Building an experience-driven digital government

Today’s consumers are increasingly pampered by fast and personalised services offered by the private sector – ranging from online banking to retail – all available at the touch of their screen.

This has fuelled a rising expectation among citizens that government services should also be available in a similar seamless manner.

While Singapore has been proactive in digitalising its government services, there is still work to do.

Singapore’s score in Adobe’s third annual Digital Government Index (DGI) for 2024 was 62.1/100 - showing only a marginal improvement of 0.5 per cent from previous years.

Commenting on this, Adobe’s Digital Strategy Group Director for Public Sector, John Mackenney, said the problem is that the government tends to be quite fragmented, “which means the citizen experience is compromised”.

He shared how prioritising citizen experience is not just about convenience, but a fundamental requirement to make government services more cost effective.

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Moving to a citizen-centric approach

The DGI measures the extent to which the services are available, accessible, and responsive to the needs of all citizens.  The combined average of each pillar generates the DGI score from 0 to 100.

How are citizens expected to adopt digital services if they have an unpleasant experience navigating different platforms? To tackle this, the first part of the index focuses on Customer Experience (CX).

“We are testing real Singaporeans going through government websites and asking, ‘do I understand this website? Can I easily apply for the service I need? Do I feel I am going to get the help I need from that government agency?’” explained Mackenney.

A key component of experience-driven digital services is a citizen-centric approach, he noted.

This entails creating websites with content tailored to the public user’s perspective, from offering self-service options to adopting an easy-to-understand language for all literacy levels. This is a key aspect of the Digital Equity pillar, which measures accessibility.

Singapore’s Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB), for example, leverages Adobe Experience Cloud to tailor its content and service offerings to residents at different life stages, be it near or close to retirement.

With a solid foundation that supports citizen experience, this approach drives greater adoption of digital services among citizens and governments benefit from providing services at a lower cost, noted Mackenney.

“For every click on a government website, that is about a minute of someone’s life. If we want our citizens to be more productive, then we need to provide a great digital government so we can put those time savings back into the economy.”

Technology foundations for a better experience

Many government websites look good but are not performant, Mackenney said.

Another aspect that Adobe’s DGI measures is site performance through site authority, speed, and mobile responsiveness. Singapore’s lowest individual score was on this metric, scoring 53.8 out of 100 – an 8 per cent decrease from 2023.

A low site performance impacts citizen experience through fragmented search authority and interrupted responsiveness.

When the government services and information are distributed across different departments, search tools like Google might provide different links for the same topic.

This means that the official agency risks losing search authority over that topic.

This issue presents citizens with the task of finding out which agency to consult for their needs from the get-go.

If the citizen is unsure, they will have to look up this information on search engines and expect the right agency website to arise as the authoritative source of information for the consulted topic.

The second issue comes with websites that have yet to adapt to the needs of citizens, largely in terms of speed and mobile use.

“We’ve got government websites that we tested in this study that took 10 to 15 seconds to load, and no one is waiting that long,” shared Mackenney.

“If it doesn’t load immediately, people close the browser and [postpone] the government service they want to obtain. That means the citizens are not getting what they need.”

He shared that investment in deploying stronger web technology is essential to prevent interruption of site responsiveness, especially on mobile phones.

This is what the CPFB did to improve findability and site speed, achieving the highest Site Performance and Digital Equity scores on the DGI 2024, Mackenney said.

Reconciling citizen experience and evolving technologies

Expectations for fast and effective digital government are growing at a faster pace.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) changes the future of the web – from search engines helping to find information to sites providing answers. With this change, citizens expect to get the same response from the government, which is not set up for that yet.

The public sector would need to be able to design services around answering people's questions and ensure that generative AI (GenAI)-powered engines provide content from official sources, added Mackenney.

The advantage of AI is that it can unlock capabilities for agencies to deliver more personalised experiences, rewrite more readable content, and improve the quality of website code.

Adobe helps government agencies to create highly performant experiences tailored to the individual, without fearing new technologies, said Mackenney.

On the other hand, some of the often-mentioned risks of AI include deepfakes and scams that could erode citizens' trust in the government.

To tackle this, Adobe worked with the Centre for Advanced Technologies in Online Safety (CATOS) to establish appropriate markings and provenance information on content and ensure citizens that information comes from the Singapore government.

As the interfaces people interact with change, the public sector must invest in capabilities to safeguard citizen engagement with better digital government experiences and lower the cost to serve.

Adobe and GovInsider will be hosting a webinar to explore how digital innovations can enhance citizen experiences and improve public services. The discussion will focus on AI-driven personalisation, co-creating citizen-centric services, and designing intuitive, user-friendly digital platforms. Find out more and sign up here >>>