After years of rapid
development in e-government around the world, Accenture has
detected a slowing of advances. It takes governments longer to make
noticeable improvements as the picture of leadership in customer
service becomes more complex. And more visionary, citizen-centric
strategies and cross-cutting initiatives needed time to take hold
and develop proven results.
To address this slowdown,
Accenture has opted not to proceed with its usual ranking of
e-government performance. Instead, our seventh annual government
study asks different questions: "What sets these leaders apart?
What do they do to perform so consistently well?"
By way of background,
government leadership in customer service has been marked by
service that is citizen-centred, cross-government, multi-channel
and promoted through proactive communication and education.
Governments that embraced these principles delivered greater value
for their stakeholders by providing better outcomes more cost
effectively. At the same time, they positioned themselves for the
next wave of new aspirations and challenges.
Five key findings have
emerged in our study this year, along with new challenges:
First, we see that leading governments are introducing services on
par with the best of the private sector. While many observers feel
that government trails business in introducing service innovations,
our own survey of the landscape shows that this is not always the
case. We saw governments using a range of technologies - from SMS
and text applications to kiosks and interactive voice response - to
provide unique and interesting services that range from the merely
helpful to the truly life changing.
To reach this future - where service value equates to looking
beyond citizens' and businesses' in-the-moment "wants" to
developing insight into and meeting their unexpressed broader needs
- governments need to retire strategies that focus solely on the
tactics of online service delivery.
Second, we find that
governments are at a critical juncture for service success.
Government executives recognize that they have "reached the limit"
with their current approaches to customer service. The leaders are
facing this challenge by stepping into the uncomfortable arena of
transformation. This has two key dimensions.
First, they are re-assessing
and re-crafting their customer service strategies, not just to
satisfy citizens but also to create lasting value. As governments
push toward service trust, they are tackling the issues of not only
what their customers want now, but what will they need in the
future.
Second, these strategies are
veering away from a "best practice," one-size-fits-all template.
Governments are building their strategies based on their own unique
challenges and value propositions. Leading countries, in
particular, have recognized that there is no set definition for
citizen centricity. They are putting the "custom" back in customer
service.
Our third finding is that
successful governments are advancing by implementing internal
structures and processes that vary dramatically from the past. As
governments have developed increasingly rich e-government programs,
they have created a new vantage point - a platform from which they
can see that the true picture of leadership in customer service
delivery is much more complicated than they had previously
understood.
They recognize that much of
their existing infrastructure, built for a government-centric view
of service delivery, will be inadequate to support their ambitious
new strategies. In response, they have begun to implement new tools
and modes of operation that vary quite dramatically from those of
the past, including strong new organizational designs, relentless
simplification, business reengineering, consolidation and forays
into shared services.
In Canada, where government
has a history of making progress through horizontal cooperation,
the federal service transformation agenda is advanced through a
model of "business-like cooperation" that begins with a weekly
breakfast meeting of deputy ministers.
Fourth, we find that
successful governments are using a combination of four proactive
marketing tactics to drive implementation and adoption of their
service strategies. More than putting a technology in place and
then running an ad hoc radio campaign, for example, these leaders
are using a combination of:
The stick. Strong pressure
or mandatory use of more efficient channels for some
services.
The carrot. Incentives for
online use.
Marketing pull. Innovative
marketing campaigns to increase awareness and educate users on how
to access and use the available services.
High-touch push. Help and
support; showing people and businesses how to get the most out of
services.
Our fifth and final finding
is that last year's leaders won't necessarily be next year's
leaders. The future challenges for governments are broad and deep.
What would typically be considered leading service practices in the
private sector (such as data mining or offshoring, for example)
remain difficult if not impossible for some governments. The
ability to co-operate across boundaries and levels of government
also remains a difficult challenge.
Many governments are
compromising their ability to prepare for the future by focusing
too much on tactical service levels and not enough on the bigger
picture. It is how public sector executives rise to meet these
challenges that will determine which governments are able to lead
the way in creating an environment of implicit service value and
trust. Difficult decisions lie ahead:
Challenge: Service delivery
channels are exploding, and so is the complexity for
governments.
The proliferation of devices
(channels of interaction) offers a government unparalleled
opportunities for connecting with citizens. As new channels open,
they give a government unprecedented new reach. But they also open
pitfalls, expected and unexpected.
Challenge: Citizen fears,
beliefs and value systems may fly in the face of what is considered
best practice.
Last year, we reported that
in most countries, governments' concerns about citizens' privacy
fears were overblown. With few exceptions, citizens are prepared to
allow government to have access to and share a whole range of
information, from nationality down to health insurance details, and
to a lesser extent, social security numbers and tax
information.
Some countries, such as
Norway, Denmark and Finland, already have unique identifiers in
place, for populations where the citizens are familiar - and
comfortable - with governments sharing information. Still, privacy
remains a thorny challenge in a number of other
countries.
Challenge: The cost of
technology is rising for governments.
Governments are burdened by
the costs of their legacy systems. Private sector companies have
the option to offshore some functions and activities that others
can perform more effectively. Yet for most countries, including
world leaders Canada and the United States, offshoring is
unpalatable, prevented by unions, or goes against the cultural
grain. For most countries, the challenge of staying abreast of
technology while managing the costs of implementation (both of
which factor into the country's ability to remain competitive in a
global environment), is a growing issue.
Challenge: Ad hoc
cooperation works on a small scale, but does not have the strength
to tackle big challenges.
The greatest service
innovations often come from an individual or small group of people
who develop an idea they are keenly interested in seeing succeed
and who rally enough resources to make it happen.
In some respects, Canada is
still working on connecting vision to implementation with Service
Canada. The country has been ahead of the curve for years. It has a
history and a culture of working cooperatively. The Service Canada
program has already launched incredibly innovative pilots -
starting small and growing in an organic way.
But moving Service Canada
forward on a large scale remains a challenge, due at least in part
to the collaborative nature of the Canadian government that has
been key to its very success.
Challenge: Some governments
are stuck in their own service processes.
Leading governments have
listened to the call for citizen centricity. They understand that
the ultimate determinant of service success will be whether, in
fact, citizens use the service. With so much riding on citizens
moving to the more efficient self-service channels provided by
governments, it is little wonder that they are trying to tune in to
citizens' attitudes and perceptions. Most executives that we
interviewed described how they implemented satisfaction surveys for
citizens after completing their transactions. Others talked about
working to service level agreements.
In the future, leadership in
customer service will be defined by service that builds an implicit
trust between citizens and their governments. Here, trust means
even more than a belief that governments are acting in citizens'
best interests; it implies an inviolate institution. The
implications of building trust through leadership in customer
service can be seen as a virtuous circle: trust in government
builds a more connected populace, whose true needs inform the
development of more effective policy to answer those needs, which
is then implemented via excellent service, which strengthens the
trust, and the cycle repeats.
Alden Cuddihey is a senior
executive in Accenture's Canadian Government Practice. For full
results of Accenture's Annual Government Study, visit www.accenture.ca.
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