E-government - it's all about change

By Laurence Millar | 19 July 2010 | Permanent link | 2 comments

The introduction of new technology into government operations has always led to changes in the way public servants do their work, and changes in how citizens interact with agencies. Herman Hollerith invented the punched card device to improve the data gathering and analysis associated with the 1890 US Census. The US Census Bureau was also the first government agency to buy a computer - a UNIVAC mainframe in 1951. In many countries, the first mainframe computers were installed in government organisations, creating different types of jobs, and changing the way work was done in offices.

The last 20 years has seen dramatic change, and most government officials now use computers, e-mail, the internet and online systems for a large proportion of their working day. Over the last ten years, since the rise of e-government, the citizen has been using the internet to access information, undertake transactions and interact with the government. These changes have affected the way employees and citizens spend their days, but the changes often appear as accidental consequences of the introduction of technology.

In our work to improve citizen centric services, government efficiency, or economic performance, we often underestimate the most important area in the adoption of e-government. The way that people react to new technology is the single most important factor influencing the speed of uptake. We are becoming familiar with the rapid dispersion of new technology – this week Facebook expects to announce 500 million users in just six years, there are almost 10 million new mobile phone users in China each month, 3 million iPads were sold in 80 days etc. For online government services, however, we have yet to see anything like the same meteoric rise in usage that we are seeing in these consumer markets.

What can we learn from this? While no government service is ever going to be as compelling as a free Facebook account or a new consumer electronic device, there are lessons from technology innovation that we can apply within the government.

Firstly, the importance of design, and in particular, the ease of the initial customer activation and provisioning. There are now well recognised standard approaches that customers expect. Governments should study the way that these consumer services are provided in mass markets to see how they can be applied to online government services.

Secondly, the importance of communications and marketing. This is not an area that governments traditionally include in the development budget for online services. Yet, we should be more interested in the use of e-government services, rather than just making services available online. Government e-services will only be successful if they get widespread usage, and they will only be widespread if citizens are encouraged and incentivised to use new services and new channels.

Thirdly, the importance of building on others’ successes, and using platforms that are already in place. If you are trying to reach out across the digital divide, recognise that your target customers will have a mobile device long before they have access to an internet browser and develop a mobile delivery strategy.

Research by the European Commission found that 50% of the cost of major e-government projects expenditure over five years was on organisational change rather than technology development. In a mass market world, the percentages today should probably be higher than in 2006, when the research was done. Look at your most recent e-government project — what percentage of the budget was taken up by hardware and software? How much was left over for change and communications associated with implementation and uptake? If the budget for change and communications is less than 40% of the total, you should not be surprised if your project does not achieve the level of uptake that will make it successful.

Investing in the people side of technology-led change is the most important and often most neglected part of a successful e-government programme.