Top Three Criteria for Technologies used in Services Delivery
I just returned from a whirlwind tour visiting government agencies who face the common challenge: to deliver high quality services in a climate of tight budgets and growing demand.
Technology is often seen as a key component to increasing the efficiency of service delivery by providing ways citizens can self-serve, increasing staff productivity and streamline communication and collaboration.
This all sounds great - so what's the issue?
The fact is that not all technology is created equal. There are characteristics of certain technology that lend themselves to greater adoption by citizens, community-based organization and internal stakeholders. Some agencies have unfortunately learned this the hard way by deploying electronic forms or a self-service portal and finding user adoption to waver at about 10%.
Here are three key characteristics to consider in whatever technologies you adopt for services delivery:
Universal Access:
Does the proposed technology allow for the widest access by citizens and businesses across all software/hardware platforms?
Is the technology freely available to the public?
Offline Support:
Does the system support offline access to sustain workflows where constant Internet connection is not possible?
Support between paper and digital assets:
Does the technology support a hybrid system to allow for modernization without disenfranchising those that want to continue to interact with government via paper?
User adoption of any system is key. If citizens don't use the new system, nothing else matters...period.