean and approachable and help us feel confident we’re in the right place. Make it clear what your service is offering us. Have clear branding and look professional. If its an official government site, it should tell us.Design the service to help me focus on what I want to achieve.


Design your service to look •clean and approachable and help us feel confident that we’re in the right place.

Make it clear what your •service is offering us.

Have clear branding and look •professional. If it’s an official government site, it should tell us.

Design the service to help •me focus on what I want to achieve.

Visualisation of a service that helps job seekers keep up-to-date with their job applications and opportunities.


Statement #4

We expect to be able to discuss, comment, give feedback, and share our opinions and ideas on online public services. A lot of us also want to make suggestions, complaints and to say thank you. We expect you to listen when we have something to say because there’s usually a good reason. We get frustrated if there’s no easy way for us to do this.

We expect to be able to rate the things you do and to make comments. We think it’s important and that you can learn from it too. We also expect to be able to see what other people have said about you, so don’t try to hide it please. We know that people on the internet sometimes write biased

reviews, but we can recognise and distinguish these.

We know you are busy so don’t always expect you to get back to us personally. Sometimes, we just want to know you have heard us. Often we are happy to receive an automated response confirming receipt of our message, which explains how our input will be used.

We don’t expect you to always directly provide the service under discussion, comment, and feedback, but it’s important that there is an option that makes this possible and that you have a relationship with the organisation that does provide it, and that you and/or the organisation listen to what we tell you through it.

WE WANT ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICES THAT mAKE IT EASy TO TELL PROvIDERS AbOUT OUR ExPERIENCES

Renay, 17, Barnet

“THE PUbLIC SHOULD HAvE THE CHANCE TO SAy WHATEvER THEy WANT TO SAy”

John, 64, Hackney

“ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICES SHOULD ENAbLE mE TO HAvE A vOICE IN CONSULTATION”

Make it easy for us to give •feedback about the services you provide.

Be clear about what will be •done with the information we provide.

Show us where we can see •what other people think about your service.

Make sure that the feedback •we provide goes somewhere that uses it effectively.



Visualisation of an automated reply from a local authority in re-sponse to feedback sent from a smartphone application.


Statement #5

WE WANT ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICES TO SUPPORT US TO mAKE A CONTRIbUTION TO PUbLIC SERvICES, DEmOCRATIC PROCESSES AND OUR COmmUNITIES

Some of us, particularly younger users, think that online public services should do more to support us if we want to make a contribution to our community, public services or democratic processes. Online public services should appreciate that we may want to get more involved in a service and help us to do so.

We might want to join a group connected to the service we are using or find out about how to get involved in our community.

Online public services should offer us the opportunity to take an active role by connecting us to groups or telling us about other actions we can take to get involved.

We don’t always want to get more involved, but if we do, we should be able to find out how to do so. If we do participate more actively we want to know what the rules are and to what extent our participation will affect things.

John, 64, Hackney

“THERE SHOULD bE mORE WAyS FOR CITIzENS TO ENgAgE IN THEIR COmmUNITy ONLINE”

“IT WOULD bE qUITE NICE TO SAy WHAT’S yOUR PLANS ON DIS-AbILITy, CAN WE mUTUALLy FIND A WAy TO ImPROvE THIS”

Fiona,30-39, Sunderland


Support us to get involved in •improving public services.

Be prepared to connect us •with ways in which we can become more actively involved in improving or supporting public services.

Support us to get involved •in related groups and our communities.

Provide us with feedback •about the impact of our participation.


Visualisation of a service that would encourage local residents to collaboratively submit ideas for improvement of the local area.


Statement #6

WE WANT TO bE IN CONTROL OF OUR ONLINE IDENTITIES AND OUR PERSONAL DATA AND STILL gET THE mOST OUT OF PUbLIC SERvICES

To get the most out of online public services we expect we will need to share some of our personal information. We think of this as a trade off - we give you some information, you give us something back which benefits us. Online public services shouldn’t expect us to give loads of our personal information for the most basic of tasks. You need to make us aware of why you need the information and what you’re doing with it. The data requested from us needs to be in proportion to what we’re getting back.

When we do provide information we would like to know where it will be held, which organisations or people will have access to it and what they might use it for. It should be up to us to decide who the information is shared with. While we want to be kept informed of what happens to our data and have control over who it goes to, we don’t want long-

winded and complicated terms and conditions or small print. The idea that all public services have access to a single source of our personal data makes some of us feel vulnerable because we’re concerned that if it fails or has a problem we would be exposed. We have a range of different online identities and want to take similar approaches to managing our relationships with online public services; sometimes we will want to give a lot of personal information, at other times we will just want a straightforward transaction. We also need to be confident that the service is secure and that you will respect our privacy.

Generally, we are happy with setting up and maintaining multiple accounts. Though we might like the option to link relevant services together (for example tax and student loans), the main thing is that we have control over the data in each of the services we use.

“I HAvE mANy DIFFERENT ONLINE PROFILES; PERSONAL, AND PROFFESIONAL”


Let us know what data is held •on us and where it is held.

Let us know what you are •using our data for and what the benefits are for us.

Give us access to the data •you hold on us.

Don’t ask for more •information than you need, and don’t ask for information you already have.

Tell us what the deal is when •we are asked to share or exchange our data with you.

Tell us how you are •protecting our data.


Visualisation of a tool that would help users take control of their personal data.


Statement #7

WE WANT EACH ONLINE PUbLIC SERvICE TO bE PROvIDED by WHOEvER’S gOINg TO DO THE bEST jObOur primary concern is that online public services work well. We are open to services being provided by third parties, but we’re interested in why they are providing the service.

When we’re looking for information we generally trust information provided on official government websites such as NHS Direct or Directgov. If we’re interested in finding out what others think, communicating with other consumers, or feeding back on public services, we’re happy to use services such as Mumsnet, or Patient Opinion that are provided by third parties and which help us interact with, navigate, or make choices about public services. If we’re transacting with you we’d rather not go through a third party but will do if it will significantly improve the service we get; for example, many people use third party service to help setup businesses.

Some of us, especially if we are older or advanced users, are more likely to look up who owns and runs a website before using it.

Alex, 29, Kent

“THE INFORmATION OR SERvICE mIgHT COmE

FROm gOvERNmENT, bUT THEy mIgHT NOT bE

bEST PLACED TO bUILD THE INTERFACE”

We want to understand who is providing it and why. If you are not a government body, we want to know why you are providing the service. Are you a charity or a voluntary body? Are you a not-for-profit, or are you making money from it? We’d like to be able to find this out fairly quickly and you should be open in providing the information.

This usually won’t stop us from using the service but it can help us decide between rival services doing the same thing. If we are younger or less advanced Internet users, we are not likely to check up as often on who owns, runs and funds a service, we’ll tend to do what our friends do.

We expect the government to be responsible for providing good, sound data which all of us can access and use too, including developers who can use it to build tools that are useful to us. If we can find it, we trust information that comes from the public sector and trust websites that use it and reference it as a source. We care more about the quality of a site than who is providing it to us, but we want to want to know who’s running it and the provenance of the information they are using.


Tell us who you are and why •you’re providing this service.

T• hink about who is best placed to provide this service, and each part of the service.


Be prepared to let go, or •support someone else to deliver the service, if they can do a better job.

Visualisation of a online public service platform.


Statement #8

We’re getting used to expressing ourselves over the internet, so we know that putting information online is not expensive or difficult. Therefore we expect to be able to find out about anything that we’re interested in, especially public services. All public service information should be easily searchable. As we’ve said before, we mostly use Google to search the Internet, so information should be provided in way that can be picked up easily by search engines.

Sometimes organisations or groups make public sector information more useful and interesting for us, such as

TheyWorkForYou.com, so it is important that the information is available for them to do this.

We would like to see increased transparency in relation to the interactions and transactions we are having with you - showing us what is happening with our information will help us trust the services we are dealing with and know what to expect. If we know more about the way that they work and can see exactly what is happening to our information, we are more likely to have a satisfying experience. For example if we put in a comment about a planning application we want to

WE WANT mORE TRANSPARENCy

“I WOULD LIKE TO HAvE TRANSPARENT INFORmATION, SO THAT I CAN SEE WHERE my CONTRIbUTIONS ARE gOINg”

Jamie, 19, Glasgow


19Scenario No. 4.0

If we’re transacting with •you, tell us what’s going on behind the scenes and give us information to help us know what to expect.

Publish public information •in ways that make it easily picked up by search engines.

Publish public information •in ways that make it easy to be re-used.


Visualisation of a tool that explains which pieces of information will be made public and why.

What we want from online public services The online public service Manifesto 2011

www.thinkpublic.com www.consumerfocus.org.uk

thinkpublic were commissioned by Consumer Focus to condusct research into the future of online public services.

This research was aimed at bringing consumer needs and wants into the debate on online public services.

Its focus was to understand what people wanted from public

services, whether the internet/ web can improve those service, what those services should look and feel like, and who should provide

them.

Documents

Online Service Manifesto