From E-government To E-governance

From e-Government to e-Governance Using new technologies to strengthen relationships with citizens

Contents 1 Introduction: Strengthening governance.................................................. 1 2 Focusing on improved outcomes................................................................. 6 3 Balancing choice and common good......................................................... 11 4 Engaging, educating and enrolling citizens as co-producers.............. 15 5 Improving accountability and transparency............................................. 20 6 The journey to e-governance........................................................................ 25

1. Introduction: Strengthening governance

As citizens’ expectations of government have increased, so has the pressure to improve public services. With access to more information than ever before, people are becoming more knowledgeable, more vocal about their needs and more sophisticated in their expectations of how government should meet those needs. At the same time, of course, governments are under growing pressure to do more with less. Budgets are static or shrinking—even as citizen expectations and demand for services continue to grow. Over the last decade, public service organizations around the world have invested heavily in technologies to improve service delivery and realize cost efficiencies. Collectively known as “e-government,” these initiatives were designed to meet a range of organizational challenges—such as improving public access to information and services through online channels; sharing data within and across organizations; improving the efficiency of business processes; and managing organizational performance. 1

While investment in e-government has delivered significant benefits, these solutions also have limitations when it comes to public service delivery and reform. People are no longer content to be passive consumers of services. They expect a different kind of relationship with their government— one that places individual needs and expectations at the heart of public service planning and delivery. This new relationship is characterized by the more active involvement of citizens and other stakeholders in identifying priorities, influencing decision making, shaping policies, designing services, holding governments accountable for results and even jointly contributing to service delivery. In light of today’s changing citizen expectations, governments have begun developing strategies to not only enhance efficiency and effectiveness, but also to strengthen the relationship between government and citizens. While e-government has been largely a one-way street—with government

delivering and citizens receiving—these new e-governance strategies enable government and citizens to engage and partner with each other and other stakeholders. In doing so, they are leveraging new technologies and modifying conventional service provision in innovative ways to create public value. It is a development that is gaining momentum as citizens respond positively to the new information, debate and participation that government and non-governmental community e-governance tools make possible. To learn more about what citizens expect and can contribute, the Accenture Institute for Health & Public Service Value has been conducting the Global Cities Forum, an ongoing international study into how members of the public define “public value” and what they believe government should be doing to help improve the quality of their lives.1 Launched in 2007, the study involves a series of citizen panels in cities around the world. Through

2

The framework is built around four components:

these daylong panels, local residents discuss and debate their views of government and public services. During the first phase, we conducted Forums in Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, New York, Paris, Singapore and Sydney. In 2008, we continued with panels in Dublin, Oslo, Rome, Tokyo and Toronto. In 2009, we are conducting Global Cities Forum panels in Austin, Johannesburg, Mexico City, New Delhi and Rio de Janeiro.

1.  Outcomes—Focusing on improved social and economic conditions for citizens—such as health, learning and safety—and not merely on the amount of services provided or on efficiency. 2.  Balance—Balancing choice and flexibility with fairness and common good, being mindful that narrow application of either can widen gaps between those who are able to take advantage of service improvements and those who are not.

Through the Global Cities Forum, we have learned that people do indeed want to become more engaged in their governance. They want to be more informed and to have a bigger say in how government acts to make their lives better. From that learning, we formulated what we believe to be a compelling model for a more active, trust-based relationship between people and their governments. The Accenture Public Service Value Governance Framework represents a more publicly engaged model of governance, one that connects people—as citizens, service users and taxpayers—with those whom they elect to lead them and to shape and direct their public services.

3.  Engagement—Engaging, educating and enrolling citizens as co-producers of public value by eliciting their views, helping clarify their perceptions and enabling them to make best use of government resources and to contribute to improving their own quality of life. 4.  Accountability—Clarifying accountability, being more transparent about government actions and performance, and facilitating public recourse by providing accessible means to remedy problems with government and public services. Together, these highly interrelated components articulate a relationship that is about genuine engagement of people in their governance—not one that is merely about voting in elections, answering surveys or paying taxes, as important as these things are.

m tc o

en t m

ge En ga

Ou

e

y lit

bi

ta un

3

nc la

Public Service Value

co Ac

Government

Ba

es

Accenture Public Service Value Governance Framework

Citizen Service User Taxpayer

We consider this type of engagement critical to governments’ ability to achieve high performance and deliver greater public value. Over the last several months, we have undertaken a follow-up study: an examination of how governments are using new technologies, and older technologies in innovative ways, to strengthen their relationships with citizens and residents and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services. In particular, we have explored how governments are addressing the four components of the Accenture Public Service Value Governance Framework. From an operational perspective, we have found that governments are using technology to enable cross-sector, governmentwide collaboration by investing in: •  Enterprise-wide data sharing through shared information workflows and standardized data models. •  Standardized architectures, protocols and applications across agencies. •  Interfaces that support collaboration between organizations—for example, dashboards and enterprise search capabilities. •  Enhanced content and record management capabilities to enable employees from across government to access citizen data in multiple formats. •  Shared business process management platforms to manage complex, shared workflows. Governments are also investing in citizen-facing technologies that enable a more meaningful discourse between citizens and public service organizations—one that makes it possible for individuals to partner with government in creating public value and to participate in their own governance as never before. Many of these initiatives leverage web 2.0 technologies that empower people to connect with each other and with government through interactive forums, blogs, wikis, e-participation tools and social

networking platforms. Some use web 2.0 technologies to maximize the value of shared information by opening government data vaults to the public and encouraging them to create mash-ups, applications and widgets to solve real-world problems.

Engagement

This study explores the strategic intent that is driving and shaping these operational and citizen-facing initiatives.

•  Educating citizens and encouraging participation through online training and learning resources

We have found that governments around the world are adopting new strategies and adapting old ones to better engage the public, deliver more effective public services and enable citizens to participate in their governance. Through our research, we have identified 10 e-governance strategies that government is using to strengthen the governance relationship. Not all governments are implementing all of these strategies, and some are implementing more rapidly or extensively than others.

•  Increasing transparency and accountability by developing webbased tools to report on results achieved

Often interlinked and interdependent, the strategies can be clustered around the four components of the Accenture Public Service Value Governance Framework: Outcomes •  Focusing performance management on actual improvements in people’s social and economic conditions •  Continually improving the customer experience by soliciting service user and customer feedback •  Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Balance •  Conducting customer segmentation analysis and using customer insight to target services appropriately •  Ensuring that more citizens can access and use digital media channels and providing support to those who cannot

•  Enabling citizens to engage with each other through social networking technologies •  Enabling citizens to participate in their governance through digital media

Accountability

•  Enabling citizens to report problems and resolve complaints through online channels By adopting these strategies, government and public service organizations are transforming their relationships with people from one of dependency or even cynicism to one of shared responsibility. As this transformation occurs, governments are finding themselves better placed to deliver improved services and social outcomes that address people’s whole life needs. That, in turn, is building trust among customers and citizens in the role that government can play in their lives. This report elaborates on the findings of our first study of the evolution from e-government to e-governance. We describe the 10 strategies more fully and present examples of their implementation. In keeping with our intent—to find ways in which government can actually strengthen governance— we have organized the report around the four components of the governance framework. We describe the components in more detail, outlining some of the key themes that underpin each and providing short examples to illustrate good practice. It should be noted that the organizations and initiatives we feature are, in many cases, demonstrating progress in implementing more than one component of the governance framework.

Based on our findings and recommendations, we also outline a set of key practices public service organizations should consider adopting to drive, shape and manage their journey to e-governance: 1.  Develop a citizen-centric vision of governance 2.  Tailor services and communications to meet user needs and preferences 3.  Strengthen and foster the capacity to innovate by creating a sense of ownership within the workforce 4.  Aim for success in terms of improved service quality and increased citizen trust in government These practices are central to any government’s ability to strengthen its relationship with the people it serves. They provide important guidance to public service leaders who seek to achieve high performance and deliver improved social and economic outcomes for citizens. Finally, we acknowledge that this study and our learning are works in progress. Just as the demands and contributions of citizens and the responses and tools available to government are evolving over time, our work will continue to evolve as we track governments’ progress in the transformation to e-governance.

4

Summary of e-governance strategies The Accenture Public Service e-Governance Strategies Value Governance Framework

Examples

Outcomes

Focusing performance management on actual improvements in people’s social and economic conditions

• United Kingdom: Public Service Agreements • United States: EHSResults! Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services

Continually improving the customer experience by soliciting service user and customer feedback

• Dubai: eComplain System • Singapore: Reaching Everyone for Active Citizenry @ Home (REACH)

Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision

• Australia: Australian Tax Office Change Program • Canada: GCPedia • Finland: Finnish Immigration Services • Italy: Linea Amica • Italy: Magellano • United States: Cloud Computing in the District of Columbia • United States: FEMA Risk MAP • United States: GovLoop

Conducting customer segmentation analysis and using customer insight to target services appropriately

• Australia: STRONG Families Western Australia • Canada: WelcomeBC • Sweden: Försäkringskassan • United Kingdom: Northumberland County Council and Mosaic Public Services • United States: NYC 311

Ensuring that more citizens can access and use digital media channels and providing support to those who cannot

• Lithuania: Windows to the Future Alliance • Malaysia: MySMS • Singapore: CPF Board m-Ambassadors

Enabling citizens to engage with each other through social networking technologies

• France 2025 • United Kingdom: MySociety.org • United States: District of Columbia’s Digital Public Square

Enabling citizens to participate in their governance through digital media

• Australia: Country Fire Authority and the Victoria Fires Map • Scotland, UK: e-Petitioner • The Netherlands: The Dutch e-Citizen Charter • United Kingdom: Online Watch Link • United States: The Whitehouse Open for Questions

Educating citizens and encouraging participation through online training and learning resources

• New Zealand: Wellington Budget Simulator • Norway: NAV eLearning • United Kingdom: Change4Life • United States: Kentucky Open Door

Increasing transparency and accountability by developing web-based tools to report on results achieved

• United States: NYC Citywide Performance Reporting and My Neighborhood Statistics • United States: NYCStat Stimulus Tracker • United States: Recovery.gov • United States: The IT Dashboard

Enabling citizens to report problems and resolve complaints through online channels

• India: Lokvani • United Kingdom: Community Fix

Balance

Engagement

Accountability

5

2. Focusing on improved outcomes

Today, government is serving a customer base that is more sophisticated and enlightened. People’s expectations have risen in line with the quality of services many private-sector companies offer. As such, people expect public services to be better targeted, more personalized, more responsive and more efficient than in the past. Even so, they still judge public services on the basis of the outcomes they achieve—that is, the actual differences that services make to people’s quality of life through, for instance, better learning, public safety or health. Through Accenture’s Global Cities Forum research, we have found that citizens are very concerned about government waste and want public service organizations to ensure that their operations are as efficient and effective as possible. By improving the efficiency of public services, governments can make savings in the back office that can be re-invested in citizenfacing functions—enabling them

to deliver more accessible, higherquality public services that improve social and economic outcomes. Improving the effectiveness of public services requires government to develop a deep understanding of citizens’ needs and preferences. Only then can public organizations design services that deliver improved outcomes in the areas that citizens prioritize. However, citizens’ needs and expectations are not constant; they are shaped by changes in personal circumstances as well as by major political, economic or social changes over time. While the role of government largely remains the same— to protect, maintain and enhance the welfare of citizens—the outcomes people expect government to deliver are more fluid. Therefore, to deliver public services that lead to improved outcomes, government must be quick to respond to citizens’ changing needs and deliver flexible public services that can adapt to changing customer demand.

To be flexible and responsive, government must place customers’ needs at the heart of their service delivery strategies. They must solicit and use customer feedback as the basis for meaningful change in the delivery of services, integrating it into their long-term planning, service delivery and decision-making processes. Achieving a greater level of citizen centricity requires significant organizational change, including multi-agency collaboration around cross-cutting outcomes. This approach involves joining up public services around citizens’ needs and circumstances or life events— developing collaborative ways of working across government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, community groups and even citizens themselves. It also calls for greater coordination and the integration of policies, program design and service delivery across multiple organizations.

6

7

High-performance public service organizations are finding ways to work together more effectively by developing joint visions and strategic plans that reflect shared goals; by establishing joint accountability and governance frameworks; by integrating their processes, procedures and information systems; by managing budgets and assets in pursuit of common goals; and by deploying their staff more effectively across a range of services. To help break down service silos, organizations are increasingly turning to web 2.0 and other information technologies to overcome the cultural, organizational and technical obstacles to collaboration and enable government to work effectively across organizational boundaries.

e-Governance strategies Delivering improved social and economic outcomes for citizens requires public service organizations to deliver services more efficiently and effectively while realigning their internal operations, decision-making processes and organizational values around citizen-centric outcomes. We have identified three e-governance strategies government is using to drive the required cultural, organizational and technological change: •  Focusing performance management on actual improvements in people’s social and economic conditions •  Continually improving the customer experience by soliciting service user and customer feedback •  Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Focusing performance management on actual improvements in people’s social and economic conditions To create public value, public service organizations must translate resources into real and beneficial outcomes for the people they serve. Using these outcomes to measure organizational performance can make a real difference, both for governments

seeking to deliver dramatically improved outcomes for their constituents and for the citizens they serve. Measuring outcomes is not the same as measuring inputs, processes or outputs. For example, in a secondary school system the number of teaching hours per student is an example of an input; the quality of the curriculum is a process; the average exam results of students is an output. A corresponding educational outcome measure is how many students go on to further education or employment. In our 2007 study into how public service organizations around the world are using performance management, we found that some public service organizations are beginning to use performance management in a strategic way to plan, develop and manage future organizational capability. The purpose: to deliver improved social and economic outcomes rather than simply retrospective accountability and reward.2 This kind of outcomefocused performance management enables governments to organize their activities and budgets around the results that matter to citizens; to transform public service organizations from reactive, inward-focused entities into proactive agencies focused on creating greater public value; and to monitor how effectively and efficiently they are delivering outcomes that improve constituents’ quality of life. Outcome-focused performance management helps public service organizations drive enterprisewide cultural change and break down service silos by encouraging organizations to collaborate around shared outcome targets and by challenging entrenched working practices, organizational boundaries and corporate values. For instance, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) is using outcome-focused performance management to deliver citizen-centric change by developing cross-agency strategic goals defined around improved outcomes for citizens. The EOHSS

uses dashboards to communicate progress toward these goals and support fact-based decision making. Continually improving the customer experience by soliciting service user and customer feedback Our recent Leadership in Customer Service study found that highperforming public service organizations are using customer feedback to improve services, business processes and customer interfaces— ensuring that these are designed with customers in mind.3 This is enabling government to create more effective, customer-centric services that meet the real needs of their customers, not just of the service provider. However, governments are beginning to realize that to deliver services that are responsive to the needs of citizens, they must develop highly effective means of soliciting detailed service and organization-specific customer feedback so it can be used as the basis for long-term planning and service delivery. As a result, governments are turning to new media, such as government and community websites and collaborative social networking tools, alongside more traditional channels, such as mail and call centers, to solicit customer feedback. An increasing number of public service organizations are realizing that platforms designed to solicit customer feedback must be part of a broader customer service strategy. That way, customer input feeds into long-term planning and makes a meaningful difference to the delivery of public services. To that end, public service organizations are developing strategies to interpret, evaluate and visualize (that is, to represent a data set graphically) customer feedback as a means of improving services. Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Governments are striving to deliver improved social and economic outcomes for citizens by using information technology in new ways to improve the accessibility of public services and information about public services; to reduce the cost of 8

interacting with citizens by moving services online and automating transactions; to enable organizations to collect, use and share customer data more effectively; to enable and reduce the cost of collaboration across government; and to improve the efficiency of public service organizations’ operations. Some of the most innovative public service organizations are delivering more effective public services by using Enterprise 2.0 technologies to enable government-wide collaboration around cross-cutting outcomes. They are also investing in cloud computing strategies to improve the efficiency of their operations. Traditional approaches to e-government improved the accessibility of public services but did little to break down service silos or deliver citizen-centric government. Public service organizations are increasingly using new technologies, and older technologies in new ways, to enable employees to collaborate more effectively, break down service silos and join up services in meeting customers’ needs. Increasingly, public and private organizations are using web 2.0 technologies and community tools to improve productivity, enable collaboration and support organizational change. Enterprise 2.0 technologies, such as mashups, blogs, social networking tools, wikis, collaborative planning software and rich Internet applications, are being created and used by public service organizations. These technologies are providing employees with new collaborative tools, enhanced enterprise-wide search functionality and data sharing, authoring and ideasharing platforms and real-time access to information. Governments are already using social networking technologies to enable and reduce the cost of collaboration between organizations, improve information sharing and encourage innovation. For example, in October 2008 the Government 9

of Canada launched GCpedia, a government-wide collaboration platform that is an internal version of the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Similarly, since 2006 the United States government has used Intellipedia, a platform similar to Wikipedia, to share intelligence information between 16 agencies of the intelligence community and other relevant government organizations. Government employees are also using social networking technologies to collaborate and share ideas. For example, GovLoop is a public social networking site, set up by government employees, which connects over 9,000 government employees, academics and contractors from around the world. Using the site, they can share ideas, explore opportunities and debate and discuss issues facing government. Public service organizations are also beginning to explore how cloud computing can be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services while providing employees with more computing power at a reduced cost. Cloud computing services enable employees to access everyday business applications over the Internet using a web browser. The actual software and data is stored on servers, rather than on employees’ desktops. Increasingly, governments are realizing that although the cost of implementing a cloud-based desktop strategy may be high, there are significant potential benefits— including reduced capital expenditure on IT, hardware and location independence, improved resource sharing and scalability.

Recommendations From our research, we have developed four recommendations that we believe will help public managers drive and shape the organizational, cultural and technical change required to enable their organization to deliver improved social and economic outcomes for citizens.

Develop a compelling citizencentric vision It is important for public service organizations to provide the public with a coherent, convincing vision that demonstrates the actions government is taking to deliver improved social and economic outcomes. An organization’s citizen-centric vision should be encapsulated in a simple statement that sums up the core benefits to the customer and persuades constituents that government is committed to providing better services and improving people’s quality of life. A comprehensive communications strategy should then be developed around this vision. This communications strategy will enable government to better manage the citizen perspective, improve the effectiveness of engagement initiatives designed to solicit feedback and support future efforts to educate and enroll the public as co-producers of public value. Co-production involves citizens and service users contributing their time, skills and ideas to improve social conditions for themselves and their communities, for example, by acting as student mentors, as members of community safety associations, or even in taking steps to prevent ill health.

Enable and drive collaboration around improved social and economic outcomes To deliver improved outcomes, public service delivery must use citizencentric rather than organizational or process-driven logic. Organizing service delivery strategies around cross-cutting outcomes is a major challenge, in part because it requires unprecedented collaboration across organizational boundaries that have been reinforced over time by technical, cultural and organizational developments within agencies and service-silos. Breaking down service silos and enabling multi-agency, cross-sector collaboration requires investment in shared IT systems, common outcomecentric governance processes and

budgets, and workforce transformation to bring about more collaborative ways of working. A crucial first step is the implementation of outcome-focused performance management that challenges siloed ways of working and rewards effective collaboration. Effective outcome-focused performance management requires organizations to develop: •  Customer- or user-centric rather than producer-driven strategic goals that are aligned to clearly articulated measures of performance developed around improved social and economic outcomes. •  Outward-focused processes that ensure goals and objectives reflect evolving stakeholder expectations, political context and organizational capabilities. •  Performance objectives that are linked directly to organizations’ plans and budgets that are based on achieving this year’s policy objectives rather than adjusting last year’s actual spending. •  Individual employees’ objectives and incentives explicitly connected to organizational goals that cut across the organization. •  Processes that ensure regular evaluation and reporting of performance results. •  Feedback mechanisms that enable information and analysis from the performance management system to be regularly fed back into strategic planning, creating a learning loop that drives continuous improvement. Although there is no universal model for the implementation of outcomefocused performance management systems across different sectors and organizations, all successful implementations will: •  Define the corporate mission (around citizen-centric government) and strategic targets (around outcomes) that the new performance management system will seek to achieve. This approach will help to secure active political support and

firm senior-executive commitment to implement the performance management system and see it through to the point where continuing improvement is realized. •  Design the performance management system, taking into account current organizational, cultural and technological enablers of and obstacles to change. The new system should foster and enable integration and collaboration between the departments or agencies as needed to deliver intended outcomes. •  Plan the roll out of the new performance management system and ensure the right infrastructure is in place to support the change process. A dedicated professional team should be responsible for implementing the outcome-focused performance management system. •  Encourage open dialogue about organizational results with all stakeholders by reporting performance management findings as transparently as local laws and regulations allow. •  Use performance-management findings to develop organizational capability and capacity, to continually learn and to drive future performance improvement.

Listen to customers Putting the customer experience at the heart of public service delivery enables government to deliver flexible services that meet people’s needs and effect real improvement in their quality of life. To deliver more effective public services, organizations must solicit customer feedback, use it strategically to drive improvements in service delivery and then evaluate their performance in terms of improved outcomes. We have identified five key practices that public service organizations should consider when developing initiatives and online tools designed to solicit customer feedback: •  Customer feedback should be viewed as a valuable strategic asset. Public service organizations should

analyze and evaluate customer feedback to highlight weaknesses and then use it in performance management, decision making and strategic planning to drive improvements in service delivery. •  Government should proactively solicit customer feedback as frequently as possible. Customers should be invited to provide feedback at any point of interaction with the organization and through a variety of channels, from a website visit to a face-to-face consultation. •  Customers should be able to provide input using a number of different channels—for example, websites, email, traditional mail, face to face, over the phone and through social networking sites. They should also be able to track the status of their suggestion or complaint so they are assured that government values and acts on their input. •  Front-office employees should value customer feedback and view it as an essential means of gaining insights that will help them improve the customer experience and overall service delivery. This may require a comprehensive training and communications strategy to drive cultural change.

Use new technologies to improve productivity and reduce costs Reducing the cost to serve citizens requires public service organizations to invest in the infrastructure, enterprise architecture and data warehousing solutions that support Enterprise 2.0 technologies while adopting cloudbased desktop strategies that give employees enhanced computing power at reduced cost. With this approach, government employees can collaborate more effectively in the delivery of personalized public services that meet customers’ complex needs and maximize operational efficiencies. Organizations can then channel backoffice and IT savings into citizenfacing services.

10

3. Balancing choice and common good

Through our Global Cities Forum study, we have learned that people want governments to tailor service provision to meet the wide range of needs across the population. People are increasingly accustomed to privatesector services that respond flexibly and discriminatingly to their individual demands. They see little reason why government cannot do the same. For example, as service users, people want more choice in the type and means of service delivery: better public transport and improved roads, services available in person and online, a wider choice of schools and doctors and more convenient service hours. However, people also want government to strive toward fairness and equality. Although they want everyone to have more choice, they recognize that without support, some people—those who are not as highly skilled or educated or as highly equipped because of lack of income— will be unable to exercise that choice and thus will be comparatively worse off as a result. 11

It falls to government to balance the demand for increased choice and flexibility with fairness and common good. Governments can achieve that balance by striving for equality of outcomes for all constituents—that is, ensuring that everyone has the chance to experience the same social and economic conditions, or at least similar improvements in those conditions. To achieve this, governments must strive to become better informed about what the people they serve want and need, and put in place services and service delivery mechanisms that are responsive, connected and aligned to those wants and needs. Then they must respond by targeting services and resources appropriately, ensuring that those who have the greatest need receive the most help and those who are most able to help themselves have the opportunities and means to do so. To achieve more equal outcomes, governments are thinking about how to personalize and tailor services around the needs of individuals and

families requiring the most help. Public service organizations recognize that because people’s needs continually change in response to life events and altered circumstances, the services they offer must be dynamic and flexible. Only then can they deliver improved outcomes for customers with the most complex needs. To deliver flexible and personalized public services, government is employing more sophisticated means of developing customer insight. With that insight, government is better positioned to distribute resources and tailor service delivery strategies around customer need-profiles. Of course, equality of outcomes is also influenced by the way in which people are able to interact with government. As the use of web 2.0 technologies becomes more widespread, the citizengovernment relationship is moving online. Through community and government-run web sites that utilize ever more sophisticated

12

technologies, citizens and government are able to hold online “conversations.” However, the web 2.0 revolution is leaving some behind and widening the digital divide; those who are not computer literate and those without access to a broadband connection or a PC are not able to engage in online dialogue with government or to access online services and information. As more services and information move online, the challenge will become increasingly acute. Whereas some will be able to conduct all of their business with government online and access information in minutes, others will be forced to interact with government face to face or over the phone, leading to dramatic inequalities in the accessibility of services and information.

e-Governance strategies Technology can enable government to deliver more personalized, flexible and effective public services. We have identified two e-governance strategies government is using to help provide equality of access and outcomes for all constituents and so effectively balance choice and flexibility with fairness and common good: •  Conducting customer segmentation analysis and using customer insight to target services appropriately •  Ensuring that more citizens can access and use digital media channels and providing support to those who cannot Conducting customer segmentation analysis and using customer insight to target services appropriately Government is trying to develop shared customer relationship management systems to help organizations capture and share valuable data from every customer interaction. The goal: to ensure that this customer insight is as detailed as possible and includes, for example, any significant change in circumstances or major life events; information regarding the services and payments the individual receives from government agencies; and details of past service requests and interactions with government. However, given the public’s concerns over the collection 13

and use of personal information, government has to guarantee the security and integrity of the customer data it holds. To that end, public service organizations are investing in advanced data security systems and implementing stringent data-handling policies. Government is employing a wide variety of methods to develop a better understanding of people’s individual needs. Customer segmentation and customer insight management solutions are two of the most common. Customer segmentation Customer segmentation enables public service organizations to better understand the needs of different customer groups. With that understanding, organizations can tailor services and communications strategies to meet those varying needs. In private industry, companies conduct value-based segmentation; in the public sector, organizations undertake detailed, needs-based customer segmentation studies. Depending on the context, these needs groups may be defined demographically, geographically, by income or in terms of life events, such as losing a job, moving or having children. Regardless of exactly how customers are categorized, public service organizations should have a detailed understanding of the needs groups they serve and use it as the basis for long-term strategic planning and service delivery. Customer insight management Customer insight is more than just each customer’s demographic, contact or service-use data; it is an in-depth, holistic understanding of a customer’s needs, circumstances, characteristics, preferences and behaviors based on an analysis of patterns of enquiry and service use. Effective customer insight management involves public service organizations collecting, standardizing, evaluating, visualizing and sharing customer insight across government to enable organizations to build a detailed picture of their customers and to target resources effectively to meet their needs. Effective customer insight management also improves the accessibility of public services

by reducing the time taken to assess customers’ needs and eligibility for support; supports cross-government and cross-sector collaboration as organizations responsible for different outcomes share customer data; and enables organizations to tailor service delivery mechanisms and communication strategies to reflect the true needs of citizens. In some cases, public service organizations are striving to achieve this by implementing shared customer intelligence systems, business processes and information workflows that enable enterprise-wide sharing of customer data. How organizations use customer insight to deliver more personalized, flexible public services varies across government; there is not a single service delivery model that government is using to manage customer insight effectively. However, regardless of the context, public service organizations are striving to develop service delivery models that: •  Enable collaboration across government and sectors. •  Encourage an organization or multiagency team to take ownership of individual cases. •  Facilitate fact-based decision making in which customer insight is the basis for all decisions regarding eligibility and service delivery. Ensuring that more citizens can access and use digital media channels and providing support to those who cannot Governments around the world are developing comprehensive digital inclusion strategies that are supported by a network of public and private organizations from different sectors. The majority of digital inclusion strategies aim to increase broadband penetration, ensure that all citizens have regular access to a PC and deliver training programs to increase computer literacy. A major complicating factor for government is the correlation between digital exclusion and social exclusion; citizens who are digitally excluded usually suffer from multiple forms of disadvantage and thus are most in need of effective, personalized and flexible

public services. As a result, government has to appropriately tailor digital inclusion initiatives to target socially excluded and hard-to-reach groups. Governments are also turning to cell phone technology as a means of ensuring that as many citizens as possible can access public services, and information about public services, quickly and easily. For example, governments in Bahrain, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines all provide residents with services that can be accessed through web-enabled cell phones and SMS messages.

Recommendations In an effort to deliver more equal outcomes, and in the face of different levels of demand and need, public service organizations are striving to provide more personalized, targeted and effective public services. For customers who have the most complex needs or are least able to help themselves, public service agencies are developing innovative service delivery models and finding new ways of generating, analyzing, interpreting, sharing and utilizing customer data and customer insight. Moreover, governments are investing in platforms and initiatives to improve the accessibility of online services and citizen engagement forums for digitally excluded citizens. Through our research, we have developed three recommendations for governments seeking to deliver more equal outcomes to constituents.

Develop appropriate customer segmentation strategies Government should collect customer data, conduct customer segmentation analyses and use customer insight to tailor services, inform channel strategies and target marketing and communications. In doing so, government can improve the accessibility and effectiveness of public services for customers with the most complex needs while delivering more equal outcomes. In our recent Leadership in Customer Service research, we suggested a number of points for government to

consider when conducting customer segmentation as a means of achieving more equitable outcomes for citizens: •  Services should be organized and grouped around the different customer segments and their needs, rather than around organizations’ internal structures. People know themselves and their needs, but they do not necessarily know which service they require or which part of government provides it. Government services should be made as intuitive and customer centric as possible. •  Public service organizations should strive toward greater self-service and “lighter-touch” customer service for those who are most able to help themselves or present least risk. This enables public service organizations to channel resources into helping customers with the highest levels of need and so improve equality of outcomes. Low-risk customers should be moved to self-service options such as electronic services, pre-populated forms, automated renewals, selfassessments and self-certification, where appropriate. Organizations should offer a more comprehensive service for those customers who have greater need or present a higher risk than the majority—for example, in-person assistance or dedicated customer liaisons to individuals or segments identified as requiring extra help. More thorough assessments and audits should be provided to those most at risk of non-compliance.

Incentivize and enable organizations to share and maximize the value of customer insight Where appropriate, individual customer data should be shared across public service organizations. It should also be used to personalize customer interactions and offer additional services based on known eligibility and need. Effective data sharing requires investment in common IT systems and information workflows, as well as cultural and organizational change. However, it is important for public managers to consider regulatory and legislative guidelines that limit information sharing between government agencies and how these

guidelines may impact potential data-sharing solutions. Moreover, given the public’s concerns around the security and appropriate use of personal information government holds, public managers should engage citizens and ensure they understand how data sharing will improve their public services and what steps are being taken to safeguard their personal information.

Consider the accessibility and usability of web 2.0 technologies before investing in new citizenfacing websites It is difficult for any individual public service organization to tackle the digital divide. Digital inclusion programs are outside most organizations’ mandates and decision makers are rarely in a position to invest in initiatives that are not business critical. Even so, public service organizations cannot ignore the issues surrounding digital exclusion. Before launching new websites and investing in digital media channels, public service organizations should consider the accessibility of bandwidth-intensive platforms that utilize video-streaming and web 2.0 technologies as those constituents without a broadband connection will be unable to access them. Public service organizations need to provide citizens with a range of online and offline channels through which they can access services and engage government. Offline channels may include “one-stop-shops,” surgeries, citizen juries, surveys, customer call centers, SMS portals and town-hall meetings that operate in conjunction with online channels, such as e-governance portals, forums, e-commerce sites, online town halls and government gateways. Moreover, by identifying customer segments, government can tailor messages and channels to target specific needsprofiles, enabling government to engage and deliver services to hardto-reach groups.

14

4. Engaging, educating and enrolling citizens as co-producers

An overwhelmingly consistent finding from our Global Cities Forums research is that people all over the world want government to offer more opportunities to involve them in setting priorities, defining outcomes and designing services that reflect people’s true needs and preferences. Moreover, they want to be able to do this on an ongoing basis—not simply through rare public consultations or superficial user satisfaction surveys. True engagement must go beyond asking people what they want from government. It must also include active programs to educate people about their rights and responsibilities, as well as initiatives to enroll them as active partners in improving outcomes—from promoting individual preventative measures (such as consuming a better diet) to encouraging more active community participation (such as organizing environmental clean-up activities or establishing neighborhood safety teams) to harnessing people’s IT skills to create better information and service delivery mechanisms. 15

Recognizing the interactive potential of web 2.0, many public service organizations are developing a presence on popular social networking sites as a new way of strengthening the relationship with citizens and soliciting their feedback. These new digital media help government engage a traditionally hard-to-reach audience, such as the younger generation and people in remote locations. They provide a means for public service organizations to disseminate information about public services, to educate citizens about matters that affect their quality of life, to solicit people’s feedback and to enroll them as co-producers in a timely and costeffective way. Social networking and community sites also enable citizens to participate in their governance as never before. They provide a platform for people to discuss and debate issues relating to government and public services, to voice their concerns, to exchange information about their local area,

to petition government to make improvements in public services and even to work together to improve the quality of life in their community. This new form of technology-enabled participation is becoming more common as government itself is investing in new technologies that enable more effective communication with citizens and other stakeholders. Technology-enabled participation is rising on governments’ agendas as decision makers increasingly believe that citizens should be asked what they want from their public services, that they have a right to know how effectively government spends public money, that they should be able to hold government accountable for performance and that they should be empowered to play a role in the delivery of public services and the creation of public value. As part of the drive to enable and encourage citizen participation, governments around the world are

16

starting to make an unprecedented amount of government data, and an increasing number of public services, available online through non-governmental sites. This “socialization” of government data and services is driving significant changes in the channels through which government and citizens interact. Increasingly, citizens can choose to access information and services from a variety of providers, both governmental and private. As a result, government is no longer the only agent capable of creating public value. Increasingly there is evidence that new “intermediaries,” such as popular social networking, e-commerce and community sites, are better placed to disseminate information about public services, report on public service outcomes, solicit citizen input, educate people about how to improve their own lives or make better use of public services and enable citizens to collaborate to deliver public value. How should government relate to these emerging intermediaries? If government adopts a traditional approach and assumes that it has a responsibility to deliver all public services and host all government data, then public service organizations may discourage citizens from using these intermediaries by developing competing governmental citizen participation tools. However, if government assumes that its primary responsibility is to deliver public value, then government may chose to work with these intermediaries as valued partners that should be supported and encouraged to play a role in engaging citizens.

e-Governance strategies Government is adopting three main strategies to capitalize on the developments outlined above: •  Enabling citizens to engage with each other through social networking technologies •  Enabling citizens to participate in their governance through digital media

17

•  Educating citizens and encouraging participation through online training and learning resources Enabling citizens to engage with each other through social networking technologies Web 2.0 technologies have the potential to transform the relationship that citizens have with government and with each other. The dramatic growth in the number of people using social networking sites has led to a significant increase in citizen-tocitizen communication, engagement and collaboration. This growth in social networking has resulted in the formation of virtual citizen networks through which individuals discuss and debate issues facing government, share information about government and public services, petition government, build applications and mashups that improve the accessibility of government data and public services, and work together to improve social and economic conditions in their local communities. Government is developing strategies to effectively engage these virtual citizen networks because they enable government to enter into coproductive relationships with citizens who are enthusiastic about working with public service organizations to deliver public value; to solicit citizen feedback more efficiently and effectively; and to engage traditionally hard-to-reach groups. Although the growth in social networking presents government organizations with a range of opportunities, there are a number of regulatory obstacles they must strive to overcome if they are to effectively utilize external social networking sites. The federal government in the United States is already addressing this problem. In early 2009, the General Services Administration (GSA) signed agreements with four video-sharing and social networking sites—Flickr, Vimeo, blip.tv and YouTube—to establish pre-negotiated service agreements that comply with

federal terms and conditions. These agreements provide federal agencies and providers with standardized service agreements both parties can sign, enabling the federal government to use popular media technologies to engage citizens and distribute information about public services. Enabling citizens to participate in their governance through digital media Technology-enabled participation is at the heart of the emerging governance relationship. Government is striving to provide citizens with channels through which they can effectively communicate and partner with government in the creation of public value. Government is using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to enable citizens to tell public service organizations what they need and what they think about a range of issues—from school closures and hospital standards to public-sector reform and cost-cutting measures. Public service organizations can use this citizen feedback to drive improvements in service delivery and as the basis for communications strategies to shape citizens’ perceptions of government. This level of participation involves government: •  Soliciting and acting on citizen feedback •  Managing the citizen perspective Soliciting and acting on citizen feedback Soliciting citizen feedback is becoming a priority for public service organizations. Doing so enables government to understand how citizens define public value in particular contexts and what outcomes people want public service organizations to prioritize. Citizen feedback also allows government to judge how well its constituents think it is performing and is a valuable source of innovation. Government is starting to use social networking sites and web 2.0 technologies to solicit citizen feedback and develop a deeper understanding of citizens’ changing expectations.

Public service organizations are challenged to interpret, evaluate and visualize citizen feedback so it can be used as the basis for longterm planning, service delivery improvements and setting of outcome targets. One of the main problems government faces is the often contradictory and ill-defined nature of citizen feedback. Putting the citizen perspective and citizens’ needs at the heart of public services is not easy when it is so difficult to define what citizens expect and want from government.

Educating citizens and encouraging participation through online training and learning resources

Managing citizens’ perceptions

Second, government is using online training and learning resources to enable citizens to enter into a discussion with government about public value and public services by:

Government is also thinking about how new technologies can help manage citizens’ perceptions and expectations. Accenture’s Global Cities Forum research and the Accenture Citizen Experience Study4 highlight the importance of citizens’ perceptions in informing their judgment on the performance of government. It seems clear that organizations that manage the citizen perspective effectively are perceived to perform better by the citizens they serve. Traditionally, government has struggled to manage citizens’ perceptions effectively, leading to unsubstantiated accusations of waste, inefficiency and ineffectiveness often perpetuated by the media. Web 2.0 technologies present governments with an unprecedented opportunity to bypass the media and directly engage citizens in a more mature, reasoned and productive discussion about the strengths and shortcomings of government. In this way, public service organizations can, for the first time, play an active role in shaping citizens’ perceptions of government by providing the public with instantly accessible, intelligible information and analysis—enabling a more balanced and objective debate in which citizens are able to consider government’s perspective.

Government is using new technologies and digital media channels to develop online training and learning tools for citizens. These learning tools are being developed for a variety of reasons. First, by educating citizens about public services in their local community, government ensures that citizens are aware of what services they are entitled to and how to access them, improving the accessibility and effectiveness of public services.

•  Giving citizens insight into government operations •  Making the public aware of the challenges government faces, including financial, regulatory, legislative and organizational factors that affect operations •  Increasing people’s awareness of existing strategies to improve service delivery and efficiency and reduce costs Third, through citizen learning sites and public information campaigns, government is giving people the capacity to partner with government in the production of public value.

Recommendations Public service organizations are striving to enable citizens to become more involved in their governance by investing in innovative citizen engagement platforms that use multiple digital media channels to enable a dialogue between citizens and government; by developing a presence on popular social networking sites; and by launching online training and learning resources to provide citizens with the knowledge they need to engage government in a meaningful way and partner with government in the creation of public value. From our research, we have developed four recommendations that we believe

will help public managers maximize the value of citizen engagement, education and enrollment to their organization.

Develop a comprehensive citizen engagement strategy Engagement initiatives should be part of a comprehensive engagement strategy that is aligned with the organization’s strategic goals; that links all initiatives designed to engage, educate and enroll the public; that ensures continuity of message and purpose across engagement activities; and that demonstrates how citizen participation and feedback will add value. The channels and techniques used to engage, educate and enroll the public will vary across organizations. However, we believe that all citizen engagement strategies should: •  Develop a sound business case. Doing so ensures that engagement programs are cost effective and support broader strategic objectives. A business case should clearly define the business need for citizen engagement and include key objectives, performance indicators and critical success factors for the initiative. •  Set up processes to review, evaluate and overcome organizational, regulatory, cultural and technical obstacles to citizen engagement and participation. •  Establish a robust and flexible governance structure to enable organizations to effectively collaborate in the planning, delivery and evaluation of citizen engagement initiatives. From the beginning, all partners participating in the strategy should agree on key performance indicators, funding arrangements, oversight and reporting mechanisms, project management processes and an organizational structure. •  Develop a communications strategy and performance management process that will drive the cultural change required within public service organizations to ensure that

18

employees from different organizations proactively collaborate in the design and delivery of engagement programs; that employees at every level of the organization understand how important citizen engagement is to their organization and view it as a critical part of their work; and that key stakeholders remain committed to citizen engagement in the long term. •  Create standards and reporting mechanisms to ensure that partner organizations have the business processes and technical solutions required to respond to citizen feedback and use it as the basis for meaningful change in the delivery of public services.

Consider public service organizations’ relationships with online “intermediaries” Many online citizen engagement channels, such as groups on social networking sites, are not owned by government. Public service organizations can support these sites as valuable citizen engagement channels and/or develop governmentowned digital engagement channels to compete with or complement them. One strategy open to government is to develop a presence on popular social networking sites. These sites present public managers with a range of opportunities for soliciting real-time citizen feedback, engaging constituents and improving the accessibility of government information. However, public service organizations must manage the potential risks and drawbacks of creating a presence on popular social networking sites: •  Government organizations cannot control the content of online government pages. •  There are significant costs associated with making government data available on external pages, monitoring the content of government pages and analyzing, evaluating and distributing citizen feedback that is relevant to a number of different organizations.

19

•  Incorporating social networking technologies into existing applications can be technically challenging.

Proactively manage customers’ expectations and perceptions of government Citizens’ perceptions of public services greatly influence their judgment of government’s performance. New technologies enable government to bypass the media and directly engage citizens in a more objective discussion about what they expect from their public services. Alongside citizen engagement initiatives, government can use training and learning programs to manage citizens’ expectations, opinions, attitudes and behavior. These training and learning initiatives will largely be shaped by an organization’s overall strategic goals and the political, social, economic and organizational context in which they are developed. However, all government training and learning initiatives should fulfill the following criteria. They should: •  Have a clear set of objectives that support broader strategic goals. •  Be supported by a robust business case. •  Be informed by customer segmentation analysis to ensure messages and media channels are tailored and targeted to reach specific customer segments. •  Be built around a concise and easy to understand set of messages that can be effectively conveyed using the media channels available. •  Include input from a broad range of stakeholders, from business and community groups to local and national government organizations, in the planning, design, delivery and evaluation of initiatives. •  Be delivered via easily accessible, highly publicized, user-friendly, engaging and content-rich websites that enable citizens to access information and training resources when they choose.

Use citizen feedback strategically Citizen participation can be a valuable source of innovation and input to the organization’s strategic direction if feedback is analyzed and visualized effectively—enabling it to be included in the decision-making process and used as the basis for improvements in service delivery. A crucial first step is for government to develop effective frameworks and models for structuring and interpreting citizen feedback. These frameworks may be based on a core set of principles that define an organization’s approach; for example, a police force may structure citizen feedback around accountability, transparency, approachability and engagement. Conversely, these frameworks may be based on sector-specific outcomes; for example, health care organizations may structure citizen feedback around primary, preventative, geriatric, pediatric and emergency care. From a technical perspective, public service organizations require effective data sharing, data management and data visualization solutions to ensure that intelligible, actionable citizen feedback is able to flow up the organization to decision makers.

5. Improving accountability and transparency

The findings from our our Global Cities Forum research have shown that people are demanding much greater transparency and accountability from government. Transparency is especially important with regard to tax expenditure, where the absence of easily accessible information fuels perceptions of waste and inefficiency and has the potential to undermine public trust. People want government to provide them with information that enables them to scrutinize government’s activities, to determine how efficiently and effectively government is spending public money and to hold government accountable for the results achieved. The results from the citizen survey conducted as part of the recent Leadership in Customer Service study show a strong relationship between citizens’ perceptions of government accountability and their overall trust in government.

Governments around the world are striving to give the public unprecedented access to the data they hold. From crime figures and school exam results to civil servants’ salaries and spending figures, government is pushing data into the public domain as never before. While governments already produce a great deal of information, some forward-thinking governments and public service organizations are taking innovative approaches to maximizing the value of this information. The key challenge for government is how to visualize this data effectively so people can interpret and use it. Government is beginning to use mashups as a means of visualizing the huge amounts of data now available. In some cases, governments are running “idea contests” that encourage people to design their own mashups to visualize government data. Making data available not only increases transparency and enables greater accountability, but it also encourages a more open and equitable

dialogue between citizens and government. In the past, government could speak from a position of authority to citizens who lacked sufficient information to engage government in a meaningful dialogue and debate about public services. Today, the increased availability of data helps to eliminate the traditional information “imbalance” between government and the public, ensuring that people are well enough informed to influence government decision making if they wish to get involved. In particular, people want more regular reporting of government spending and outcome-specific performance data—results that show how government is improving people’s quality of life. By making performance and spending data available for public scrutiny and informing people about policies, programs and services actively and regularly, government can engage citizens and other stakeholders in thinking about organizations’ performance. Moreover, 20

21

by involving citizens in establishing, implementing and evaluating measures of performance, governments can foster a broader awareness and sense of ownership among citizens and a willingness to act as co-producers. As a result, improving the transparency of public service organizations’ spending and performance is fast becoming a priority for government. The public is also seeking consistent and accessible means to voice their views, concerns and complaints and to remedy problems with government when they occur. However, our Leadership in Customer Service citizen survey highlighted the prevalence of unexpressed and unresolved frustrations in people’s ability to request services and to register and resolve their queries or complaints. Many citizens simply do not know where to go or whom to call or write to about an erroneous or missing benefit payment, poor hospital treatment or unsatisfactory customer service. Worse still, the inaccessibility of recourse can have an impact on the equality of social and economic outcomes. If complaints systems are opaque, complex and burdensome, only the most knowledgeable, persistent and articulate in society will be able to complain and have their concerns addressed. Government must therefore provide the means for all citizens to report problems and request services as easily and quickly as possible. These service requests are the most direct interaction between citizens and government. As a consequence, government’s ability to fulfill them has a significant bearing on the governance relationship. While online service request forms and email addresses can be used to report problems to government, they are often insufficient as they require citizens to find out which organization is responsible for the service. What’s more, they do not always allow citizens to track the status of issues they have raised.

Web 2.0 technologies and social media are changing the way citizens raise service requests and report problems. Government and private organizations are launching websites that enable citizens to report problems, request services, send feedback or make a complaint in seconds without knowing which agency should receive their request or complaint. The main challenges for government are to ensure that service requests are acknowledged and services provided efficiently and effectively, problems are remedied as quickly as possible and citizens’ complaints are addressed. Failure to respond appropriately to service requests can have a detrimental impact on citizens’ perception of government’s performance—making people less willing to engage with government and partner with public service organizations in the creation of public value.

e-Governance strategies To increase transparency and accountability, government is investing in programs that open up public service organizations’ spending, performance and decision-making processes to public scrutiny and enable citizens to report problems to government and raise service requests more effectively.

web-based transparency and accountability tools that make public service organizations’ spending and performance data open to public scrutiny. These web-based transparency and accountability tools are designed to provide up-to-date information that enables citizens to understand how government spends public money, how budgets and spending priorities are decided and how effectively organizations use public money to deliver high-quality public services that improve people’s quality of life. These tools enable citizens to visualize and interpret complex data sets and provide individuals with the information necessary to form fact-based opinions, arguments and suggestions. They can share these views with each other and with public service organizations, thereby influencing decision making and driving improvements in service delivery.

•  Increasing transparency and accountability by developing webbased tools to report on results achieved

To develop these web-based transparency and accountability tools, government first needs to ensure that effective reporting and oversight processes are in place at every level. Although the majority of public service organizations already have effective reporting and oversight processes, problems emerge when there are dramatic changes in an organization’s spending, structure or function. For example, at the time of writing, federal and state agencies in the United States are planning to roll out new reporting and oversight processes to track stimulus funds and make this information available to the public through Recovery.gov and state stimulus sites.

•  Enabling citizens to report problems and resolve complaints through online channels

Enabling citizens to report problems and resolve complaints through online channels

We have identified two distinct strategies government is using to increase transparency and accountability and facilitate public recourse:

Increasing transparency and accountability by developing webbased tools to report on results achieved To improve citizens’ trust in government and enable them to participate in their governance effectively, government is developing

Citizens want a simple, easy-to-use and effective means of reporting problems they encounter in their dayto-day lives and requesting services from government. The overwhelming majority of public service organizations provide some sort of online channel for both, usually through online service

22

request forms or email. The most effective online channels:

Invest in effective reporting and oversight mechanisms

•  Are shared between as many organizations as possible, enabling citizens to report problems to government using a single site.

Improving transparency requires organizations to provide the public with up-to-date, accurate spending and performance data, which requires government to invest in enhanced reporting systems that enable this data to be collected, shared, stored, analyzed and visualized efficiently and effectively. Enterprise applications that generate procurement, spend and performance analytics and deliver enhanced business insight are an integral part of the solution. However, these technologies must be supported by a broader organizational and cultural change program through which new reporting policies, more transparent ways of working and greater levels of accountability are introduced.

•  Enable citizens to track the status of issues they have raised and make it clear to citizens which organizations are responsible for remedying problems. •  Are widely publicized to raise awareness of how to seek redress. Increasingly, though, citizens are also reporting problems through new sites, such as communityfix.com and fixmystreet.com in the United Kingdom, which are often built by private businesses or nonprofits. These sites use web 2.0 technologies to enable citizens to upload photographs of problems (for example, potholes) and send them to government in place of detailed written explanations. They also allow people to identify problems on a map and report problems without necessarily knowing which organization is responsible for remedying them. These sites are becoming increasingly popular because they dramatically reduce the cost to the citizen of reporting problems to government and requesting services.

Recommendations Public service organizations are taking steps to be more directly accountable to the public and to report more transparently on their spending and performance through web-based transparency and accountability tools that enable citizens to understand how, where, why and how effectively government is spending public money. They are also empowering citizens to report problems, find solutions to problems and request services more quickly and easily. We have developed four recommendations that we believe will improve the effectiveness of these initiatives and allow public managers to provide the strategic direction and leadership required to maximize the benefit of these projects.

23

Ensure citizen-facing transparency and accountability tools are fit for purpose Successful web-based transparency and accountability tools should have three main elements: •  A function that allows users to view detailed performance or return on investment (ROI) statistics by government agency, category, geographic area or, most importantly, cross-agency outcome target. Including ROI or performance metrics, and specifically outcomes and outputs, alongside financial data enables citizens to evaluate how effectively government is spending public money. The tools should provide citizens with up-to-date, accurate spending and performance information that can be compared over time or contextualized in some other meaningful way. •  A user-friendly interface that allows users to search for specific spending and payments information and understand the data returned. Graphs and charts enable users to view and interpret data easily, particularly if they can choose how to present the data through interactive graphics.

•  An educational, engagement and training component to enable citizens to develop a deeper understanding of government spending priorities and strategies, interpret financial data and acquire a better understanding of organizations’ operations. Prior to designing and developing transparency and accountability websites, government should engage businesses, civil society organizations, NGOs and the public to ensure that demand for them exists, that they make relevant information accessible, and that they are user friendly and encourage citizen participation. At the same time, public managers need to consider how their organization and workforce will be affected. With that insight, they should take steps to ensure that employees remain motivated, that they can see the difference they make and be encouraged to innovate, and that they remain focused on delivering public value.

Make as much government data publicly available as possible Providing the public with government data that can be scrutinized and used in data mashups can improve transparency, affect people’s perception of government, increase their willingness to partner with government in creating public value and improve the accessibility of public services. Moreover, by making the huge amount of data government holds available to the public, the value of this data can be maximized as individuals create innovative applications and mashups that solve real-world problems and improve quality of life.

Encourage citizens to report problems and request services Government’s ability to address citizens’ concerns can have a significant impact on the governance relationship. Governments should provide citizens with an easy-to-use online channel through which they can report problems, request services and make complaints about a range of organizations and issues. Government should follow up with citizens once an issue has been raised, and citizens must be able to track the status of their issue and government’s response. We are seeing a rise in the popularity of non-governmental websites that enable citizens to report problems to government and request services. In some cases, these sites are more efficient and effective than government’s own online channels (such as email and service request forms). Government should not necessarily try to replicate these sites since community-built sites are likely to be more popular than government sites. Rather, government should develop strategies to engage and support these sites as a means of providing citizens with more effective ways of reporting problems and requesting services, while reducing the cost to government of developing and hosting such websites.

24

6. The journey to e-governance

Progress toward e-governance varies significantly across and even within countries. Some public service organizations have developed effective e-governance strategies that are having a dramatic impact on the governance relationship. Others are just beginning to explore how they can use technology to strengthen a particular aspect of their relationships with constituents. Through our research, we have found that just as every organization is different, so, too, are their journeys to e-governance. Some are the result of long-term reform initiatives. Others grow from departmental service improvement efforts or as responses to external political pressures. Still others are driven by a genuine demand from citizens to participate in their governance. Moreover, organizational factors—including structure, service delivery arrangements, governance systems, risk tolerance, embedded ways of working and even funding arrangements—can have a significant impact on an organization’s journey to e-governance. 25

Regardless of these differences, we believe organizations should adopt four key, interrelated practices to successfully exploit innovations in technology and strengthen their relationships with citizens: •  Develop a citizen-centric vision of governance •  Tailor services and communications to meet user needs and preferences •  Strengthen and foster the capacity to innovate by creating a sense of ownership within the workforce •  Aim for success in terms of improved service quality and increased citizen trust in government

Develop a citizen-centric vision of governance Citizen-centric government is responsive to the real needs of all citizens. It is open, transparent and accountable; enables citizens to participate in their governance and improve their own quality of life; and adopts a whole-person, holistic

view of service users. Public service organizations should develop a vision of citizen-centric governance that translates these “generic” aspects of citizen centricity into specific, high-level outcomes and meaningful strategic goals that can drive organizational change. To become more responsive to the real needs of all citizens, public service organizations must develop flexible service delivery mechanisms and effective enterprise tools that enable front-office staff to assemble networks of service providers around citizens’ needs. Enterprise resource planning and business process management solutions, for instance, enable citizen-centric public services by providing decision makers with enhanced business insight and greater control over the flow of resources and information. However, to deliver more responsive, flexible public services, these IT solutions must be part of a broader change program to establish a customer-centric culture in the front office. This change program

26

should provide staff with enhanced client service skills and a comprehensive understanding of service delivery mechanisms. Realizing open, transparent and accountable government requires decision makers to invest in reporting and performance management systems that enable the effective collection, analysis and visualization of operational, spending and performance data. This information must then be made available to the public. Organizations can do so through webbased transparency and accountability tools developed via a collaborative, user-centric design process to ensure they are user-friendly and provide the public with relevant information about results achieved. Enabling citizens to participate in their governance and improve their own quality of life is becoming easier with the growth in social networking and web 2.0. Using popular social networking sites, rich Internet applications and other web 2.0 technologies, citizens can engage, coordinate and collaborate with each other and with government as never before. Public service organizations should develop comprehensive citizen enrollment strategies that outline how they will use new technologies (probably alongside more traditional citizen engagement methods) to enable citizen participation and to encourage citizens to take a greater role in improving quality of life for themselves and their communities. Citizen enrollment strategies must also demonstrate how greater public participation will contribute to improvements in social and economic outcomes for constituents.

Tailor services and communications to meet user needs and preferences Service users want to be able to access customized services tailored to meet their individual needs. Similarly, citizens want government information and communications to reflect their personal preferences in terms of media channel, design, content and

27

frequency. Targeting services and communications effectively requires public service organizations to define and identify user profile groups and customer segments and to use this customer insight to inform flexible service delivery strategies. To deliver more personalized services and targeted communications, public service organizations should identify customer segments based on registered preferences, patterns of inquiry and service use, as well as socioeconomic, demographic and geographic factors. Organizations should use this analysis to redefine service delivery and communications strategies. To achieve this, organizations’ customer service strategy must inform most aspects of operational planning—from performance and talent management to IT strategy and business process management. To maximize the benefit of customer segmentation, public service organizations need to develop effective customer insight management and case management systems that enable enterprise-wide data sharing and collaboration. These IT systems deliver enhanced content management capabilities and, when integrated with the existing Customer Relationship Management infrastructure, enable organizations to maximize the value of every customer interaction and deliver more personalized customer service.

Strengthen and foster the capacity to innovate by creating a sense of ownership within the workforce To maximize the benefits of new technologies and adapt to meet citizens’ changing expectations, public service organizations must build the capacity to innovate. To that end, public service organizations must encourage employees to take greater responsibility for the efficiency and effectiveness of information workflows, businesses processes, programs and delivery channels; enable their workforce to take risks, generate ideas and share learning; and demonstrate to employees, through effective

performance management systems, the value they create for citizens by developing innovative solutions focused on improving outcomes. To give employees greater responsibility for the efficiency and effectiveness of operations and service delivery, decision makers must commit to cultural transformation. This transformation requires a move away from traditional and highly centralized, hierarchical organizational structures toward flatter, more bottom-up, decentralized structures. These structures encourage and empower employees to take ownership of the programs, deliverables and business processes with which they are involved. Such an approach calls for an emphasis on training, learning and continued professional development for front-office and back-office staff at every level of the organization. Through this emphasis, organizations can ensure that employees have the knowledge required to suggest and implement process and service improvements. Empowering the workforce to innovate also requires organizations to invest in enterprise 2.0 technologies that enable employees to develop applications and mashups, author content to share learning across the organization, collaborate through informal channels and access real-time data. To maximize the value of internal crowd sourcing and new communitybased software development models, decision makers at the top of public service organizations need to open up the decision-making process to employees at every level and encourage them to contribute.

Aim for success in terms of improved service quality and increased citizen trust in government From the outset, organizations should define the success of e-governance strategies in terms of both improved service quality and enhanced citizen trust in government. The journey to e-governance is as much about strengthening the relationship with citizens as it is about creating highquality public services.

Organizations’ e-governance strategies should include high-level key performance indicators (KPIs) around improvements in service quality and efficiency. At the same time, public service organizations should aim to gauge the effects of improved service quality and accountability on public trust. Our Leadership in Customer Service research has shown a strong correlation between increased accountability and trust in government and the potential benefits to be gained from increased willingness of the public to participate and act as coproducers are immense—politically and economically. At present, the great majority of public service organizations around the world are already measuring success in terms of improved service quality. Relevant KPIs include transaction cost and customer satisfaction. Trust in government, however, is much harder to measure. At one level, citizen trust can be quantified by measuring the gap between what citizens expect

from government and how successfully citizens believe government actually fulfils these expectations. In our global research project, the Accenture Citizen Experience Study, we found that the gap between citizens’ experience of public services and expectation of government is not merely a consequence of the level of service quality. Citizen perception can be influenced positively or negatively by the extent to which government engages them in a discourse about what is and is not possible in service delivery. Yet frequently, we have found, government does not do enough to make that discourse meaningful, despite the availability of new technologies to provide more regular and informed ways of communicating with the public. To increase public trust and confidence in government, public service organizations must develop e-governance strategies that aim to narrow the gap between citizen expectations and government

performance. This entails managing citizens’ expectations through effective engagement and communications, as well as improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public services. As the technologies advance—from web 2.0 today to web 3.0 tomorrow and beyond—their impact on public services, government organizations and governance itself will continue to evolve. More governments will turn to new technologies as they develop innovative strategies to enable greater citizen participation, deliver improved social and economic outcomes for their constituents and create public value. Meanwhile, as technology continues to change the way people live, it will also change the tools they use to connect with each other, the expectations they have of government and the demands they place on public services. As new technologies change providers’ capabilities and customers’ expectations, the journey to more effective forms of e-governance will continue.

References 1

www.accenture.com/gcf

2

http://www.accenture.com/Global/Research_and_Insights/Institute_For_Public_ Service_Value/ManagingValue.htm

3

http://www.accenture.com/Global/Research_and_Insights/Institute_For_Public_ Service_Value/2008LCSROutcomes.htm

4

www.accenture.com/aces

28

About the Accenture Institute for Health & Public Service Value

Accenture Institute for Health & Public Service Value Project Team Giles Randle Researcher Julie McQueen Director of Research Greg Parston Director

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

ACC09-1315

The Accenture Institute for Health & Public Service Value is dedicated to promoting high performance in the health care sector and in public service delivery, policy-making and governance. Through research and development initiatives, the Institute aims to help health care and public service organizations deliver better social, economic and health outcomes for the people they serve. Its home page is www.accenture.com/ healthpublicservicevalue.

About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With approximately 177,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$23.39 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2008. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

Focus on Outcomes United States: EHSResults! Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services

e-Governance strategy: Focusing performance management on actual improvements in people’s social and economic conditions Background The Executive Office of Health and Human Services is the largest Massachusetts Commonwealth secretariat and is responsible for delivering a variety of services ranging from family services (including adoption, fostering and child welfare) to health insurance and disability services. These services are delivered by 16 Executive Office of Health and Human Services agencies, including Medicaid and the Departments of Public Health and Children & Families. EOHHS has a budget of $13.5 billion, 48% of the state’s budget, and 23,000 employees.

Solution Overview The Executive Office of Health and Human Services has launched EHSResults!— an outcome-focused performance management strategy—to improve the efficiency of its operations and the effectiveness of the services it delivers. As part of the EHSResults! initiative, teams made up of employees from all 16 EOHHS agencies worked together to define a set of secretariat-level, cross-agency strategic goals defined around improved outcomes for citizens:

Wellness and Quality of Health Care • Ensure access to care • Advance health care quality • Contain health care costs • Promote individual wellness • Promote healthy communities Safe Communities • Surveillance—Monitor key indicators of safe communities • Preparedness—Develop infrastructure to support safe communities • Prevention—Deliver proactive and targeted services to individuals, families and communities • Intervention—Intervene where needed to ensure safety of individuals, families and communities

Jobs and Self Sufficiency • Increase accessibility and diversity of available jobs for targeted residents through policy and employer outreach • Provide employment support services for targeted adults • Maximize number of targeted adults who move toward selfsufficiency and independence through employment • Successfully transition EOHHS youth entering the workforce Effective Government • Provide client-centered customer service • Develop and maintain a highperformance workforce • Improve internal efficiencies • Increase efficiencies and quality of the Purchase of Service system Educating Kids in Our Care • Ensure access to educationrelated programming, services and opportunities for children and youth in EOHHS care • Maximize school attendance and engagement for children and youth in EOHHS care • Maximize stability in education programs for children and youth in EOHHS care • Maximize educational success for children and youth in EOHHS care

These strategic outcome targets are then mapped to Executive Office of Health and Human Services priorities for the financial year and agency-specific goals and outcome targets. Performance dashboards ensure that progress toward strategic priorities, goals and agency-specific targets is transparent. The Executive Office of Health and Human Services is using EHSResults! to drive organizational improvements, create a citizencentric culture and achieve highperformance public service by: • Establishing a reporting and tracking mechanism that explains clearly and simply what EOHHS has accomplished and creates visibility at all levels into desired outcomes and EOHHS progress

Highlights • Strategic goals are clearly linked to outcome-focused performance targets at different levels of government, including agencyspecific performance targets and indicators. • Strategic goals were developed through a collaborative process in which all agencies affected by the new outcome targets are able to contribute. • Performance dashboards are used to demonstrate and communicate success to decision makers and the workforce.

• Providing a management tool that demonstrates and communicates success both to EOHHS executive management and to the agencies; works across agencies with goals and outcome measures that provide multiagency perspective; and focuses budget and resource discussions on desired results instead of simply on dollars. • Creating a performance management culture that focuses on cooperative efforts to deliver outcomes citizens care about; enables agencies to make the case for findings and change; and clarifies connections between agency and secretariat priorities.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes

United Kingdom: Public Service Agreements

e-Governance strategy: Focusing performance management on actual improvements in people’s social and economic conditions Background Public Service Agreements (PSAs) are “key priority outcomes the Government wants to achieve.” The United Kingdom government first introduced PSAs in 1998 after the Comprehensive Spending Review. Originally, there were 600 performance targets for 35 areas of government. In 2005, government started working with frontline professionals, the public and external experts to renew the performance management framework. Those efforts resulted in the launch of 30 new Public Service Agreements in 2007.

Solution Overview Collectively, Public Service Agreements form a comprehensive set of outcomefocused performance targets that are supported by a limited number of performance indicators. Each Public Service Agreement is underpinned by a single delivery agreement shared across all contributing departments and developed in consultation with delivery partners and frontline workers. Delivery agreements set out plans for delivery and the role of key delivery partners. Public Service Agreements also describe the small basket of national outcome-focused performance

indicators that will be used to measure progress toward each Public Service Agreement. A subset of indicators also has specific national targets or minimum standards attached, and details are set out in the relevant delivery agreement. In 2008, the Public Service Agreement framework was reshaped to reflect government’s changing spending priorities during the economic downturn. Since 2000, Local Public Service Agreements, now called Local Area Agreements-Reward Element, have become increasingly common. These agreements are designed to encourage local government to focus on outcomes and reward local government agencies that deliver improved social and economic outcomes for their constituents. Local Area Agreements-Reward Elements are agreements between individual local authorities and central government that “set out an area’s commitment to delivering improvement targets, chosen by themselves and central government.” The agreements also state central government’s commitment to rewarding those improvements and how central government will assist the authority in achieving them.

Public Service Agreement Framework 2008—2011 Fairness and opportunity for all • Halve the number of children in poverty by 2010-11, on the way to eradicating child poverty by 2020 • Raise the educational achievement of all children and young people • Narrow the gap in educational achievement between children from lowincome and disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers • Increase the number of children and young people on the path to success • Address the disadvantage that individuals experience because of their gender, race, disability, age, sexual, orientation, religion or belief

A better quality of life

Stronger communities

• Improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people

• Build more cohesive, empowered and active communities

• Improve children and young people’s safety

• Make communities safer

• Tackle poverty and promote greater independence and wellbeing in later life • Promote better health and wellbeing for all • Ensure better care for all • Deliver a successful Olympic Games and Paralympic Games with a sustainable legacy and get more children and young people taking part in high-quality physical education and sport

A more secure, fair and environmentally sustainable world

• Deliver a more effective, transparent and responsive Criminal Justice System for victims and the public • Reduce the harm caused by alcohol and drugs • Reduce the risk to the UK and its interests overseas from international terrorism

• Lead the global effort to avoid dangerous climate change • Secure a healthy natural environment for today and the future • Reduce poverty in poorer countries through quicker progress towards the Millennium Development Goals • Reduce the impact of conflict through enhanced UK and international efforts

• Increase the proportion of socially excluded adults in settled accommodation and employment, education or training

Help people and businesses come through the downturn sooner and stronger, supporting long-term economic growth and prosperity Deliver commitments by the National Economic Council to help people and businesses come through the downturn sooner and stronger, including packages on repossessions, apprenticeships, business access to finance and help for the unemployed. • Raise the productivity of the UK economy • Improve the skills of the population, on the way to ensuring a world-class skills base by 2020 • Ensure controlled, fair migration that protects the public and contributes to economic growth • Promote world-class science and innovation in the UK • Deliver reliable and efficient transport networks that support economic growth • Deliver the conditions for business success in the UK • Improve the economic performance of all English regions and reduce the gap in economic growth rates between regions • Maximize employment opportunity for all • Improve long-term housing supply and affordability

Highlights • Strategic outcome-focused performance targets are supported by low-level, organization-specific output targets.

• Organizations from across government share common outcome-focused performance targets that are supported by delivery strategies that emphasize and reward joined-up working and collaboration.

• Performance targets are developed through a collaborative process that enables all delivery partners and stakeholders to shape performance targets, indicators and service delivery plans.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes Singapore: Reaching Everyone for Active Citizenry @ Home (REACH) www.reach.gov.sg

e-Governance strategy: Continually improving the customer experience by soliciting service user and customer feedback Background REACH was set up in October 2006 as part of a major change program around the restructuring of the Singaporean government’s feedback unit. REACH proactively engages citizens and enables them to enter into a more interactive relationship with government by providing the public with simple, effective and accessible means of registering their feedback about any service, policy or issue.

Solution Overview REACH is responsible for collecting and soliciting citizen feedback, reaching out and engaging citizens and promoting an active citizenry by enabling citizen participation. Citizens can use REACH’s website to provide feedback about any government agency, public service or policy.

Citizens can: • Submit a general feedback form that REACH directs to the relevant organization. • Complete an e-consultation paper if they know which agency they would like to register feedback with. • Participate in online discussion forums and blog about government and public services. • Submit online questionnaires about their experiences of public services, proposed changes to services or policy and issues facing government, directly to government agencies.

Highlights • The REACH website includes a community element that enables residents to discuss their experience and opinion of public services with each other. This community element enables government to capture more in-depth feedback and encourages more citizens to contribute to ongoing discussions. • REACH solicits customer feedback on specific issues, services or organizations, which enables government to collect relevant, structured feedback that is of real strategic value.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes

Dubai: eComplain System

www.ecomplain.ae/Main.aspx?Lang=EN

e-Governance strategy: Continually improving the customer experience by soliciting service user and customer feedback Background The Dubai Government is trying to improve the quality of public services by enabling customers to voice their concerns directly to public service organizations and using their feedback to change the way public services are delivered. The principal aim of the eComplain system is to “provide a solid platform for customers to make their voices heard and acted upon. We want the departments to listen to their customers, to solve their problems and benefit from them in the continual improvement and development of services.”

Solution Overview Dubai’s eComplain System enables customers to provide feedback on the service they have received from any one of 22 government departments. In March 2009, the eComplain system and the Ask Dubai call center were integrated into a single e-customer platform that provides customers with a single point of contact through which they can register feedback on any of Dubai’s government agencies. Customers can provide feedback online, on the phone, via email or by fax. Customers

can also track the status of their feedback online or over the phone. Dubai’s government leverages customer feedback to drive continuous service improvement as part of an overall strategy to achieve excellence in public service delivery. "Any form of grievance can have an impact on the integrity of any government department and hence it is important that these concerns are addressed promptly. The integrated contact center provides an easy, centralized and more efficient platform for government departments to generate feedback from the public and subsequently identify areas for development and improvement. In addition, this initiative provides a direct and user-friendly facility that allows residents to air their views and be heard in a proper forum by concerned authorities." Moza Al Akraf, Acting Director of eServices, Dubai eGovernment

Highlights • The Dubai government views customer feedback as a valuable strategic asset that enables decision makers to identify areas of poor performance and drive improvements in service delivery. • The eComplain system enables the Dubai government to proactively engage citizens to solicit feedback and use it as a valuable source of innovation and indication of performance. • Providing customers with a range of possible channels through which they can contact government—email, online forms, telephone, face to face—makes it more convenient for customers to register feedback, improving the overall customer experience, increasing the likelihood that a customer will leave feedback and enabling citizens to report problems and request services from government.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes

Canada: GCPedia

e-Governance strategy: Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Background

Solution Overview

The Government of Canada is looking to web 2.0 technologies as a means of improving collaboration and information sharing across public service organizations and government departments. In 2007, National Resources Canada, the Federal Government department responsible for managing Canada’s natural resources, launched NRCan Wiki, an internal wiki that was eventually used by 1,900 of the department’s 5,000 employees to share ideas and disseminate information. NRCan was so successful that the Treasury Board, a cabinet committee responsible for managing the administrative aspects of government including personnel and budget, decided to launch a governmentwide wiki.

In October 2008, the Canadian Federal government launched a government-wide pilot for a new internal collaboration platform called GCpedia, an internal version of the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The service allows federal employees to post articles as well as comment and edit articles posted on GCpedia by their peers. GCpedia can only be accessed by federal government employees and only hosts articles that are relevant to government operations and public services. The federal government is using GCpedia to make decision-making processes and organizations’ operations more transparent within government, share information across government and ensure that all federal agencies are aware of policy changes or developments in service delivery.

Highlights • The Government of Canada is using GCpedia to enable informal collaboration between federal employees within and across organizations. • As the proportion of the government workforce made up of people belonging to “Generation Y” increases over the coming years, government organizations’ culture and traditional ways of working will change dramatically. The Government of Canada is preempting and enabling this culture shift by investing in web 2.0 technologies to facilitate instant access to information and encourage collaborative, flexible ways of working.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes

United States: GovLoop www.govloop.com/

e-Governance strategy: Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Background Government employees are taking the initiative and proactively using public social networking sites to share ideas and experiences, disseminate information and discuss issues facing government. These collaboration platforms range from small groups on popular social networking sites such as Facebook to purpose-built sites with thousands of members such as Municater, a “social networking site devoted to helping municipal government employees find solutions, share ideas, learn about new products and services, review and learn about vendors, and improve their career.” One of the fastestgrowing social networking sites created by government employees exclusively for government employees is GovLoop.

Solution Overview Launched in June 2008, GovLoop is a government social networking site that connects over 11,000 federal, state and local government employees, academics and contractors from around the world. GovLoop uses web 2.0 technologies to enable cross-government collaboration and innovation by encouraging people involved in the delivery of public services to share ideas, explore opportunities and debate and discuss issues facing

government. GovLoop “creates a place for government innovators to talk about the possibilities and share ideas of how they have cracked the code and implemented change.” This kind of informal social networking, collaboration and idea sharing enables public service professionals to share best practices and is potentially a valuable source of innovation.

Highlights Government employees who use social networking and web 2.0 technologies in their everyday lives are creating private, government-only social networking sites to enable collaboration, facilitate discussion and disseminate information across organizational boundaries and international borders to solve some of government’s most pressing problems.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved.

Focus on Outcomes

United States: Cloud Computing in the District of Columbia

e-Governance strategy: Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Background

Solution Overview

In 2008, the District of Columbia’s Chief Technology Officer decided to switch from a traditional static desktop strategy and introduced web-based Google Apps as the new platform for day-today business operations. The district moved to cloud computing to reduce costs, enable government employees to collaborate more effectively and ensure better business continuity by moving from a single data center to multiple, geographically dispersed data centers. The aim is to roll out Google Apps to all 38,000 of the district’s employees across the 86 agencies that the Chief Technology Officer’s department supports.

The Google Apps software suite includes e-mail, calendar, documents and spreadsheets, along with wikis and instant messaging. The new system has dramatically reduced the amount the district spends on enterprise applications as the Google Apps software suite only costs the district $50 per user per year: “The average cost of [enterprise] email is $8 per month [per user]…For half that, we can get more value beyond just e-mail. We’re getting Google apps and video for the enterprise. We’re getting the ability to share spreadsheets and documents,” according to the District of Columbia Chief Technology Officer.

The district’s cloud computing strategy also reduces the risk, cost and complexity associated with large-scale implementations of enterprise applications: “In D.C. government, the schools spent $25 million on [an enterprise application roll out] and it failed… Government needs to start asking the question, ‘Are we building an IT organization? Or do we move out of the system of owning hardware and get services to deliver solutions to customers faster?’ We spend far too much on enterprise software roll-outs,” the district’s Chief Technology Officer has noted. From the Chief Technology Officer’s perspective, the ultimate rationale for cloud computing is “why should I spend millions on enterprise apps when I can do it at one-tenth cost and 10 times the speed?”

Highlights • Cloud computing is enabling the District of Columbia to provide employees with greater computing power and applications that facilitate collaboration at a reduced cost. • The District of Columbia is using cloud computing to reduce the risk associated with large-scale implementations of enterprise applications, which reduces the level of waste in the IT budget and enables the CIO to concentrate on and invest in innovative, citizen-facing IT solutions that strengthen the governance relationship.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes

United States: FEMA Risk MAP

e-Governance strategy: Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Background The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) mission is to “reduce the loss of life and property and protect the Nation from all hazards, including natural disasters… by leading and supporting the Nation in a risk-based, comprehensive emergency management system of preparedness, protection, response, recovery and mitigation.” Floods are one of the most common hazards in the United States. The National Flood Insurance Program, part of FEMA, is responsible for mitigating the risk posed by floods in part through flood hazard mapping. Building on the success of the Map Modernization Program, through which flood maps were digitized and made available online, FEMA launched Risk Mapping, Assessment and Planning (Risk MAP) in March 2009.

Solution Overview Risk MAP is a comprehensive strategy that combines flood hazard mapping, risk assessment tools and mitigation planning into one comprehensive, seamless program. The intent: to maximize flood loss reduction by encouraging innovative uses of flood hazard data and enabling local communities to develop more effective mitigation plans by providing an integrated national assessment of risks based on digital flood hazard data and web-accessible data.

Risk MAP has five goals: Goal 1: Address gaps in flood hazard data to form a solid foundation for flood risk assessments, floodplain management and actuarial soundness of the National Flood Insurance Program. Actions include: • Initiate Risk MAP flood map update projects to address gaps in required engineering and mapping for high flood risk areas affected by coastal flooding, levees and other flood hazards (for example, lakes, rivers, ponds). • Ensure state and federal resources aimed at identifying flood hazards are aligned with flood risk, data needs and partner contributions. Goal 2: Ensure that a measurable increase in the public’s awareness and understanding of risk management results in a measurable reduction in current and future vulnerability to flooding. Actions include: • Implement a comprehensive national outreach strategy that provides stakeholders with targeted messaging using innovative outreach tools to increase understanding of risk and promote actions to reduce those risks.

• Establish a baseline, and measure annual progress, of local understanding of flood risk. • Develop a process to conduct the risk assessment routinely and measure the reduction of current and future vulnerability. Goal 3: Lead and support states, local communities and tribal communities to effectively engage in risk-based mitigation planning resulting in sustainable actions that reduce or eliminate risks to life and property from natural hazards. Actions include: • Integrate hazard mitigation planning with other planning processes already in place at the federal, state, tribal and local levels. • Communicate the benefits of the hazard mitigation planning process to help states, local communities and tribal entities to develop, adopt and implement FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plans. • Evaluate hazard mitigation plans to demonstrate that mitigation actions are being effectively implemented at the state, local and tribal levels, resulting in risk reduction. Goal 4: Provide an enhanced digital platform that improves management of limited Risk MAP resources, stewards information produced by Risk MAP, and improves communication and sharing of risk data and related products to all levels of government and the public. Actions include:

• Enhance existing systems and tools—leveraging advances in geospatial information systems and data to help Risk MAP producers and end users take a geographic approach to risk analysis and enable Risk MAP to provide the right information to the right audience at the right time. Goal 5: Align Risk Analysis programs and develop synergies to enhance decision-making capabilities through effective risk communication and management. Actions include:

Highlights Risk MAP is a comprehensive strategy FEMA is using to maximize the value of digital flood maps. The goal: to improve social and economic outcomes for citizens by reaching out to and engaging local communities; educating the public and enabling them to develop more effective mitigation strategies; collaborating, coordinating and sharing data with organizations from different levels of government; and investing in IT to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government operations.

• Expand flood hazard mapping guidelines to include data needed to support flood risk assessment. • Develop ways to share risk assessments, encourage integrated planning and coordinate plans for communicating with the public. • Create forums for federal, state, local, tribal and business entities to discuss risk. • Identify synergies at all levels, including interagency coordination, programmatic decisions and day-to-day activities. • Facilitate the expansion of a risk management approach beyond flood to other threats.

• Use technology efficiently to manage Risk MAP investments and identify, quantify, store, share and enhance risk analysis information. • Leverage advancements in national geospatial data production, quality and availability to improve Risk MAP products.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes

Australia: Australian Tax Office Change Program

e-Governance strategy: Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Background The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is the Australian government’s principal revenue collection agency. One of the ATO’s strategic objectives is “to make it as easy as possible for people to voluntarily comply with their tax and superannuation obligations by implementing a range of initiatives designed to improve our products and services.” As part of this strategic drive to improve customer service, the ATO launched the Listening to the Community program in 2002, through which the ATO engaged people from all walks of life–families, people in rural areas, youth, seniors, accountants, tax practitioners, software developers and small business operators. The ATO used discussion groups, product development workshops and other engagement forums to solicit citizen feedback. Based on this feedback, the ATO determined that:

• Individuals wanted easier tax forms, better phone services, more online options and assistance with record keeping.

Solution Overview Based on the findings of the Listening to the Community program, the ATO launched the Easier, Cheaper and More Personalised (ECMP) program in 2003. The ECMP program is a holistic, ongoing change program designed to “improve client experiences through enhanced client service practices and systems. The focus is on providing easier, cheaper and more personalized interactions, information and advice for individuals, business and tax agents.” More specifically, the ECMP program aims to deliver: • An integrated processing system for all ATO products

• Tax agents wanted more detailed and faster online access to client information, better phone services and secure email.

• An effective active compliance and advice capability

• Small businesses wanted more personalized electronic access, a more user-friendly website, greater access to phone services after hours and more targeted assistance for their industry.

• Improved enterprise-wide outcome management of work

• Effective, improved client service

• Uninterrupted delivery of tax office business • A system with integrity and performance • Productivity and sustainability benefits To deliver these outcomes, the ATO has developed a number of backoffice and front-office solutions designed to: • Offer citizens more personalization in terms of how they interact with the ATO by developing improved analytics and intelligence capability. This enables the organization to develop a deeper understanding of customers’ compliance behavior and offer customers who are experiencing uncertainty and hardship increased flexibility—for example, by expediting refunds.

Highlights • Since 2003, the ECMP program has transformed the ATO into a more citizen-centric organization by improving the effectiveness of its services, allowing the organization to develop a holistic understanding of customers’ needs, behaviors and preferences, and enabling the ATO to interact with customers in a more flexible, personalized manner. • The ECMP program has also improved the efficiency of ATO operations by improving productivity through work and case management systems and reducing costs by rationalizing and standardizing IT systems.

• Enable the ATO to develop a more detailed picture of customers’ tax affairs by processing all registrations, forms, payments and accounting transactions across all types of revenue products using a single system. • Improve customer service to individuals, businesses and tax agents through a customer relationship management system to encourage staff to focus on improving levels of customer satisfaction, case and work management systems to enhance the ATO’s active compliance and advice capability and document and content management platforms to improve customer record management.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes

Italy: Magellano

www.magellanopa.it/

e-Governance strategy: Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Background

Solution Overview

Established in 1983 as part of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Italian Ministry for Public Administration and Innovation drives modernization in government. The ministry seeks to enhance the quality of public services and reduce the cost of public administration by promoting more efficient and effective government operations.

To support this program, in May 2009 the ministry launched Magellano, a web-based content management platform designed to enable government-wide knowledge sharing, collaboration and coordination; to encourage the reuse of best practices across organizational boundaries; and to reduce the cost of providing employees with up-to-date content. The ultimate goal of the Magellano project: to improve the Italian government’s ability to capture, update and manage intellectual capital— content, best practices, knowledge and tools.

Over the last few years, the ministry has coordinated an extensive governmentwide transformation program designed to improve the quality of public services; simplify administrative processes and procedures; reduce and rationalize public expenditure; and support public administration modernization.

Alongside a sophisticated content management solution, the Magellano project has developed an integrated set of knowledge management processes, together with a new governance model, to establish an ongoing management process and deliver real cultural change across the Italian government. Magellano also enables employees from across government to connect with each other to share ideas, knowledge and best practices through online forums and wikis, as well as authoring and content-sharing platforms.

Using content from Magellano, the ministry is currently creating a comprehensive service catalogue that gives key details about individual services, including the organization responsible for delivering the service, contact points for requesting additional information and important information regarding the handling of citizen requests, such as office opening hours and administrative procedures. The system has more than 16,000 registered users from local and central government, as well as universities and other public service organizations, and manages more than 100,000 documents a year.

Highlights • The Italian government has created a single content management platform that enables employees from across government to share best practices, access up-to-date information and collaborate to deliver innovation and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services. • Magellano uses enterprise 2.0 technologies to enable employees to author and share content, access information quickly and easily, and discuss and debate issues—helping government to innovate, break down silos and overcome other organizational obstacles to change. • Magellano supports improved customer services by ensuring that all government contact centers have access to standardized information about individual public services through a comprehensive service catalogue.

.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes

Finland: Finnish Immigration Services

e-Governance strategy: Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Background

Solution Overview

In recent years, the Finnish Immigration Service has come under increasing pressure. In 2008, residence permit applications numbered 22,752, up onethird from 2006; asylum applications increased 167 percent; and citizenship declarations were up 223 percent versus 2007. These increases have had a dramatic impact on Finland’s immigration landscape. In fact, the number of foreign citizens living in Finland went up 40 percent from 2004 to 2008. This explosion in immigration and the migrant population has placed unprecedented demands on the Finnish Immigration Service. The service is processing many more applications and managing far more complex outcomes, such as the integration of foreign nationals, including an increasing number of asylum seekers from outside the European Union, maximizing the economic benefit of immigration and ensuring national security. It has become clear to the Finnish government that immigration services must adopt a joined-up, holistic approach to processing and managing complex cases.

Until 2006, responsibility for immigration services in Finland was split across seven different organizations, including the Ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs, Labor and Justice, as well as the Directorate of Immigration (renamed Finnish Immigration Services in 2008), the Police and the Border Guard. In the past, this division of responsibilities has resulted in complex migration procedures, delays in processing applications, inefficient processes and suboptimal outcomes for migrants. Cases were often passed from agency to agency with limited collaboration, coordination, communication and strategic alignment among them. Since 2006, the Finnish government has sought to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its immigration system by driving and enabling crossagency collaboration around crosscutting shared outcomes. The first step: to create a shared outcome model by bringing together professionals from several agencies to agree upon a set of outcomes, metrics and priorities for migration in Finland. At the highest level, these outcomes include optimizing the fairness and equality of the migration system, fulfilling international protection obligations toward asylum seekers and

refugees, ensuring the security of migration and enabling the smooth transition of the migrant workforce into the labor market. Organizations involved in the immigration system use this shared outcome model as the basis for joint strategic planning. The shared-outcome model is also being used to drive a transformation program around a single groundbreaking, end-toend electronic immigration case management system. When fully deployed in 2009, this custombuilt case management system will incorporate over 40 interfaces and 20 data systems. It will also enable fully integrated, interagency handling of every process within the immigration, citizenship and asylum workflow—from electronic submission through processing and communication to electronic archiving—by 15,000 potential users based in Finnish government locations and offices across the globe. Eventually, the case management system will also include additional applications, such as an accommodation management system and a reporting system that will enable outcome-focused reporting.

Highlights The Finnish Immigration Service is driving and enabling collaboration around shared cross-agency outcomes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Finland’s immigration system. This effort is being driven by a comprehensive shared outcome model that has been developed by professionals from all organizations involved in the delivery of immigration services. A shared case management system, as part of a broader transformation program, is enabling the Finnish Immigration Service to improve communication, collaboration and coordination among organizations responsible for a common set of outcomes.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Focus on Outcomes

Italy: Linea Amica

www.lineaamica.gov.it/

e-Governance strategy: Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision Background

Solution Overview

Every day, more than half a million Italians contact a Public Relations Office (URP) or a Public Administration call center to access information or services and request support. It is estimated that 50,000 citizens or more a day visit government offices unnecessarily as their request could be fulfilled more effectively online or over the phone. This has a detrimental impact on the efficiency, effectiveness and performance of public service organizations’ customer service. To tackle this problem, the Italian government is taking steps to reduce the proportion of face-to-face customer service cases by enhancing the effectiveness and accessibility of services online and on the phone.

In 2009, the Minister of Public Administration and Innovation launched “Linea Amica,” a national network of contact centers and a single online government customer service portal to improve the accessibility, efficiency and effectiveness of customer service by reducing the proportion of face-to-face customer service cases. Linea Amica does not replace existing front-office structures but integrates them into a single network, which includes URP and call centers, to ensure a high standard of customer service across public services and realize cost efficiencies. Linea Amica also enables the Italian government to collect, analyze and evaluate data on the number, types and geographic distribution of requests as well as the number of issues solved and services delivered.

Citizens can contact “Linea Amica” by phone, email or SMS and through an online service request form. Customers are then referred to the relevant organization or, if their request is more complicated, the case is handed to a dedicated Linea Amica team. Through the Linea Amica online customer service portal, customers can use an emoticons tool to register their satisfaction with the services they have received and this data is published in real time on the website. The Linea Amica customer service portal offers a range of features, including:

Highlights • The Italian government is using Linea Amica to transform customer service by establishing a single point of contact for customers with a very wide range of needs, thereby improving the accessibility and performance of customer service. • As an integrated network of front-office structures from across government, Linea Amica enables government-wide collaboration around improved customer service and enhanced data sharing capabilities.

• Links to the main local and national public administration contact centers • Frequently asked questions and answers • News, which is also delivered through Linea Amica Radio • A virtual assistant that teaches users how to ask questions, report service problems or navigate other government websites

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Balance

United Kingdom: Northumberland County Council and Mosaic Public Services

e-Governance strategy: Conducting customer segmentation analysis and using customer insight to target services appropriately Background Mosaic Public Services is a lifestyle classification system that enables government in the United Kingdom to segment its constituents into 61 lifestyle types and 11 groups: from “Happy Families” (younger families living in newer homes) to “Welfare Borderline” (people living in social housing with uncertain employment in deprived areas) and “Grey Perspectives” (independent older people with relatively active lifestyles). This segmentation is based on over 900 different variables from a diverse range of data sources, including the Census, the British Crime Survey and the Index of Multiple Deprivation. The Mosaic classification has been validated through extensive surveying across the United Kingdom.

Solution Overview Northumberland County Council modified the mosaic classification system and added three new groups to ensure that rural lifestyle types common in the area are adequately represented. This segmentation methodology has been applied to the services that Northumberland County Council provides—for example, council tax, welfare benefits and refuse. Figures have been generated showing the level of need that each lifestyle type has for the various services that the council provides.

The council has used Mosaic to: • Develop more effective communication strategies. By mapping the geographic distribution of lifestyle types across the county and considering the communication methods that people in each classification respond to best, the council has been able to develop targeted communication strategies tailored to reach specific lifestyle types. • Identify gaps in service provision and predict the impact that changes in service delivery will have on certain areas by identifying areas in which high-need lifestyle types are concentrated and service provision is, or may become, inadequate.

Highlights • Classification systems like Mosaic are an effective basis for a customer segmentation strategy; they enable organizations to identify needs groups and tailor services and communication strategies to meet the needs of customer segments. • Northumberland County Council has used the customer insight derived from customer segmentation to drive improvements in service delivery and customer service. Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved.

Balance

Canada: WelcomeBC

www.welcomebc.ca

e-Governance strategy: Conducting customer segmentation analysis and using customer insight to target services appropriately Background Until 2008, when new immigrants arrived in British Columbia they had to use a series of complex, disparate online resources to access information and services that facilitate the immigration and settlement process. The province decided that given the social and economic benefits of immigration, the process of settling in British Columbia should be much easier. To this end, the province created WelcomeBC.ca, a comprehensive, one-stop website for information on immigrating to British Columbia. WelcomeBC.ca is designed to make it easier for immigrants and potential immigrants to access information, services and programs from all levels of government and relevant community-based organizations.

The main aims of the WelcomeBC project were to: • Improve access to information, programs and services for immigrants to BC, potential immigrants, their families, sponsors and immigrant-serving agencies. • Allow for streamlined access to information on services and programs from all levels of government and relevant community-based organizations. • Ensure that the website provides clientcentered, rather than producer-centered, information. • Translate the information needs of the client segments and related communities of interest into business requirements. • Implement a governance structure to sustain the management, maintenance and continuous improvement of the web site.

Solution Overview

Highlights

The key to the success of WelcomeBC is its citizen-centric design. WelcomeBC is organized around broad customer segments or needs groups (for example, temporary workers, international students, family members) to enable users to more easily access targeted information and services relevant to them. This is a very different approach to traditional organization-centric website design, in which information and services are structured around the organizations or service silos that deliver them rather than citizen need profiles or outcomes. To achieve this level of citizen centricity, the province conducted a unique 20-week customer segmentation program to identify customer segments within the immigrant community and tailor information, services and website design to meet the needs of specific segments.

WelcomeBC demonstrates how a comprehensive customer segmentation program can successfully support citizencentric website design, enabling government to create portals and websites that are easy to navigate and provide accessible and appropriately targeted information and services.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Balance

Australia: STRONG Families Western Australia

e-Governance strategy: Conducting customer segmentation analysis and using customer insight to target services appropriately Background In 2001, the Premier of Western Australia launched an “Inquiry into the Response by Government Agencies to Complaints of Family Violence and Child Abuse in Aboriginal Communities.” The inquiry was prompted by the findings of a coroner's investigation into the death of a 15-yearold girl. The investigation raised questions about the response of various government departments and other agencies to allegations of physical and sexual abuse. The investigation, later termed the Gordon Inquiry, examined the activities of state government agencies in addressing complaints and the reporting of sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities; identified the barriers and capacity of government agencies to address the issue of family violence, particularly child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities; proposed support measures for children reporting abuse; and considered current research into the prevalence, causes and solutions to Aboriginal violence.

The inquiry concluded that current services were unable to adequately address the escalating rates of family violence and child abuse in Aboriginal communities and articulated a community-focused systemic response. In Western Australia, the government’s response to the Gordon Inquiry’s recommendations resulted in state-wide expansion of the STRONG Families Program. The program is based on the Strengthening Families strategy developed and implemented nationally in New Zealand.

Solution Overview STRONG Families is a planning and coordinating process for families who are receiving services from two or more states agencies and it is considered that a formalized, interagency approach will help the family achieve desired outcomes. The aim: to join up public services around the needs of families who are least able to help themselves and have the highest level of need. The organization’s approach recognizes that the problems experienced by many families are complex and inter-linked, and that these problems cannot be solved by one agency alone, or by agencies working in isolation. The STRONG Families

approach also recognizes that there are many barriers to bringing about coordinated and collaborative services for families with complex needs and seeks to overcome organizational and cultural barriers to collaboration. To overcome these organizational challenges and fulfill families’ complex needs, STRONG Families has developed a flexible Process Flow that enables agencies to coordinate and tailor their services to meet the needs of the family. To ensure the families’ needs remain at the heart of service delivery and to facilitate regular communication between government and the family a single “lead agency” is appointed. This agency is not responsible for delivering services but coordinating the work of other organizations and acting as a single point of contact for the family.

Highlights • STRONG Families is built on the assumption that to effectively support families with the most complex needs, organizations must collaborate to deliver personalized, tailored public services that correspond to the needs of individual families. • To enable cross-government collaboration and fulfill families’ complex needs, STRONG Families has developed a flexible process flow that enables agencies to coordinate and tailor their services based on customer need. • To ensure the families’ needs remain at the heart of service delivery and to facilitate regular communication between government and families, a single “lead agency” is appointed. This agency is not responsible for delivering services but coordinating the work of other organizations and acting as a single point of contact for families.

Strong Families Process Flow 1. Referral

2. Convening

3. Initial Meeting

• Agency identifies family they believe can benefit from the STRONG families process and discuss suitability of referral with Coordinator. Criteria • Complex social issues • Family with children under the age of 18yrs • Two or more agencies involved (or should be involved) with the family • Family consent to the process and for information to be shared between identified agencies and individuals • A period of more formal coordination is likely to make a positive difference

Engagement with family • Process is explained to the family and written consent obtained for information sharing • Family prepared for participation in the meeting • Coordinator works with referring agency to identify relevant agencies and to convene initial meeting

• Attended by agency and family representatives • Conducted by neutral facilitator • Relevant information shared • Family needs and strengths identified • Goals are identified • Integrated action plan developed • Lead agency appointed • Review meeting date set

6. Closure

5. Review

4. Implementing

Closure occurs when: • Goals for the family are substantially achieved • Agencies are now working together effectively and there is no further need for additional coordination through STRONG families • Significant changes in the family’s circumstances render the plan inoperable. • Family withdraws their cooperation or consent A maintenance plan is developed Success is celebrated!

• Held at the previously agreed time or earlier if necessary • Progress is identified and changes to the plan are determined

Each agency works with the family in accordance with their agency’s custom and practice, carrying out their role according to the plan. Lead Agency / Worker • Acts as a primary point of contact and communication in relation to the plan • Monitor progress of the plan

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved.

Balance

United States: NYC 311

e-Governance strategy: Conducting customer segmentation analysis and using customer insight to target services appropriately Background

Solution Overview

Before 2003, residents of New York City looking for government assistance were confronted with more than 4,000 entries on 14 pages of the NYC telephone book, and more than 40 resource-intensive call centers were required to direct inquiries to the right city offices. This had a significant impact on the accessibility of public services and prevented the city from offering residents flexible, personalized customer service that reflects their needs and circumstances.

In 2003, the city launched the NYC 311 Customer Service Center: a centralized, all-purpose call facility. It is accessible through the simple-to-remember 3-1-1 phone number, which is answered by a live operator who quickly directs callers to the information or resources they need at any time of the day or night. This single, integrated communication channel manages all of the city’s non-emergency service and information requests. The principal aim of NYC 311 is to increase the accessibility of public services and enable the city to offer more personalized customer service and information— enabling residents to easily interact with city agencies to receive information, file complaints and resolve issues.

The Customer Service Management System (CSMS) is the technical solution that supports Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) in the 311 Citizen Service Center. CSMS is a customized customer relationship management tool that incorporates a searchable knowledge base that includes information dealing with more than 7,000 aspects of the city's government; an interagency work order routing and tracking system; and an enterprise content management platform that provides CSRs with a single point from which to create, manage, approve and deploy content that is shared across the organization. CSMS not only allows CSRs to find relevant information and respond to citizen requests more quickly, it also enables them to offer more flexible and personalized customer service by supporting governmentwide collaboration and data sharing and by providing enhanced case management capabilities.

Highlights • NYC 311 improves the accessibility of public services while enabling the city to deliver more flexible, personalized customer service that reflects citizens’ preferences, needs and circumstances. • CSMS allows CSRs to adopt a segmented case management approach to customer service whereby lighter-touch customer service cases can be dealt with as quickly as possible, enabling CSRs to concentrate time and resources on managing more complex cases.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Balance

Sweden: Försäkringskassan

e-Governance strategy: Conducting customer segmentation analysis and using customer insight to target services appropriately Background

Solution Overview

Försäkringskassan is the Swedish government’s social insurance provider. Social insurance covers everyone who lives or works in Sweden. It provides financial protection for families and children, for persons with a disability and in connection with illness, work injury and old age. As a result, Försäkringskassan serves a wide range of customers with very different needs, preferences and circumstances—from teenagers and people out of work to the elderly and people caring for disabled children.

Försäkringskassan has launched a new customer service strategy designed to increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs by delivering more flexible, personalized customer service that reflects the needs and preferences of the customer. One of the main aims is to eliminate unnecessary face-to-face meetings with citizens who are most able to help themselves while moving a greater proportion of customer service cases to more efficient self-service channels (where appropriate). To achieve this, Försäkringskassan conducted extensive customer segmentation analysis. Through rigorous factor and cluster analysis, it defined 17 discrete customer segments based on life events and complexity of need. The agency then developed detailed customer insight around needs, customer service channel behavior and preferences for each segment. It used this insight to align the 12 customer segments that make social insurance claims to three primary contact channels:

• Self-service: – Teenagers – Parents taking time off work to care for a sick child – Citizens on maternity/paternity leave – New pensioners – Younger senior citizens - Unemployed • Customer service centers: – Multi-service users – People recovering from illness – Older senior citizens • Personal case worker/ administrator: – Citizens entitled to disability support – People currently suffering from ill health – People with a long-term disability

Through customer segmentation analysis, Försäkringskassan discovered that around 45 percent of customers could use self-service as their primary contact channel. Further, 50 percent of customers who do not use self-service could be incentivized to change their behavior and switch to self service as their primary contact channel. This customer service strategy has enabled Försäkringskassan to deliver more personalized, effective customer service by encouraging those who are able to use efficient, online self-service channels. This, in turn, enables the organization to channel resources into meeting the needs of customers who are least able to help themselves and who require face-to-face customer service. During 2008, 4.5 million unnecessary face-to-face client service meetings were eliminated; meanwhile, the proportion of selfservice cases increased from 10.4 percent to 15.3 percent.

Highlights Försäkringskassan’s customer service strategy is enabling the organization to deliver more equal outcomes, increase customer satisfaction and utilize and target resources more effectively by providing citizens with flexible, personalized customer service that reflects their needs, preferences and behavior.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Balance

Lithuania: Windows to the Future Alliance

e-Governance strategy: Ensuring that more citizens can access and use digital media channels and providing support to those who cannot Background In 2002, some of the largest business in Lithuania collaborated with the Lithuanian Ministry of the Interior to launch the Windows to the Future Alliance. The goal: to “promote the use of Internet in Lithuania, and thus raise the standard of life of the country's population, increase the country's competitiveness in Europe and the world.” The alliance “supports the development of an information society” in Lithuania by: • Providing public Internet access points • Stimulating the growth of e-services • Increasing computer literacy and enabling citizens to use the Internet The Alliance receives funding on a project by project basis. So far, its various projects have been funded by the European Union, the Lithuanian government and various businesses both within and outside of the Windows for the Future Alliance.

Solution Overview Between 2002 and 2008, the Alliance established over 800 Public Internet Access Points, the majority of which are in rural areas where broadband penetration is relatively low. This project was funded by the European Union, the Ministry of the Interior

and businesses both within and outside the Windows to the Future Alliance. One of the most successful initiatives the alliance has launched so far is the “Computer Literacy Basics for e-Citizens” project. Between 2006 and 2008, over 50,400 people were coached and tutored to use computers. More than 85% of those tutored—mainly 40- to 59-year-olds living in small regions and towns—now use their own PC at home and are sharing their knowledge with family and friends. Training courses were offered in 2,938 classrooms and 181 PIAPs. In all, the project involved more than 400 trainers. The training initiative cost €2.7 million and was funded by the Windows to the Future Alliance and the European Union through the European Social Fund.

Highlights The Windows to the Future Alliance is successful at tackling digital exclusion because it enables businesses and government to collaborate in the planning and delivery of digital inclusion strategies. This collaborative approach has enabled the Windows for the Future Alliance to deliver a well-resourced, easily accessible and effective e-citizen training program while increasing broadband penetration. Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved.

Balance

Malaysia: MySMS

www.mysms.gov.my/

e-Governance strategy: Ensuring that more citizens can access and use digital media channels and providing support to those who cannot Background The Malaysian Government is trying to improve the accessibility of public services and information by using ICTs to enable the public to access information and services online, over the phone and through mobile devices. It is estimated that of Malaysia’s 27 million people, 24 million have access to a cell phone whereas only 16 million have access to the Internet.

Solution Overview In July 2008, the Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (Mampu) launched MySMS, a single number (15888) to which citizens can send an SMS message. In doing so, citizens can access more than 1,500 SMS services from 86 agencies—including the police, Road Transport Department, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Higher Education and local councils.

The MySMS online portal supports MySMS users and features Member Registration, FAQs, Types of Services, List of Agencies, Training Manual, Promotions, Feedback and a blog. Through mySMS, citizens can access general information about an agency, such as the addresses and telephone numbers of particular offices; request documents and forms that will be sent to the user’s email address; and access their personal information held by different agencies including “examination results, application status and personal profiles.” To access personal information, users must be registered with the agency that holds that information.

Highlights • Providing citizens with a single gateway through which they can access information and services from multiple agencies makes it easier for citizens who are less able to help themselves interact with government and may well improve the overall customer experience. • SMS services like mySMS increase the proportion of lighter-touch or self-service customer service cases that can be automated. This enables government to channel resources into helping citizens with the most complex needs.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Balance

Singapore: CPF Board m-Ambassadors

e-Governance strategy: Ensuring that more citizens can access and use digital media channels and providing support to those who cannot Background Singapore’s Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board is a comprehensive national social security savings plan. It not only provides savings plans for retirement, but also for home ownership, health care and more. CPF currently has around 3.2 million members; of those, around 1.6 million are actively contributing to their plans. The mission of the CPF Board is “to enable Singaporeans to save for a secure retirement,” while its vision is to be “a world-class social security organization providing the best national savings scheme for Singaporeans to enjoy a secure retirement.”

The CPF Board has invested in a range of online and offline engagement and empowerment initiatives—from interactive online games to e-counters in walk-in government offices designed to educate and enable citizens to plan for a secure retirement. However, by its very nature, the organization has a broad and diverse customer base. Exemplifying an organization with cradle-to-grave relationships, the Board serves customers of all ages—from the very young to the very old. It also serves all sectors of society—from the affluent to the poor. One of the CPF Board’s key challenges, therefore, is to differentiate its services to meet the diverse needs of all its customers and to engage and adequately serve all sections of society.

Solution Overview

Highlights

To engage, educate and empower individuals who are less able to take advantage of online tools or who prefer face-to-face service, the CPF Board employs mobile Customer Service Officers (CSO) or “m-ambassadors.” The m-ambassadors may visit people in their homes if they have contacted the call center to report difficulties they are facing or if the CPF Board has identified them as being eligible for payments they have not claimed. The m-ambassadors also hold community road shows to educate customers and give them the opportunity to use online services. m-ambassadors use Ultra Mobile Personal Computers (UMPCs) and connect to the Internet through the Wireless@SG service, Singapore’s free nationwide Internet service based on wireless zones. This enables them to deliver CPF services anywhere in Singapore and in any location—from shopping malls to private homes.

• The CPF Board is using the m-ambassador program to deliver more equal outcomes by reaching out to deliver services, educate and empower traditionally hardto-reach groups. • The m-ambassador system enables the CPF Board to channel resources into meeting the needs of citizens who are least able to help themselves—allowing the organization to maximize the value of strategies designed to reduce the cost of serving those customers who are able to take advantage of online, self-service tools.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement

United Kingdom: MySociety.org www.mysociety.org/

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to engage with each other through social networking technologies Background

Solution Overview

An increasing number of charities and businesses are building participatory democracy and citizen engagement websites that use web 2.0 technologies to enable citizens to participate in their governance and engage with one another. MySociety is a United Kingdom site that uses social networking technologies to enable people to engage with each other in new ways—for example, by creating sites that enable citizens to collaborate and launch community projects that improve social and economic outcomes in their neighborhood; providing people with a forum for real-time debate and discussion; and connecting people so they can contribute to the design and delivery of participatory websites.

MySociety is a charitable project that “builds websites that give people tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives.” MySociety also aims to “teach the public sector, through demonstration, how to use the Internet most efficiently to improve lives.” MySociety uses an extensive network of online volunteers connected through a variety of social networking media including blogs, RSS feeds and Twitter to build effective citizen-participation tools. These tools are improving people’s quality of life and changing the relationship between citizens and government.

Since 2004, MySociety has launched a number of websites that enable people to participate in their governance and engage with each other in new ways including: • WriteToThem.com is the only website in the United Kingdom that people can use to contact any of their elected representatives. WriteToThem has been used to send over 400,000 messages, about half of which have come from citizens who are writing to a politician for the very first time.

Highlights • As a charity, MySociety connects citizens—enabling them to collaborate in the creation of websites that allow people to participate in their governance and engage with each other in new ways. • Government organizations such as the Ministry of Justice, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office are working or have worked with MySociety to develop websites that create public value.

• No 10 Downing Street Petitions Website was built for the Prime Minister’s Office and enables citizens to petition government online. Over five million people have used the site to sign online petitions. • FixMyStreet is a site where people can report, view or discuss local problems such as graffiti, fly tipping, broken paving slabs or street lighting. Nearly 25,000 problems have now been reported across the United Kingdom. • Publicexperience is a pilot project hosted by MySociety and funded by the Ministry of Justice. The project seeks raw, unvarnished feedback from citizens about public services.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement

France 2025

www.france2025.fr/

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to engage with each other through social networking technologies Background

Highlights

In 2008, the French government launched France 2025—France’s strategic assessment project that “aims to draft different future development scenarios for the country and recommend winning strategies.” France2025.fr was launched as the project’s website.

The French government is encouraging and enabling citizens to discuss and debate issues facing government and strategies that could be employed to solve some of the country’s most pressing problems. This approach strengthens the governance relationship, improves transparency and is a valuable idea-generation and innovation exercise.

Solution Overview France2025.fr uses web 2.0 technologies (blogs, wikis and video streaming) to enable citizens to comment on government proposals and documents; to discuss and debate issues facing France in the future; and to collaborate on suggestions regarding possible strategies to address these issues. The interactive elements of the website are organized around eight key themes, from globalization to utilities, and numerous sub-themes. The site enables citizens to comment on specific issues, as well as provide more general comments.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement

United States: District of Columbia’s Digital Public Square dps.dc.gov/

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to engage with each other through social networking technologies Background

Solution Overview

In 2008, District of Columbia CTO Vivek Kundra launched Apps for Democracy, a contest in which members of the public were invited to create iPhone, Facebook and web applications and mashups to visualize and make use of DC.gov’s data catalog. The data catalog contains all types of open public data, such as realtime crime feeds, school test scores and poverty indicators. Apps for Democracy was a huge success, costing the District of Columbia $50,000 but resulting in a set of applications worth an estimated $2.6 million or more. Building on the success of Apps for Democracy, the District decided to launch the Digital Public Square “to make government services more effective, accessible and transparent.”

The Digital Public Square is a government portal that uses web 2.0 technologies to enable citizens to discover how district agencies work, to participate in the democratic process and to connect with government and each other. The project reflects the districts CTO’s belief that we are entering a “new era of governance, one in which technological advances now allow people from around the world unfettered access to their government.” The site enables citizens to: • Access, scrutinize and visualize government data by opening up the data catalog and allowing users to create custom downloads and live data feeds. • Use and create mashups and applications built by the public and government for a range of purposes. • Use a range of popular social networking sites to discuss and debate issues facing government and share information about government and public services.

Highlights The Digital Public Square provides citizens with a single portal through which they can participate in their governance by accessing government data, sharing ideas, collaborating to create applications that improve people’s quality of life and telling government what they want from their public services.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement United Kingdom: Hertfordshire Constabulary’s Online Watch Link www.owl.co.uk/

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to participate in their governance through digital media Background

Highlights

Police forces across the United Kingdom are trying to enhance community intelligence and communication while supporting neighborhood policing more effectively. To achieve this, Hertfordshire Constabulary launched Online Watch Link in 2007.

• Online Watch Link enables and encourages citizens to connect, collaborate and engage with each another to deliver improved outcomes.

Solution Overview Online Watch Link (OWL) is a webbased application that connects all Neighborhood Watch, School Watch, Rural Watch, Shop Watch, Business Watch and many other watch programs in Hertfordshire, Staffordshire and parts of North Wales. OWL enables the police to provide timely and localized communications to watch groups across the county—helping prevent crime or find missing people or wanted suspects. The system enhances communications via phone, text messaging, fax and email. Online Watch Link also incorporates management tools the police and public use for starting and maintaining watches. The application enables thousands of volunteer coordinators to securely and effectively manage watch programs with minimal police input.

• The police use the virtual citizen network created through Online Watch Link to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. • Online Watch Link enables the public to become actively involved in their governance as co-producers of public safety.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement Australia: Country Fire Authority and the Victoria Fires Map mapvisage.appspot.com/fires/ FireMap.html

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to participate in their governance through digital media Background

Highlights

The Country Fire Authority, a volunteerbased emergency management organization, is responsible for preventing and fighting fires in Victoria, Australia. In February 2009, Victoria experienced some of the worst bushfires in living memory. To provide the public with real-time information about the number, location and severity of these bushfires, Google created the Victoria Fires Map.

The Country Fire Authority RSS feed provides the public with government data in a standardized, usable format. It enabled a private organization to partner with government in creating public value by developing a mashup that visualized government data effectively.

Solution Overview The Victoria Fires Map is a Flash map that overlays Country Fire Authority data on to Google Maps. The data is updated in real time from the Country Fire Authority website via the Country Fire Authority RSS feed. Launched within a few hours of the start of the emergency, the Victoria Fires Map greatly assisted the public and emergency services by providing them with up-to-date information and reducing the burden on other websites.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement

United States: The White house Open for Questions

www.whitehouse.gov/Openforquestions/

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to participate in their governance through digital media Background Citizen engagement and improved transparency are priorities for the Obama administration: “We need to connect citizens with each other to engage them more fully and directly in solving the problems that face us. We must use all available technologies and methods to open up the federal government, creating a new level of transparency to change the way business is conducted in Washington and giving Americans the chance to participate in government deliberations and decision making in ways that were not possible only a few years ago.” Barack Obama, Presidential Announcement Speech in Springfield, IL 02/10/07

economy on whitehouse.gov. The public rated the questions submitted and then President Obama answered the questions with the highest rating in a special online town hall streamed on whitehouse.gov. Over 100,000 questions were submitted and 3.5 million votes cast.

Highlights • Open for Questions was a mass citizen engagement initiative that effectively engaged large numbers of people. • Responding to citizen feedback in a transparent and meaningful way enabled a citizen-government dialogue to emerge, which increased citizen interest in and support for future citizen-participation initiatives.

Solution Overview The Obama administration is changing the way that citizens relate to government— using technology to enable greater citizen participation and to solicit and respond to citizen feedback. As part of this agenda, the White House launched the Open for Questions project. The public was given two days to post questions about the

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved.

Engagement

The Netherlands: The Dutch e-Citizen Charter

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to participate in their governance through digital media Background

Solution Overview

The aim of the Dutch e-government is “to improve information exchange, service delivery and interactive participation by introducing a new partnership between citizen and government.” To achieve this, the Dutch government decided that through Information Communication Technologies, citizens should have more responsibility and choice and should be actively involved in the delivery of public services. In 2004, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior launched the e-Citizen program—an independent platform designed to “stimulate the development of e-government from the citizen's point of view.” To that end, the program solicited citizen input through surveys and forums to aid in the development of an e-Citizen Charter.

The Dutch e-Citizen Charter consists of 10 quality standards that define the digital relationship between citizens and government. Each standard is built around a citizen right or entitlement: • Choice of Channel: As a citizen, I can choose which way to deal with government. Government ensures multi-channel service delivery—that is, the availability of all communication channels: visit, letter, phone, e-mail and Internet. • Transparent Public Sector: As a citizen, I know where to apply for official information and public services. Government guarantees one-stopshop service delivery and acts as one seamless entity with no wrong doors. • Overview of Rights and Duties: As a citizen, I know which services I am entitled to under which conditions. Government ensures that my rights and duties are at all times transparent. • Personalized Information: As a citizen, I am entitled to information that is complete, up to date and consistent. Government supplies appropriate information tailored to my needs.

• Convenient Services: As a citizen, I can choose to provide personal data once and to be served in a proactive way. Government makes clear what records it keeps about me and does not use data without my consent. • Comprehensive Procedures: As a citizen, I can easily get to know how government works and monitor progress. Government keeps me informed of procedures I am involved in by way of tracking and tracing. • Trust and Reliability: As a citizen, I presume government to be electronically competent. Government guarantees secure identity management and reliable storage of electronic documents. • Considerate Administration: As a citizen, I can file ideas for improvement and lodge complaints. Government compensates mistakes and uses feedback information to improve its products and procedures.

Through each quality standard, these citizen rights are mapped to obligations public service organizations must fulfill to deliver citizen-centric, multichannel e-government across local and national government in the Netherlands. In 2006, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recommended that the Dutch Government should integrate the e-Citizen Charter into national policy. As a result, the charter and associated quality standards are being adopted by the Dutch Standardization Council as the national standard for public service delivery. In 2008, CitizenLink took over from the e-Citizen program and uses the e-Citizen charter to advise local and national government on citizen-centric e-government solutions; monitor progress toward citizen-centric e-government and encourage e-participation.

Highlights • The Dutch e-Citizen Charter is an e-participation and e-government strategy the Dutch government is using to help organizations move away from producer-centric approaches and toward e-government solutions that are of real benefit to citizens and that enable the public to participate in their governance. • The Dutch government is using the e-Citizen Charter to share best practices and encourage and enable organizations from different levels of government to develop effective e-participation platforms. As a government-wide e-participation strategy, the Dutch e-Citizen Charter ensures that organizations from across government view e-participation as a strategic priority and are aware of key practices associated with effective e-participation and citizen-centric e-government projects.

• Accountability and Benchmarking: As a citizen, I am able to compare, check and measure government outcome. Government actively supplies benchmark information about its performance. • Engagement and Empowerment: As a citizen, I am invited to participate in decision making and to promote my interests. Government supports empowerment and ensures that the necessary information and instruments are available.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement

Scotland, UK: e-Petitioner

epetitions.scottish.parliament.uk/

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to participate in their governance through digital media Background In 1999, the newly established Scottish Parliament committed itself to principles of “open, accessible and participative democracy.” Reflecting this commitment, the Parliament established the Public Petition Committee to oversee the public petitions process. The Scottish Parliament considers this process vital to encouraging public participation as it provides “members of the public with direct access to the policy development and scrutiny processes.” The Public Petitions Committee considers public petitions addressed to the Parliament, determines whether a petition is admissible, decides what action should be taken upon an admissible public petition and continually reviews the operation of the public petitions system— including the e-petitions system.

Solution Overview Launched in 2004, the e-petitioner is a web-based tool that enables citizens to raise, view, learn about, sign, comment on, discuss and track the status of e-petitions. This user-friendly tool is fully integrated into the Scottish Parliament’s website.

At the time of its launch, e-petitioner was truly innovative; the Scottish Parliament was the first in the world to enable citizens to raise e-petitions. However, with the advent of web 2.0 and social media technologies, the Public Petitions Committee has been exploring new ways of enabling participation and engaging the public. This review of the e-petitions system was, in part, a response to a 2007 petition submitted through e-petitioner entitled “New technologies and engaging young people in the democratic process.” The inquiry concluded that the e-petition system should be re-developed to include web 2.0 technologies as a priority and that new interactive, social media technologies should be used to increase awareness of the public petitions system and encourage public participation. As a result of the inquiry, the Public Petitions Committee launched a new blog page that allows petitioners and the committee to share photographs; to post and view video and podcasts; and to link to the Scottish Parliament’s YouTube page, website and podcasts through Holyrood TV, the Parliament’s webcasting service.

Highlights From a very early stage, the Scottish Parliament has partnered with citizens in creating public value—encouraging individuals to participate in their governance and enabling them to contribute to the policy development and scrutiny processes online. The e-petitioner tool empowers petitioners to engage and work with a wide audience across Scotland; to raise, generate support for and track the status of petitions quickly and easily; to discuss and debate petitions and issues facing government; and to provide the public with detailed supporting information.

As early leaders in e-participation, the Scottish Parliament is looking at ways in which it can use web 2.0 technologies to regain its leadership position, encourage citizens to participate in the public petitions process, reach out to traditionally hard-to-reach groups and, ultimately, enable citizens to continue partnering with government in the creation of public value.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement

Kentucky Open Door opendoor.ky.gov

e-Governance strategy: Educating citizens and encouraging participation through online training and learning resources Background

Highlights

In January 2009, Kentucky launched Kentucky Open Door, a web-based transparency and accountability tool designed to “provide a more transparent, accountable state government, and to allow you [residents] the opportunity to find out how your tax dollars are being applied to move our state forward.”

The Kentucky Open Door illustrates how building citizen learning platforms into web-based transparency and accountability tools enables citizens to acquire the knowledge required to engage government in a meaningful dialogue about public value, spending and performance.

Solution Overview Kentucky Open Door includes a citizen education platform. The educational component is designed to teach people how the state budget is prepared, give them insight into the state’s rainy day fund and enable them to view Kentucky’s top appropriations. The learning platform also includes a budget builder, which gives users a chance to understand in more detail the considerations and compromises that shape budgetary decisions.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement Wellington City Council, New Zealand: Wellington Budget Simulator

www.budgetsimulator.com/wellington

e-Governance strategy: Educating citizens and encouraging participation through online training and learning resources Background

Solution Overview

Online participatory budgeting is becoming increasingly common. New government websites enable constituents to not only understand how government spending priorities are determined and how budgets are created, but also to set up their own budgets and submit their spending preferences to government. This interaction empowers citizens around the world to develop a deeper, more detailed understanding of how government and public service organizations operate and the complex, conflicting demands constituents place upon them. In New Zealand, the Wellington City Council is using online participatory budgeting to create a more informed, active citizenry that is better able to engage in a conversation with government about public value and what they expect from public services.

In 2009, Wellington City Council launched the Wellington Budget Simulator, a website that enables residents to find out what range of services the council is responsible for, how spending increases and decreases in each area affect rate levels and how changes in spending affect services. Once users have designed their budget and have seen how their choices would affect services and rates, their choices are submitted to the council. As a result, decision makers enjoy a better understanding of citizens’ preferred spending priorities as they consult on the draft plan for 2009-19. The main aim of the Wellington Budget Simulator is to help residents understand the difficult choices the council faces in trying to keep rates affordable while retaining the resources that help Wellington stay vibrant and internationally competitive.

Highlights For citizens, the Wellington Budget Simulator illuminates the competing demands government must consider when formulating a budget. The site also provides citizens with insight into the actual impact spending changes may have on their city. In this way, the Wellington Budget Simulator shows citizens how complicated and difficult it is for government to create budgets that reflect the preferences and needs of all its constituents. This kind of online, interactive participatory learning experience enables citizens to engage government in a more productive way and to participate more fully in their governance.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement

United Kingdom: Change4Life

www.nhs.uk/Change4life

e-Governance strategy: Educating citizens and encouraging participation through online training and learning resources Background

Solution Overview

Without intervention, an estimated 90 percent of children in the United Kingdom could be overweight or obese and at risk from serious diseases by 2050, placing a huge burden on the health service and resulting in a public health crisis. The government is trying to tackle the problem from the bottom up by educating the public about healthy living and bringing about a “lifestyle revolution on a huge scale.” To tackle the “obesity epidemic,” the Department of Health launched Change4Life: a campaign designed to “galvanise support from everyone in the country, from grass roots organizations to leading supermarkets and charities” to “halt the rising tide of obesity.”

The aim of the Change4Life project is to reduce obesity levels by educating the public about the causes of obesity and steps they can take to improve their health. The Change4Life campaign uses TV advertising, posters, billboards and online channels to communicate a core set of simple messages to the public—including “fat in the body” is more important than “fat bodies”; there is a definite link between fat and preventable illnesses; modern life is responsible for the obesity epidemic; and a few minor lifestyle changes can result in dramatically improved health. The Change4Life campaign is a partnership between government, charities and businesses. The Department of Health encourages any organization, from supermarkets to local charities, to register as partners and support this society-wide initiative:

"Ten million people visit their corner shops every day and 36 million shop at Asda and Tesco (supermarkets) each week—the fact that grocers and supermarkets are on board means we can really influence what goes into our shopping trolleys. It's unprecedented for supermarkets to join the Government and pledge to cut prices on healthy food. But this isn't an exclusive club. Anyone who promises to help families to be healthier can join. I am today challenging every CEO of every company who can influence what we eat and how we exercise to come forward and tell us how they are going to help beat this national epidemic. Obesity affects us all so everyone must get involved."

Highlights • Through the Change4Life campaign, government is trying to enroll charities and businesses as co-producers of improved public health. • The Change4Life website is a well-designed citizen education platform that effectively conveys key messages and provides citizens with links to online and offline support, so it is easier for them to change their lifestyle.

Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson The cornerstone of the initiative is the Change4Life website. The Change4Life interactive website is engaging and easy to use and navigate, with key messages conveyed through online games and interactive tools. Potential partner organizations can also use the website to register.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Engagement

Norway: NAV eLearning

elaring.nav.no/alderspensjon/

e-Governance strategy: Educating citizens and encouraging participation through online training and learning resources Background In 2006, the Norwegian Government embarked upon a major pension reform program designed to increase the level of flexibility in the pension system, encourage employees to stay in work longer and ensure that the pension system is fiscally sustainable in the long term. This reform program has had a major impact on citizens in terms of pension policy, eligibility requirements and incentives.

Solution Overview To educate citizens and provide them with an overview of the reform program and how it will affect them, the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) has launched a eLearning tool as part of “Din Pensjon” (Your Pension), which can be accessed from NAV’s website (www. nav.no). Din Pensjon is a comprehensive self-service solution that enables the public to apply for pensions online and allows users to view standard payables such as next payment and last payment. Din Pensjon also includes a standalone e-learning course module that enables users to understand how the pensions reform program affects them in terms of how they earn and receive their pension and how individual pensions are regulated.

Throughout the course, there are questions for users and practical examples to illustrate and reinforce learning points. The tool also features a glossary, and users can choose to assess their knowledge through a test.

Highlights Your Pension is a highly effective e-learning tool. It presents complicated messages and learning points in an easily accessible way. Engaging interactive functionality includes self-assessment tests, multiple-choice questions and illustrative examples.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Accountability

United States: Recovery.gov www.recovery.gov/

e-Governance strategy: Increasing transparency and accountability by developing web-based tools to report on results achieved Background

Solution Overview

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is an economic stimulus package. Worth approximately $787 billion, the package is designed to jumpstart the United States economy while saving and creating millions of jobs. Some stimulus money is distributed by federal agencies, such as the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Energy, which decide who will receive award grants and contracts. Stimulus money is also being given to state governments and, in some cases, is going directly to schools, hospitals, contractors and other organizations. The Act provides for unprecedented levels of transparency and accountability and makes it clear that citizens must be able to find out how, when and where their tax dollars are spent. To achieve this, Recovery.gov was launched to enable citizens to track the progress and impact of the economic stimulus.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act transparency and accountability site, Recovery.gov, has three aims: • Education—Explain the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act • Transparency—Show how, when and where the money is spent • Accountability—Provide data that will allow citizens to evaluate the Act’s progress and provide feedback The site currently includes interactive graphics to show projections of how stimulus money will be distributed across areas and the number of jobs created or saved in each state. The site also currently includes an online form that enables users to “share their recovery story” and send government feedback regarding the effectiveness of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In the future, the site will include information about federal grant awards and contracts as well as formula grant allocations. Federal agencies will provide data on how they are using stimulus money, and eventually, prime recipients of federal funding will provide information on how they are using their federal funds.

Highlights • Recovery.gov is user friendly and easy to navigate, making it easier for citizens to find, visualize and interpret information. • Recovery.gov includes community pages and interactive channels that enable citizens to provide feedback to government. • Recovery.gov includes education and learning pages that enable citizens to interpret stimulus data and evaluate the impact of the stimulus act. • Recovery.gov is continually updated and improved to include new, up-to-date information as agencies and organizations receiving stimulus funding make such information available. • The site has links to all other agency and state stimulus sites so the public can use Recovery. gov as a one-stop transparency and accountability site to track the impact of stimulus spending.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Accountability United States: NYC Citywide Performance Reporting and My Neighborhood Statistics www.nyc.gov/html/ops/nycstat

e-Governance strategy: Increasing transparency and accountability by developing web-based tools to report on results achieved Background

Solution Overview

Government organizations around the world are trying to increase citizen trust by making more spending and performance data available for public scrutiny. In his first State of the City Address in 2002, New York City’s Major Bloomberg signaled his commitment to accountability and transparency: “As elected officials, we must remind ourselves that we are here to serve all of the people, not just those who voted for us. That's why we are doing everything possible to create ‘Openness in Government’... ‘Open Government’ is not just a slogan; it's the only effective way to deal with complicated problems. As part of ‘Open Government,’ we will create a ‘Citizen Service Center,’ that will allow New Yorkers to reach all services by calling one phone number, ‘3-1-1.’"

The NYCStat portal is New York City’s one-stop shop for all essential data, reports and statistics related to city services. NYCStat provides access to a wide array of performance-related information—including citywide and agency-specific information, 311-related data and interactive mapping features for selected performance data and quality-oflife indicators. Through NYCStat, New York City is using web-based technologies to enable citizens to become directly involved in their governance by “eliminating the mystery about where and what kinds of performance information are available.” Ultimately, the portal is making public service organizations more accountable to their customers.

By 2008, 311 was receiving over 15 million calls a year—and having a dramatic impact on New York’s public services. Launched in February 2008 and 2009, respectively, the Citywide Performance Reporting and NYCStat systems use data from 311 and other sources to enable New Yorkers to understand their city government’s performance.

The NYCStat portal provides quick and easy access to a range of different reporting tools. Among them: • CPR, the Citywide Performance Reporting System, an interactive dashboard designed for user-friendly access to the most critical performance indicators for every city agency, with monthly updates and automatic evaluation of trends within specified program areas

• The Mayor’s Management Report, the public report card on city agency performance that is published twice a year • The NYC*SCOUT web page, which maps street conditions, such as potholes and catch-basin defects, and allows users to track the progress of repairs • My Neighborhood Statistics (MNS), which maps comparative performance data at the neighborhood level for approximately 50 selected performance measures • Scorecard Cleanliness Ratings, updated monthly for streets and sidewalks throughout the five boroughs • 311 Customer Service Center data, including basic operational statistics and community-level reports on the city’s response to service requests from 311 callers • Citywide Customer Survey Results from the 2008 survey of New Yorkers’ opinions on the delivery of city services

citizens' lives are affected by government. Many of these measures are being reported for the first time and represent fresh thinking about how to measure the outcomes each agency is responsible for. • Measure performance by comparing current data to data for the same period the year before, thereby holding agencies accountable for year-over-year improvement. • Make performance trends obvious by providing graphical representation of performance, including pie charts and colorcoding to provide early warnings for areas that need attention. • Provide drill-down capability, allowing users to review comparative trends over a fiveyear period. • Aggregate important measures into citywide themes, which cut across agency silos and disciplines to reveal the overall picture about city government performance.

• NYCity Map, which lets users find information on transportation, education, public safety, resident services, neighborhood information and city life

• Deliver monthly, quarterly or annual updates of each measure—depending on how often the statistic is produced— so the most recent data is always available.

• Additional performance measures at the websites of 12 key city agencies

• Enable users to download data for more detailed review and analysis.

A crucial part of the NYCStat portal is the Citywide Performance Reporting (CPR) tool. Launched in February 2008, CPR seeks to implement transparent, interactive performance management and improve accountability by making performance data easily accessible.

• Provide detailed information about each measure, including an explanation of what the measure means, its reporting frequency and other useful details.

CPR is a feature-rich set of webbased applications that: • Track performance for the most important "outcome" measures— those directly reflecting how

area, analyze long-term trends, and review specific agencies' outcome measures.

CPR: Agency Performance Reporting is New York City's comprehensive online performance reporting tool that gives the public access to a collection of critical performance measures from more than 40 city agencies. The tool enables users to search for performance measures relating to a specific service or

As part of the NYCStat portal, My Neighborhood Statistics lets residents know how city agencies are performing in their neighborhood by enabling them to view locally mapped performance statistics using a street address or intersection. Color-shaded maps also allow for easy comparisons of highs and lows in different neighborhoods.

Highlights CPR: Agency Performance Reporting and My Neighborhood Statistics are very strong e-transparency platforms in terms of enabling the public to understand how government is performing. They are also user-friendly sites that enable individuals to decide how to visualize the data of interest. However, because these platforms do not link performance data to government spending, the public cannot use them to understand how efficiently and effectively government is spending public money. Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved.

Accountability

United States: NYCStat Stimulus Tracker www.nyc.gov/html/ops/nycstim

e-Governance strategy: Increasing transparency and accountability by developing web-based tools to report on results achieved Background

Solution Overview

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) supplies around $787 billion of funding to US government agencies and departments designed to support efforts that include modernizing health care, improving schools, upgrading infrastructure and investing in technologies that will lay the foundation for a robust and sustainable 21st-century economy. Stimulus funds allocated to New York City are being used to ensure the continuation of vital city services, provide assistance to New Yorkers in need and stimulate the city’s economy. By law, government organizations receiving these funds must provide citizens and public officials with the ability to track how federal stimulus funds are received and spent.

NYCStat Stimulus Tracker is New York City’s web-based transparency and accountability tool designed to allow citizens to follow stimulus funding progress at the project, contract and payment levels and enables the public to understand how effectively the city is spending stimulus money by linking public outcomes to money spent through the Outcome Tracker and Contract/Budget Tracker. The stimulus tracker also includes geographic information systems (GIS) technologies that provide a mapping component, enabling citizens to understand how stimulus funding is making a difference in their neighborhoods. Specifically, NYCStat Stimulus Tracker looks at the city’s use of stimulus funding in eight areas: infrastructure; energy efficiency; economic and workforce development; health and social services; education; public safety; neighborhood stabilization; and budget relief.

NYCStat Stimulus Tracker enables citizens to: • See how funding sources are distributed to building projects and other city programs. • Track key performance measurements, such as jobs created. • Drill down to see details of projects and learn how these projects are helping the city—for example, the start and end dates of construction projects.

Highlights • By linking outcomes, such as jobs created or sustained and number of internships created, to stimulus spending, residents are able to understand how effectively the city is spending public money to improve people’s quality of life. • The stimulus tracker enables citizens to understand how, why and where the city is spending stimulus funding by organizing data by area, subcategory and project/program.

• View an interactive map of certain project and program locations. • Help hold city government accountable by easily identifying progress toward program goals.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Accountability

United States: The IT Dashboard it.usaspending.gov/

e-Governance strategy: Increasing transparency and accountability by developing web-based tools to report on results achieved Background From the start, the Obama administration has made it clear that it is committed to transparent, open and accountable government. To meet this goal, the administration has launched a number of initiatives including recovery.gov, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act tracking site, and the appointment of the nation’s first Chief Performance Officer. The Federal Government CIO Vivek Kundra believes that this new style of government involves “engaging citizens, making sure that we put information out there in the public domain and a different worldview of what it means to be a citizen.... The idea of citizenship in terms of civic participation and transparency or open government allows you...to embrace the notion that the government is about we the people and that it's taxpayer dollars that are being spent.”

Solution Overview The IT Dashboard, as part of the federal government’s comprehensive budget tracking portal USASpending.gov, is designed to enable citizens to understand: • How the federal IT budget is distributed across agencies.

• How federal agencies spend their IT budgets in terms of specific projects and programs. • How agencies and individual programs are performing in terms of actual cost against allocation (measured in percentage variance from planned), schedule (measured in average days late per milestone) and an overall evaluation rating from the agency CIO, which includes a range of difficult-to-quantify factors, such as risk management and contractor oversight. The IT Dashboard enables users to create personalized data feeds they can use to build mashups, applications and widgets. The dashboard also has extensive visualization capabilities that enable users to create a wide variety of customized, interactive charts. In the future, the IT Dashboard will include more detailed and more extensive spending and performance data, along with additional chart customization features, agency-generated content, such as widgets or mashups using IT Dashboard data, and personal portfolios that enable users to create their own portfolio of “investments” to watch and subscribe to updates to these investments.

Highlights Even though the scope of the IT Dashboard is limited to tracking IT spending, it is one of the most successful web-based transparency and accountability tools government has developed: • The IT Dashboard enables citizens to understand how government is spending public money in terms of total federal IT expenditure, agency IT spending and spending on individual projects and programs. • The IT Dashboard links spending with performance and uses multiple performance measures to enable citizens to understand how effectively government spends public money. • Although the dashboard gives citizens access to a huge amount of data, its comprehensive visualization tools enable citizens to create customized, animated graphs and charts that ensure the data is searchable, intelligible and easily accessible. • The IT Dashboard includes extensive education and learning materials, including a video, Frequently Asked Questions pages and “help” links throughout the tool to ensure that users are able to access and interpret the spending and performance data the IT dashboard makes available. Ultimately, the dashboard enables citizens to hold government accountable for its spending and performance.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Accountability

India: Lokvani

sitapur.nic.in/lokvani/

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to report problems and resolve complaints through online channels Background Sitapur (Uttar Pradesh, India) is a predominantly poor, rural district. When a new district magistrate was appointed in July 2004, the system for reporting problems to government was on the verge of collapse. All grievances had to be raised either face to face in a single government office or via letter. There were no computers to help government employees track and respond to citizens’ grievances. What’s more, the system for processing citizens’ complaints was inefficient and opaque. In 2005, the district launched Lokvani to provide the public with a more efficient and effective means of reporting problems to government.

Solution Overview Lokvani is a Government to Citizen, or G2C, interface that provides citizens with a channel for registering grievances with government. The Lokvani portal enables citizens to report problems to

government quickly and easily using online forms. It has also dramatically improved the efficiency, transparency and accountability of back-office processes designed to resolve citizens’ complaints. Because the vast majority of Sitapur’s residents do not have computers at home, Lokvani is made available via Internet kiosks. By 2008, 110 Lokvani kiosks had been established across the district. These kiosks are cyber-cafes that act as “franchises” for the Lokvani system, with kiosk owners actively encouraging citizens to register grievances through the Lokvani system. Because the literacy rate in the district is just 38 percent and computer literacy is rare, the Lokvani portal is specially designed to be as user friendly as possible. Between 2005 and 2008, individuals registered over 100,000 grievances through the Lokvani portal. In fact, the system has been so successful it has now been rolled out across 35 districts.

Highlights • Lokvani has dramatically improved the efficiency and effectiveness of the grievance reporting system in Sitapur. Citizens can now report problems online at their convenience; they no longer have to travel to a government office and stand in long lines to register grievances face to face. Further, their problems are resolved much more quickly than they were under the previous system. • Lokvani has been so successful because district government effectively engaged private businesses in local communities, enabling government to provide citizens with free access to the portal through Internet kiosks.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Accountability

United Kingdom: Community Fix

www.communityfix.co.uk/

e-Governance strategy: Enabling citizens to report problems and resolve complaints through online channels Background

Highlights

Individuals and private organizations (charities and businesses) are developing websites that make it easier and more convenient for citizens to report problems to and request services from government. These sites are much faster and easier to use than most government sites, which require users to submit online service request forms, send emails or place telephone calls.

Community Fix provides citizens with a single channel for reporting problems to government so they can be fixed as quickly as possible. Sites like Community Fix are likely to grow in popularity because they reduce the cost to the citizen of interacting with government; the majority of local government websites require users to find and then submit a service request form or call a hotline, whereas sites like Community Fix enable citizens to report problems in seconds and upload photographs in place of a detailed description of the problem.

Solution Overview Created and maintained by a new media agency, the Community Fix website uses web 2.0 technologies to enable citizens to report local problems directly to the organizations responsible for fixing them. Users simply pinpoint the exact location of the problem on a map and give a brief description of the problem. Users also have the option to upload a photograph of the problem. The information is then sent automatically to the government agency responsible for addressing the issue. Once the problem is resolved, users post this information on the site, and the problem is labeled as fixed. Between the site’s launch in February 2008 and February 2009, users submitted more than 10,000 incident reports to government agencies across the United Kingdom.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.