Posts
Brookings University recently released its report Improving Technology Utilization in Electronic Government around the World, 2008 (link to PDF).
This ranks the government websites of 198 nations, reviewing 6-10 sites in each nation.
Australia ranked 6th, behind South Korea, Taiwan, the US, Singapore and Canada, up from 8th position last year.
As a benchmark this is great - it's better than our Olympic ranking (on substantially less funds per website than we spend on medal winning athletes), and substantially better than our global population ranking of around 50th.
However this study compares governments against other governments, rather than with citizen expectations.
While I do use other governments' initiatives to stimulate my thinking, I'm more interested in what our citizens want.
I also regularly refer to AGIMO's fantastic work on the use of government services online, and the 2006 e-Government Strategy, Responsive Government. There was also the (now superceded) Guide to Minimum Web Site Standards.
However none of these provide a citizen-centric view of what government sites need to provide that can be used to provide numerical ratings for each government site.
I'd love to have such a ranking available as I used to have in the private sector - using Global Reviews - to provide guidance as to what our citizens want, and the relative importance of different functionality. This would greatly assist my team and I'm sure other online groups, to prioritise online developments inline with citizen desires.
Has anyone seen a study in Australia or elsewhere on the community's expectations of how citizens should be able to engage government online?
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Australia rated 6th in global egovernment study | Tweet |
The blind leading the sighted | Tweet |
I've just been reading the State of the eNation report on the Beijing Olympics website, where they invited disabled web users to test the accessibility features of the site.
While they found a number of the worst issues commonly reported by these users had been addressed, the remaining accessibility problems still made it very difficult to use some parts of the site.
In my past roles, and from what I've witnessed across other organisations, in many cases while companies might engage Vision Australia or a similar organisations for 'spot checks' of websites when they had the funds for it, companies have often relied on interpretations of the web accessibility standards by web professionals rather than referring to staff with first-hand experience.
My team is currently building an internal reference group to oversee the accessibility of our website and intranet, drawing on staff with vision, hearing and movement impairments.
I wonder how many other government agencies could - or already are - doing the same.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
UK government launches online video news channel for public servants | Tweet |
The UK has been operating an online 'television' channel for public servants, LocalGovTV, featuring government initiatives and egovernment examples for some time now.
The service has now launched a regular news channel featuring the latest news on public sector developments within the UK.
While it is necessary to register to view the service, it contains some very interesting insights into what is occurring in public governance in Britain, particularly in the egovernment area (on topics such as Telecare).
Summary of take-aways from the Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment conference | Tweet |
A frantic day catching up yesterday, so I did not get to write this post until this morning.
On Monday I presented at Ark Group's Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment conference in Brisbane.
There was a great line-up of speakers, and I had a long list of take-aways from the day.
Here's my key ones. Note these reflect my perception of the speakers' topics - not necessarily the words they used.
Overall takeaways
- There's a lot happening across the egovernment front at all levels of Australian government, with enormous benefits beginning to be realised for the government, for constituents and for business
- egovernment initiatives still remains highly siloed, with little information being shared between governments, departments, or even within agencies
- virtually all state and federal governments recognise the need to follow whole-of-government approaches, but are doing so only within their own governments, not across jurisdictions in a co-ordinated and managed way
- Enormous cost and time benefits could be realised with more centralised co-ordination (not control)
By speaker
Kim Denham
(CEO Australian Computer Society)
- Broadband is a critical utility for Australians.
- It's crucial to ensure that Australia has an appropriate network in order for long-term national success
Dominic Feik
(Director Business Services, Dept of Innovation, Industry and Regional Developments Vic)
- A successful business case is a good story, supported by evidence, relevant to stakeholders
- Storyline is critical - provides structure for the case
- Use case studies to build a picture of the outcomes
- Create and manage a stakeholder list - develop a clear strategy on how to influence and engage key decision makers (sometimes has to be from a distance)
- Use 'guided' rather than 'blank slate' consultation
- Number one reason for project failure is if the wrong people/skills are attached to the project team
- Other reasons for failure include:
- Poor consultation
- Poor research
- Too much focus on implementation, not enough on business case
- Searching for benefits in the wrong places
Gary Shaw
(Director Information Queensland)
- QLD government has a state-wide address verification system, usable across state government websites, intranets and applications (I want one at Federal level!!)
- QLD has done a fantastic job in developing a geospatial system - involving collaboration across many government agencies.
- There is insufficient collaboration across Australia government
Qld invested $7.5 million in a geospatial display system (building a metadata atlas and other tools),
WA invested $26 million in a similar, but separate system (more bells and whistles),
NSW is looking to invest in such a system - separately
Vic is looking to invest in such a system - separately
Federally AGIMO is investing in such a system
Surely Australian government only needs one such geospatial system - open enough to support the needs of various states and levels of government, and provided/managed centrally as a national public good.
This would support the needs of businesses and individuals to deal across council and state borders, rather than requiring them to use separate tools for separate jurisdictions.
Tim Turner
(Lecturer at UNSW@ADFA)
- Government has focused on a 'one-size fits all' approach to online, but recently moved into portals based on demographic ('youth', 'family') and 'live event' models ('moving home', 'starting school').
- While AGIMO indicates that 60% of the internet using public has visited a government site at least once in the last twelve months, there is not much detail on how/why they visited or how frequently.
- Key limiters to government engagement online appear to be (from AGIMO):
Usability, navigation and content
Knowing what can be transacted (promotion)
Wanting to deal with a 'real person' (little work in Australian government on real-time online contact via video, audio or text) - Government also needs to considered the relationship that constituents have with government.
- Identifed four key relationships/roles:
Customer - single-session interactions, commercially oriented, no identity requirement, expects the same experience whether public or private organisation providing product/service
Client - multi-session interactions, relationship orientated, 'professional' engagement, identity required, expects the same experience whether public or private organisation providing product/service
Citizen - single-session interactions, about business of government, preference for anonymity, no commercial alternatives
Subject - multi-session interactions, usually initiated by government, heavily rules/procedural based, identity required, no commercial alternatives - Government services (process/tone/approach) need to take into account the relationship the constituent has with the service - people shift from one relationship/role to another across different engagements.
- For transactional engagements (Customers/Citizens) - improve usability and appearance of trustworthiness
- For relationship engagements (Clients/Subjects) - improve usability and evidence of justice
Jonathan Gray
(Senior Researcher, NICTA)
- Some great tools now coming out of NICTA
- Seeking government agencies to partner with to pilot pre-commercialisation of IT-related solutions
Jo Bryson
(Executive Director Office of eGovernment, WA)
- Ongoing need to break down silos within and between organisations. Critical factors in doing so are;
- Awareness and understanding
- Consultation and engagement
- Promotion - Need to share information, not withhold it
- Is a significant mental shift for many long-term public servants, but a necessary one for effective governance
- ICT will only realise true business benefits with a business-centric approach NOT technology-centric
- WA has developed a great set of checklists for Ministers' offices (PDF) and Secretaries to appropriately question CIOs to ensure that business value is top-of-mind (great tool - should be used nationally!)
- There is real business value in electronic transactions over physical ones
- Physical network accounts for less than 25% of Medicare's business
- Estimated that move to electronic transactions has effectively reduced Medicare's necessary headcount by 50% (compared to headcount required if all processes remained manual)
- Implemented ability for customers to check their interactions with Medicare online (publicly available but not yet being promoted)
- Has developed a national medical backbone for providing and billing services across GPs, specialists and hospitals (ECLIPSE), which has enormous benefits for the health sector (but is largely invisible to constitutents)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Are you really listening? Using the internet to listen and meet customer needs | Tweet |
I've been reading a fantastic book recommended to me by my DGM, What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith.
It discusses 20 habits that hold back successful people and key behavioural changes that can help overcome them.
One behaviour discussed is listening, where Marshall makes the statement,
80 percent of our success in learning from other people is based upon how well we listen. In other words, success or failure is determined before we do anything.Listening is a regular theme in management and self-help books, however what struck me in this case was that effective and active listening isn't only a key attribute for individual success.
It's also a key factor in organisational success.
Many government agencies spend a great deal of time and money on listening.
We engage in market research, hold community consultation sessions and ask stakeholder groups for input. We consult subject matter experts, implement feedback systems and even share information with other agencies.
Then we attempt to pull all of this data together in meaningful and useful ways to guide policy and service delivery.
Most organisations find listening a difficult and challenging process. Across the private and public sector some organisations shine but most are poor at listening.
If we're all spending so much money on it, why is this so?
Possibly because the process of listening is never perfect. It can involve the wrong groups, or fail to share information widely enough.
'Listening' may be an activity undertaken periodically, rather than constantly, and by specific groups or individuals, rather than seen as a responsibility for the entire organisation.
When listening the context may not be understood, or organisations may simply fail to accept and absorb what they are hearing because it doesn't match the preconceptions of staff or management.
Some organisations even shy away from listening altogether, as either they fear what they may hear or they believe they already know what their customers want.
I've learnt three key things about organisational listening in my working career.
- Customers are telling us more about what they want every time they interact with or talk about us
- The more organisations listen the better they become at understanding and meeting customer needs
- Listening is a continuous two-way process
Working in the online industry I've only learnt one further thing about listening.
- The internet is the most effective and cost-efficient tool for listening ever invented.
It allows individuals and organisations to share information and converse with larger and more diverse groups on an ongoing basis at extremely low cost.
It can capture every aspect of these interactions, removing the ambiguity of memory or creative interpretation (although still allowing filtering through preconceptions).
It can also capture behaviours - not simply what people say, but observing what they do, how they interact with information and services.
Most organisations do not yet understand this and make limited use of the information flowing through their web servers, or reachable via search engines and social networks.
However, those that understand it gain enormous benefits.
I've been given many reasons as to why organisations do not use the internet to listen (my response is in the brackets);
- Not everyone is online (not everyone attends focus groups either!)
- Our existing systems work fine (how can you know this if you're not listening?)
- The internet is new and untried (the people using it are your existing customers)
- We don't have the expertise (employ someone - as is done for market research)
- We don't have the budget for it (you don't need a budget)
- Our IT team won't let us (you don't need IT involved)
- We don't like to be first mover (you're not)
- It's too hard (it gets easier)
- We're scared about what people may say (they're already saying it - go listen)
- No-one will take us seriously (is your goal to improve customer service or protect egos)
- We already have a website (creating a radio ad doesn't make you an expert at talkback)
I will be blogging later in the week on ways in which organisations can use the internet to listen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
