Designing better digital services for citizens [Promoted content]

This series from Amazon Web Services (AWS) focuses on guiding public sector organisations through successful digital transformation processes, and is based on key findings from the AWS Institute. This final instalment explains how organisations can look to overcome traditional silos and design digital services that more effectively serve the needs of citizens. 

Government services have grown up in silos. They collect the same information about citizens in various formats but for similar tasks. Mark Thompson, Professor in Digital Economy at the University of Exeter Business School, explains why this is a problem and what can be done to change it: “In the UK there are 215 NHS trusts, 317 local government authorities and 45 police forces, and they have all been building slightly different versions of the same thing,” he says. “This costs money and it means we can’t share data and we can’t update things.”

Digital transformation is an opportunity to improve this situation for public sector organisations and the citizens who use their services. There are two elements to the transformation: culture and technology. The cultural change can be the most challenging as organisations tend to have embedded ways of working set up to work for the organisation itself, rather than end users. This can reinforce silos whereas public sector organisations should be looking to drive shared capabilities. The technology that supports service innovation can also be shared across functions and departments. Service design should start with the needs of end users. 

Prioritise interoperability

The concept of ‘government as a platform’ means establishing and accepting certain shared components and capabilities, guided by common standards across departments and organisations. Only unique and specialist services need to be built in a bespoke way. Authentication tools and common application programming interfaces (APIs) make it possible to share information securely between departments. To maximise these tools, data standardisation, convergence and common standards are essential. Governments including in India, Singapore and Argentina have progressed interoperability with a core component of their success being a single digital identity, enabling citizens to access multiple government services.

Put citizens at the centre

When citizens have specific requests, “what they want is to spend less time with government and get to the end of the process as quickly as possible,” says María Inés Baque, AWS government transformation leader, who previously led Argentina’s digital government transformation.

“Starting with citizens’ needs and working backwards from this is how you connect silos and build the end-to-end services that touch different departments and different parts of the same agency – you design with citizens, not for them – you find out what their pain points are,” she adds.

The first task is journey mapping to understand the existing experience citizens have when they, for example, phone a call centre to access a service. Next, observe the users of that service as they go about their daily lives and then talk to them in focus groups to establish what matters to them. This is how to start designing digital services with the end user in mind from day one. 

Take advantage of available tools 

The main technology elements that enable digital interoperability are available, says Choy Peng Wu, AWS director of government transformation (ASEAN). “The ability for governments to know which information sits in which department and how to pull it out, those are not esoteric technologies, they are mature,” she explains. She adds that alongside the technology it’s essential to have “a good data management and sharing framework so people have trust in the system.”

Develop a single digital identity 

One of the most effective ways to enable citizens to interact with the whole of government quickly and seamlessly is to establish a single digital identity to access services online. Single digital identities also offer considerable benefits for governments themselves, providing a clear picture of an individual’s interactions across government agencies, reducing issues related to overlap or fraud. 

“For a real digital transformation centered on citizens’ needs, a digital ID is essential,” says María Inés Baque. She says the move to a single digital ID in Argentina was made more straightforward because people in the country were already used to showing their identity card to access services.

Case study – Aadhaar ID in India

The flagship digital identity scheme worldwide is in India. The country launched the Aadhaar ID scheme in 2009 to make it easier to get welfare payments to the poorest in society and to reduce fraud. Citizens submit eight items of personal data including name, date of birth, address and gender as well as a biometric. They then receive a unique 12-digit number following an iris scan and validation of a photograph and their fingerprints. Some 1.3 billion Indians now have an Aadhaar ID. In addition to accessing government services, identity authentication has enabled citizens to access bank accounts and mobile phone contracts, improving financial inclusion across the country.  

The ID provides authentication, authorisation and access. It delivers efficiency, effectiveness, reliability, transparency and accountability in provision of government services to citizens in an inclusive manner. The success of digital ID has been accompanied by the development of a thriving digital payments infrastructure in India, which together form the basis of India Stack. India Stack Global now provides 12 platforms for digital services, including payments and telemedicine.

In Singapore, a resident’s digital ID can be used in commercial transactions, such as with banks. The Philippines, Togo, Burkina- Faso, Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Sri Lanka are also working to adopt Aadahar-like ID systems and are currently at different stages of maturity.

Drive greater interoperability to better serve citizens

Organisations in the public sector have traditionally worked in silos towards very similar goals. As a result, citizens deal with fragmented public services with limited continuity or interoperability. Public sector organisations must look to design public services that put user needs first, taking advantage of shared capabilities such as authentication tools and API technologies. This will enable public sector organisations to build end-to-end services that not only work better for citizens but help governments themselves in minimizing overlap and fraud. The key enabler to maximising the benefits of greater interoperability is developing a single digital ID that allows citizens to interact with the whole of government quickly and seamlessly for their day to day needs. 

The AWS Institute report on which this series of articles has been based, Accelerate public service transformation with the cloud, can be downloaded in full here.