The future of e-government services

Online government services are a two-edged sword: wonderfully convenient yet incredibly frustrating. Sure, online services reduce the amount of time you need to spend waiting in over-crowded government offices, but the moment you have a question not covered by the FAQ, and you need to talk to a real person, you suddenly realize the limitations of e-government.

Whether or not you agree with the digitization of government services is beside the point—the (Internet) die has been cast and we are moving inexorably toward a digitally mediated relationship with government. Canada is not alone in this move; countries around the world are reaching citizens online through a variety of initiatives (Estonia is an especially interesting case). So how is Canada fairing in the switch to e-government?

“While considerable progress has been made over the last few years, we [Canada] still have a long way to go before I would be comfortable stating that we are ahead of the pack,” says Mike Kujawski, Partner & Senior Consultant, CEPSM.ca (Centre of Excellence for Public Service Marketing) in an email interview. “As a starting point, I find the term e-government outdated as it tends to isolate the electronic component of service and is often used solely in the context of moving from paper based services to online services. I believe that at the end of the day the focus should be on making a government service as efficient and effective as possible for its citizens. Sometimes this means doing things online (using different devices for different tasks, i.e. mobile vs. tablet vs. laptop), sometimes offline and increasingly it is becoming a combination of both.”

In Ontario, digitally-mediated government services and the overall strategy for this type of work falls in the Ministry of Government Services’ bailiwick, where they have created something called the e-government strategy. According to the ministry’s website, this means “use[ing] electronic tools to transform … service delivery, the internal management of government, our management of broader public sector systems, our interactions with citizens.” In case you’re wondering what that means, one example is the online newborn registration service launched in 2009, and another is the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) portal, which has been online for over 10 years now. (I’ll be exploring what’s coming next for Ontario in a follow up post.)

Many government ministries and agencies—including Legal Aid Ontario—have been moving services online in recent years. But do people really want to access services this way? According to a PWC report released last year, the answer is yes, although receiving services over the phone and in-person won’t disappear altogether. The PWC report provides some interesting findings, noting that, “online usage dominates” with the majority of Canadians accessing services online “sometimes” or “often.” While only 10% said that they currently use online services “all the time,” that number is set to almost double to 18% in the future.

So what’s next for online government services? Kujawski offers several suggestions for the future including better use of social media, a greater focus on mobile apps and/or mobile-optimized websites, and a slightly different role for ministry websites.

“Government websites will become drastically smaller and have much narrower scopes of purpose since for a few years now, Google has been the true home page for most citizens looking for a government service. Already, various governments have made note of this,” Kujawski says, adding that the “City of Calgary website is essentially a search engine and the new UK government has a single website that acts as a directory.”

Gov.UK is indeed a great example of what a government website can be. Instead of forcing people to hop from one ministry website to another, Gov.UK brings everything into a nice looking, easy to use website. Created by Government Digital Service, the website’s tagline is “Simple, Clearer, Faster,” and it seems to be just that. The same team is also responsible for the Digital Transformation project (another great looking website), which tracks the progress as the team transforms or digitizes 25 significant government services by 2014.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, Kujawski points to the revamped data.gc.ca website, the Federal government’s open data portal, as a good Canadian example.

In a recent column, BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones wrote that “Maybe a few years from now we will be able to interact with public services online without tearing our hair out – and maybe government IT will no longer be a watchword for budget-busting inefficiency.” Now, wouldn’t that be nice?