Technology in the Public Sector

Accenture report - Leadership in Customer Service

I've just read the new report from Accenture - 'Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations, New Experiences'. The report is an impressive global survey of e-Government, in which Accenture make the case for a new vision of government service delivery.

The report is 108 pages long, so I won't try and cover it in depth here, but here are a few highlights.

I found the country case studies particularly interesting. I always saw the UK as quite advanced in e-Government, but according to Accenture's criteria the UK is merely a 'follower' (as opposed to 'trendsetter' or a 'challenger'). Canada leads the way in overall maturity of service delivery, followed by the United States and Denmark.

I was also intrigued by the 'telephone paradox', a term coined to describe the finding that, although the telephone is the most popular channel for accessing government services, it is consistently ranked by citizens as the least easy channel to use.

The 'telephone paradox' suggests that useability isn't the major issue when it comes to moving people from the telephone to channels like the web. However, we should seek to replicate some of the benefits that people see in using the phone in the way that we deliver services online.

Obviously it's hard to replicate, in a web interface, the responsiveness of talking to a human being over the telephone. But others perceived benefits of using the phone - such as dealing with an identifiable, named  individual - could be replicated through good CRM.

According to the report Canada has also been experimenting with combining web and phone with call-back features on line - thus combining web and phone. I've tried this with websites n the commercial sector with some success; an instant response from a customer service advisor gives a great impression and combined with a good website provides a powerful customer service tool.

e-Government part of a broader customer service agenda

Yesterday the Society of Public Information Networks (SPIN) held a conference centred around the subject of Local Authority websites.

I co-delivered a speech with Lindsay Ould (London Borough of Lewisham) on how to ensure that user need and business objectives are at the core of your site design and customer experience. 

The conference was entitled 'Useful, usable, used' and was attended by around 100 people from local government, community sector and other public services. The audience was mainly made up IT Managers, Corporate and Customer Services Policy Officers,e-Government Development Officers; and website practitioners.

A number of interesting themes emerged from the day:

• A few speakers argued, convincingly, that you can achieve a good customer experience without big investments in technology.
• In particular the need for a Content Management System was questioned by website managers that had performed well in the SOCITM Better Connected Survey. 'You can have a content management system without content management technology' was one comment.
• The need for e-Government to become part of a broader customer service agenda was also a strong theme, argued for by me and a number of other speakers.

I was encouraged by the strong emphasis on good content and service delivery, rather than the technology that enables it. I also liked the practical edge to many of the speakers comments - for example, the obvious, but important, insight that if you are going to improve access to a service by making it available online you'd better have the staff to cope with the increased uptake!

I hope that some of these laudibly pragmatic attitudes don't turn into a further lowering of horizons of what can be achieved in e-Government.

Other highlights were Stella Dextre Clarke and Sheila Apicella presenting on the newly released Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV, pronounced ips-vee) - a merger of the GCL, LGCL and Seemless vocabularies.

You can implement it instead of LGCL and GCL right now. Take a look at IPSV here.

I'll post a link to the presentations when they appear online.

Minister of Communities and Local Government to take on responsibility for e-Government

In the wake of the recent elections it's been reported that a  Minister for Communities and Local Government will be appointed of Cabinet rank.

"The Minister of Communities and Local Government, David Miliband, will be taking a close look at e-Government and the way that ODPM is involved (alongside Cabinet Office e-Government Unit and HM-Treasury / OGC especially).

This strengthening of the Ministerial team also aims to allow ODPM to play a wider role on cross departmental issues. With IEG 4, IEG 4.5 and some hefty projects needing implementation, hopefully things can start moving swiftly now that the election campaign is over.

Miliband will also be a central figure in shaping the future strategies for intermediaries delivering e-Government services."

Public Technology

News and comment on IT in the UK Public Sector

I'm a technology consultant based in London. Having worked around the UK Public Sector and E-Government for a couple of years I felt there was enough going around this area to warrant a blog that attempts to pull together the business and technology threads in this sector.

It's worth declaring a few biases from the start:

• I work mostly with Microsoft technologies and I'll be mostly tracking developments in this area. I'm not an M$ drone, but you'll not get much enlightenment from me if you want to know about the latest developments in Java or LAMP.
• I'm mostly into Portal Technologies; website, intranets, search and integration - that kind of thing.
• I'm a bit of a metadata geek - I'm seriously enthusiatsic about the idea of the semantic web and anything I can do in the here-and-now to help it along, I will. So E-GMS, E-GIF all that stuff that's my cup of tea.

So I suppose that if you've read this inaugural post you are either thinking 'this man is seriously boring' or 'OK I'll check this later and see if he posts anything interesting'.

Either way, my task over the next few months is to make this  a must-read for the (admitedly) niche audience that it is aimed at. If you happen to share some of the above interests, maybe you'll follow this blog and post your views.

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