Citizen Digital Series: How Digital Government Services Fare Around the World, With Bill Eggers

Deloitte’s Center for Government Insights recently conducted a global study on the digital citizen, surveying 6,000 people globally across 13 countries about their experiences as users of government services. The survey explores citizens’ challenges in accessing public services digitally. Eric spoke with Bill Eggers, executive director of the Center for Government Insights, about the survey’s findings, models for digital government around the world, and citizen experience of digital government as a whole.

Note: The Digital Citizen report will be officially released on April 19.

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Eric Egan: Hello and welcome to Citizen Digital an ITIF web series where I speak with experts in the United States and around the world to explore how digital technology can improve citizen experience. My name is Eric Egan. I'm the policy fellow for digital government at ITIF and with me today is Bill Eggers, executive director of Deloitte Center for Government Insights. Bill, thanks for joining us today.

Bill Eggers: Oh, it's great to be with you here today, Eric, with ITIF, which has truly long been one of my favorite think tanks in America.

Eric Egan: Well thanks for that. And I can say I've mentioned this to you before, but I'm a former Deloitter, so I've had the benefit of enjoying your research for years now, and I was actually thinking we could start there. So maybe just sharing really how the Center for Government Insights came to be and how you describe the work that your team does there.

Bill Eggers: Absolutely. So Eric, I've been working on government reform now, whether it's in think tanks or now at Deloitte and also with the state of Texas for three and a half decades. And for the last 20 years I have been leading Deloitte's public sector research and in that time written a bunch of books and hundreds of studies and we have something called the Center for Government Insights, which is really a public service and it's a, think of it as a in-house think tank at the world's largest professional services firm. We have 18 full-time researchers who are looking at issues of government management, technology, policy issues and so on.

And I think we produce about 50 to 60 studies a year, including our flagship product, which is our annual government trends report, which just came out a few weeks ago. I think we write more on government management issues and implementation and how do you actually get all this done than just about anyone else in the world at this point. And so it's a wonderful experience because we get to learn lessons from a lot of the work we're doing all over the world, from the UK to the US, to Canada, to Australia, to South Africa, and bring a lot of those field lessons, the lessons from the trenches to bear in our research and our writing.

Eric Egan: Yeah, that's great. I didn't realize it had been around for so long.

Bill Eggers: Well, the center actually had only been, it's only about five years old, the actual center, but I've been leading that research for two decades now.

Eric Egan: Nice. Yeah, yeah. It's a tenure to academic position here at Deloitte. I always appreciate it too, the way that the reports you all put out are... You do a really good job of curating the information in an accessible way, which is not always the case. I spend a lot of time looking at those types of reports. Sometimes it's a PDF document that's a hundred pages, but-

Bill Eggers: Oh no.

Eric Egan: The reports on the websites are really well organized. You can get to the meat and the takeaways of things-

Bill Eggers: Well, Eric, we actually think of it in the same way you would think of customer citizen experience in that you have to really focus on what are the needs of the user, really valuing their time, how do you make it as easy as possible for them to get the insights? Can you make the pages interactive? Can you make it come to life in different ways through video, other sort of interactive things and really saying that very few people have time to spend 50 hours on a single report. So we want to be able to distill those lessons learned in a very easy to manage way for our audience, which is government leaders all over the world.

Eric Egan: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You kind of saw through my segue there for my next question, which is obviously this series is about citizen experience specifically in government. And just from your point of view, how would you describe citizen experience? You're just hitting on it a little bit but, and not only that, but just citizen experience broadly, but also the role in which digital technology plays in that experience or increasingly plays maybe.

Bill Eggers: Sure. Well, the citizen experience has to be more than just measuring customer satisfaction, which was I think some of the early days of this. It's really about placing the citizen or the business at the center of government services and asking how to best meet their needs. And it means a mindset shift from customer experience as compliance to customer experience as citizen at the center. And by doing so you can uncover entirely new ways of delivering services such as life event-based service delivery. And it's really we architecting services around what the needs of the citizens are and businesses and really focusing on how do we reduce that friction, how do we go where they already are online and how do we make it as easy as possible to transact services, to apply for benefits and to get things done?

Because that's ultimately what people want to do. And the last thing that they want to do is try to understand all the complexities of government. Eric, when I go on to Amazon to order something, I have no idea how Amazon is internally organized and I don't need to. I just need to know what I want to look for, what I want to buy and be able to do that. And so really this is focused on how do we make really government services and delivery and benefits more like operating with the world-class private sector services we see with the institutions we interact with every day.

Eric Egan: Yeah, for sure. And I know you mentioned earlier that this is something that you're seeing happen all over the world and your research takes a look not only with digital transformation and citizen experience might be here in the US but also what's going on around the world and how can the US learn from that. And I know your son was recently working on a survey and a study around, global survey around the digital citizen. Can you share some and what did that entail? Could you share some of the findings, what was going on there?

Bill Eggers: Absolutely. And we're actually going to be releasing this study very soon. And we surveyed close to 6,000 people globally across 13 countries. And what we wanted to do was really unpack the perception of users of government experience and their challenges in accessing public services digitally. We looked at everything such as digital identity, willingness to share data, trust in government of those surveyed, and it follows on some surveys we've done of government officials. What we found was some interesting findings. So first of all, I started first writing about digital government over 20 years ago, and I ran the E-Texas Commission in Texas, which looked at this during the dot-com era. And there was a lot of hope there. And by now I would've thought that we would've had most interactions with government work through digital channels, yet only 25% of the respondents said often and always do they interact with government through digital channels.

So that leaves governments with really a long journey to increase the availability of digital services and adoption. We found that satisfaction with digital government services globally lag pretty far behind those at private sector services, 77% satisfaction in the private sector, 56% with government services. And we asked them, well, what are the major obstacles to interacting with government digitally? And what they said was that most preferred to interact with government through government websites and digitally, but navigating the websites and online services was cited as the biggest challenge while accessing government services. Other challenges were things such as privacy and security. And the good news is that these challenges can all be surmounted and especially the navigation part with better citizen experience, with really a focus on the user experience with the user interaction. And what we also found, there's a lot of reasons for optimism.

Respondents are very open to sharing data with government when there're clear benefits, they're willing to share data in exchange for personalized services tailored to their needs, interests and circumstances. And by the way, we found that UK respondents were the most willing to share data when there are clear benefits, which was a bit surprising to me. We also have found that better user experience can lead to higher satisfaction and trust in government. We actually found that a variety of surveys we've done both in the US and globally found a very high correlation between high satisfaction with interacting with government online and trust in government. So this is one of the best ways to improve trust in government is to improve your citizen experience overall. So really there's a long way to go still, but as we look at some of the leading countries around the world, whether it's Singapore, Estonia, New Zealand and others, governments can reach this level by just applying a lot of these basic strategies around user experience.

Eric Egan: Yeah, that's super interesting. And your point about the UK, that little bit, a bit of that surprise as you know I'm currently living in the UK, and when folks talk about digital IDs and that kind of thing, and it seems like there's supposed hesitancy, but it seems that from your findings, maybe the hesitancy is maybe not necessarily because of sharing the data, maybe it's some kind of other hesitancy, but it's really a receptiveness to sharing data if it does improve and streamline the experience with government services.

And I'm wondering, I have a question here and I'm wondering if this, the barrier, the issue of experiencing digital services and the issues with those experiences, is it more of on the UX side or is part of it also on the identification verification side, which is, so both can could be noticeable barriers if you go to a poorly designed website, like I just don't know what I'm doing here. But on the other side, it could be, for instance, I'm thinking off the top of my head, passport services in the US where you go in and you're trying to apply, you have to fill out a PDF, you have to prove your identity by going to Walgreens and taking a... You have to do a lot of these things to just prove who you are. And something like a digital ID could maybe cut through that a little bit so I wonder if that's something you all have considered and thought about it.

Bill Eggers: Absolutely, Eric. We've written a lot on digital ID over the last few years and it is one of the core elements you need for really taking digital transformation to the next level. Without a secure digital identity you're not going to be able to do various transactions across government agencies. When you look in an Estonia where basically and throughout Europe that tell us once only philosophy where you only need to give government your information once and then it will be shared through Europe and having that digital identity, you can't have that without a digital identity. So it's absolutely critical. And then this area, we have much of Europe, head of the US and Canada right now through the once only sort of initiative, which has been around for a while. And in the UK, I think there's a great example of this in terms of a life event around the death of a loved one where previously before the Tell Us Once initiative, you had to maybe notify 44 different government agencies when you had the very hard experience of a death of a loved one and now you only have to do that once.

And that's a real game changer, a life changer for many families that are going through this very, very difficult experience. And so the secure digital identity is really key. You're sitting there in the UK right now, and what we found was that 76% of UK citizens are open to a single secured digital identity to access all government services. And that's the highest of any country, including some countries which already have a uniform digital identity. So this is a really, really key element to making this all happen. It's easier in some countries, smaller countries, other countries without multiple levels of government than others. So in the US right now, one of our difficulties is you have the federal government with social security numbers and so on. You have the state level, the Department of Motor Vehicles, which really wants to own a lot of the digital identity.

And then you have of course city and county levels. And so the cross governmental and the more levels of government you have, the more doing a lot of digital transformation is more difficult and more complex and more challenging for sure. But it certainly can be done. And our survey shows very much so that citizens are willing to provide this information, having a digital identity, and especially if they are having to provide repetitive information and they believe that is a hassle. And we found that 72% of respondents who are hassled by having to repeatedly provide information to government agencies are more likely to be open to adopting a digital identity. So again, a lot of reason for optimism, I think citizens are ready to go to the next level with tailored personalized services, digital identity and so on.

Eric Egan: Yeah, no, that's interesting. And you hit on this already as you'd mentioned that there are other countries that are seemingly doing digital transformation and arguably better. So you've mentioned Singapore, Estonia, UK. Is there, maybe digital IDs is one. Are there lessons learned, especially as you've engaged in this global survey and this global study? What can the Biden administration or Congress do right now that is, that it's always at ITIF we talk about it all the time. It's like why is this still seem like it's so slow? You hit on some of it, which is the federated structure.

Bill Eggers: Yeah.

Eric Egan: The government in the United States is a big challenge, but what are the things that either they're low hanging fruits or they're like let's get the ball rolling kind of investments now because they'll take quite a while. Are there any lessons learned from these world-class programs that may be out there that the US just isn't doing that they really need to start working on?

Bill Eggers: Absolutely. And Eric, I actually testified before Congress on this exact subject last summer, and it was a whole session on putting people first, building trust in government through customer experience. And we talked about what needs to be happen to take the US to the next level. So when we look at other countries around the world one of the things is funding. Certainly we have something called the technology modernization fund design for high impact CX projects now. It's a very good start. There's a couple hundred million dollars in there, but more is really needed. In Australia the state of New South Wales has allocated more than 2 billion in its digital restart fund to accelerate life events in whole of government digital transformation.

And you look at New Zealand, which has a whole governance structure around their cross-sector life events approach to making this happen. So there's governance issues. Flexibility is important. Doing this well requires agencies to have flexibility and inter-agency mechanisms to pool funds, second employees from agencies for these projects. And a real key thing is around this notion of cross-government services because in the US here, when you look at things like a life events focus with, whether it's around birth or death or a new job or other areas, these all go across oftentimes four levels of government or three levels of government.

So there has to be a lot more data sharing, collaboration at the federal, state, local level. More difficult to do here with all of our levels of government, but certainly doable. I have to really give props to the Biden administration and the Office of Management and Budget for their real big focus right now on life events, service delivery and CX where they've rolled out whole variety of different services around everything from retirement to disability to birth and death to really accelerate this and put a lot of political capital in a way behind this. But we are going to have to really get a handle on the digital identity element to truly accelerate it here in the US to see the sort of real improvements we've seen in some of the leading countries who are often smaller countries, but not always.

Eric Egan: Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. The Biden administration, obviously with the CX executive order and recently they shared some information about life experiences and life events and you're touching on a little bit of these. And I wonder if, again, bringing global examples back to the US, is there, it's very intuitive, the idea, the concept of priority life events and life experiences. When you're thinking about the way you engage, especially the federal level government, it's not really like let me go to this website in this particular department to do this. That's not really how you think about a moment.

Bill Eggers: Right.

Eric Egan: So it's intuitive, it makes sense to us, but what does that look like in practice? So I know we've talked about Estonia, they have X-Road and a lot of it is about data sharing. Are there examples of that experience that you've seen elsewhere where instead of it being this siloed, let me go to nine websites, it might be the experience in the USA?

Bill Eggers: Right. Right. Right.

Eric Egan: What's an example maybe abroad where it's like, oh, for this particular life event, this is what happens?

Bill Eggers: Absolutely. And we also released last summer a whole study on how do you actually do life events? How do you make this happen? And so I encourage the listeners to access that study, just look up life events and Deloitte. But let me talk about a few examples. In Portugal, Ukrainian refugees now can apply for temporary protection status through an online portal or in person. Once the application is approved, the refugees automatically receive three identifiers at one time, a social security ID number, a tax ID number, and a national health service number. And so there's multiple agencies behind issuing these numbers, but those are invisible to the actual users. And that's really the crux of life event services.

A great example there for such an important issue in Singapore, they have a mobile app called LifeSG. It offers more than 70 government services through a single interface. The app covers life events like the birth of a baby, retirement, unemployment, and many others. In Finland, they have something called AuroraAI. And if you are looking to make a job change, you need retraining, any sort of issues around upskilling, unemployment, with the app actually helps you to do is it will take a lot of different government services and curate them and will say, here are some training you can use, here are some potential job opportunities, here are some educational opportunities and using AI to do so, which I think is really the future when you look at kind of ChatGPT, Generative AI, where you're going to be able to have government being much more proactive about service delivery and offering the sort of advice that citizens really, really need.

So I think we're at the really cusp of taking this to a whole nother level, and especially as we look at contact centers and other sort of interactions where people are going to be able to get very empathetic, inclusive, human positive experiences by using some of these new technologies and being able to do what they need very quickly in a tailored, personalized way as opposed to a one size fits all approach which we've seen in the past.

Eric Egan: Yeah, that's great. So many wonderful use cases out there. It's no longer kind of a pie in the sky. It's really things that are, we're seeing and we're happening around the world. So yeah, that's really cool. I know we're running short on time, so I'll leave it with one final question, and maybe you've already answered this to some degree, but so when you think about citizen experience in digital government, what excites you most? Maybe it's something you've talked about already, maybe you mentioned AI for instance. Is there anything that you really think is maybe more under the radar but that you think is really exciting or maybe it's something that is not under the radar?

Bill Eggers: That's a great question, Eric. It actually revolves around something I wrote about over 20 years ago in a article for public CIO called The Invisible State. And in that what I posited was that I think what we can see in the future is where government is going to where you're already interacting and you're able to interact with and complete a lot of government transactions, benefits, applications without actually maybe even going to a government website, through channel partnerships with your banks, the automobile dealers, with organizations that you're already interacting with. And it's woven seamlessly into whether it's life events or other transactions, Australia is now moving towards a model in their life events approach where they're also involving the private sector, nonprofit sector and trying to bundle these. And we have the technology to be able to do so. We have the data sharing elements that we can do this.

And then what it is doing is really reducing friction and really helping out more people. So I see a world of where increasingly the sort of friction that people might encounter and some frustration and having to provide all this repetitive information again and again, really starts to go away. And that's what Estonia's calling frictionless government in a way. And oftentimes where you're interacting with government and there's a little friction there, you barely even recognize that you're doing so. And so I think that is the next stage of this. And I think Generative AI and certainly the focus on life events, customer experience, tailored service delivery are going to play a big role in them.

Eric Egan: Yeah, that's really cool. It's kind of the concept of no touch eligibility, determination, really, really on steroids, but more pervasive, which is a super cool concept, but as you said, very doable. Well, I think that's all the time we have for this episode. Bill, thanks again for joining us. This was a great conversation as I expected.

Bill Eggers: Well, thank you so much, Eric, and thank you for all the work that ITIF does, which is some of the most in-depth nonpartisan and just really wonderful work on the impact of technology on our lives, on government, and looking at it from a very dynamist perspective, which is something I truly appreciate. And so thank you for your work and thank you for having me on today.

Eric Egan: Thank you. We appreciate you saying that for sure. And for those watching, don't forget to subscribe to ITIF on YouTube for other great content and for more episodes of Citizen Digital, which will be coming soon. Bye now.

Bill Eggers: Bye now. Thank you.