Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude may not be a fisherman, but he could learn much from the sport. Those who simply want to kill fish can do so using dynamite – but it’s an expensive option, and there are obvious risks for wildlife, environment and fisherman alike. Instead, the practised angler edges closer to the cooler water where the fish are swimming and casts his line there, ensuring he has appetising bait. Then he waits for a bite and, in time, hauls in the catch – reeling in the line only when the fish is swimming in the right direction. The result? Supper is caught safely, economically, and with the minimum of effort.
A similar approach might bear fruit in pursuing the Cabinet Office’s desire to encourage service users to abandon traditional, expensive delivery channels in favour of online alternatives. This is a priority for Maude, who told the Conservative Party conference that “we’re working urgently on channel shift”, because “moving transactions online produces big savings”. Meanwhile, the spending review set out plans to push a number of government services online, including Jobseeker’s Allowance. The Department of Work & Pensions’ business plan includes a target that 80 per cent of JSA claims will be made online by June.
Over the last year or so, both the cabinet secretary and Maude have made uncompromising noises about the prospects of forcing people to shift channels by closing down existing access points. As Maude recently told CSW (p1, 6 October 2010): “If we’re going to do this channel shift, we’ll have to be much more aggressive in closing down other channels.” Yet the stick here may not be as effective as the carrot: users will migrate naturally if online services prove to be more accessible, cheap and beneficial than existing channels – but if an attempt to force a migration fails, the government could end up maintaining both expensive new websites and traditional delivery channels.
Earlier this month Civil Service World hosted a round table discussion for civil servants working on online public services, supported by the Post Office, to determine how the civil service can ensure that channel shift results in better and more appealing services which hook the users in.
Usability advantages
Gerald Power, a policy adviser on the Cabinet Office’s Change Programme, warned of the difficulties of forcing users to leave face-to-face services, rather than trying to attract them online. “If you think you don’t have to make services really usable, really user-friendly because you’ve got the power to turn off existing services, I think that’s the road to disaster – because the customer will always find a way to make their displeasure known to you,” he said.
So what are the advantages that civil servants can highlight? One potential benefit is accessibility – as Power noted: “You can use a service yourself when you want, where you are, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You don’t need to wait to speak to someone.” Henry Pares, head of informatics planning in the NHS, noted that introducing the facility to book appointments with GPs online has provided a “significant improvement” for the customer. He also pointed out that some patients can now get test results online, rather than waiting for an appointment.
The immediacy of online public services provides another benefit: instant validation. Unlike postal applications, online public services can reassure users immediately that a transaction with government has been successful. As Power said: “With automated service delivery, the customer can know there and then whether the service has been accepted or rejected.” Paul Lanser, deputy director of the Knowledge, Analysis & Intelligence Directorate at HMRC, added that by keeping users updated, online services can avoid “progress-chasing” – saving the expense of answering repeated queries from users enquiring about the status of their transaction.
Indeed, online public services can prompt users to keep things moving at their end. The director of the Strategy and International Group at the Home Office, Isabel Hunt, noted that: “Email reminders would... take out a lot of costs.”
Behaviour shift
What’s more, the process of shifting services online provides a good opportunity for civil servants to reassess and simplify service provision processes. Gavin Dollin, assistant director of Business Link strategy at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, said that shifting channels can make “officials think very hard about regulations and put them in plain English”.
Veronica Nyong, head of customer engagement at the Identity and Passport Service, added that using “intelligent forms” can ensure that people “only have to fill in the parts of the form that they need to”. This not only reduces the burden on the user, but reduces the number of errors. “The big advantage of the smart form is a lower failure rate, because it guides the user not to put the wrong things in it,” commented Power. By contrast, he said, when a flawed application goes in by post it can take six weeks before it’s returned to the user with a request for new information.
Sharon Cooper, director of product strategy and innovation for Directgov, had a practical tip for civil servants putting together intelligent forms: “Blank boxes frighten people”. She suggested that guidance on how to fill in the form be inserted in the fields themselves, ensuring that users completing the forms have the information right in front of them. Not only does this increase the likelihood of a successful application, she said. but it also increases form completion rates.
It is important for departments moving services online to collaborate with other departments. Belinda Crowe, information director in the Ministry of Justice’s Law, Rights and International group, said that “by signing up to common designs and common standards, we can all help each other”. She added that having “many different standards and formats becomes problematic from the customer’s perspective”. It would make sense, participants said, for local and national public services to come together online: Jane Hoy from the Shareholder Executive noted that channel-shift policies “provide the possibility of linking up national and local delivery models”. Organisations across the public sector could produce additional savings and user benefits by working together, she suggested.
Trust
One major hurdle faced when shifting services online is trust. Julie Barry, head of stakeholder engagement at HM Land Registry, said: “We are facing suspicion of IT and a suspicion of government. When you combine the two, you have a major barrier to overcome.”
However, understanding the concerns of users can help overcome suspicion of the government’s motives. Cooper said that services should “only ask for the information that we actually need. People won’t [then] ask: ‘Why do you want this information, what are you going to do?’ Huge amounts of confusion are caused by asking the same question to everybody, often because an official thinks we might need it in the future.” Pares added that people would use online services more if there were a “perceived immediate benefit” to them; the issue faced by the National Identity Card scheme, he said, was that people couldn’t understand what benefits would transpire from sharing more of their information with government.
Suspicion of IT is also caused in part by attempts to counterfeit the government’s online activities. Cooper asked: “How do you differentiate between the government official email telling you to do something and the scamming ones? As we move out into other channels, what does that do to the unwary?” Cooper said these problems could in part be overcome by consumer education, but – despite Directgov officials appearing on a number of television shows to inform users of fake sites and attempts to gain private information for fraudulent ends – the problems are unlikely to go away.
Buddying up
One good way of building trust is by partnering with outside organisations which can reassure users, Cooper said. Further, she said, outside partners enable online public services to find out what users want from their public services. She noted that partners can provide “access into a market you don’t have; access into a channel you don’t have.” Directgov is working with the Post Office to better understand users’ needs, she added: “We have no face-to-face contact [with service users] at Directgov, and the Post Office gives us that.”
Paula Vennells, managing director of the Post Office, said her organisation can also bring online services to those without computers – “help the under-served by pushing digital inclusion”. And Alan Rider, of the Department for Transport’s Service Transformation Division, added that teaming up with partners trusted by service users can help providers reach new users and different markets, such as young people. “It comes down to collaboration,” he said. “We’ve got people who can do things for us outside government – be it the Post Office or carers or others who can help to get people online.”
Power noted that outside organisations can play a role in developing services. “The voluntary sector has a big role in designing a service,” he said, “because those responsible for developing the service may have an understanding of the back end of the site but not the customer journey. It makes perfect sense to have a consumer advocacy organisation or a specialist organisation saying how your customers will react.” So partnerships can actively help build better online public services, and provide supported access too.
They can also help with ID verification; an issue that can restrict online services. Rider noted that “virtual evidence is different to physical evidence”, and can be more difficult to supply or verify. But a partner organisation can perform a one-off, face-to-face verification of a user’s identity, opening up a secure online channel through which services can be managed thereafter. Cooper added that trusted partner organisations may also be able to increase a service’s flexibility online by vouching for other individuals’ ability to speak for a service user: “There are so many complex family relations, and... we’re not good at keeping up with that,” she said.
Overall, the round table revealed an enthusiasm amongst civil servants for the benefits that websites and digital services can bring – from accessibility to ease of use. To date, the government has emphasised the cost-cutting potential of channel shift above the opportunity to improve services for the user. In an era of efficiencies and shrinking budgets, this is to be expected – but participants clearly wanted to highlight more than the immediate budgetary advantages of shifting channels. Indeed, they felt that pursuing these potential advantages will ensure that public services do provide a better experience for the consumer – actively drawing them away from traditional channels. Taking an overview of the potential benefits raised by participants, Rider noted that they provide “a very good channel strategy. What you need to do is optimise them and get the right balance.”