The verdict is in: while many businesses understand the importance of digital customer experience, government institutions have been slow to implement similar tactics for their customers: citizens. 

According to a survey done by McKinsey, most governments across the globe underperform in customer satisfaction. In fact, even though 81% of government agencies want to become digital organizations, only 47% of citizens are willing to respond positively regarding their digital interactions.

What Government Agencies Need to Do to Be Digital

Customers’ expectations and needs are constantly changing and to serve citizens well, governments must provide citizens with the digital tools that are able to address these requirements quickly. 

Becoming a truly digital government agency will require uprooting outdated systems and technologies. The following infographic explores three challenges and presents solutions in order to provide citizens with a more intuitive and reliable experience. 

Next Steps for Government Agencies 

By addressing these pain points with better, more modern technologies, like a digital experience platform, government agencies can provide intuitive citizen experiences by leveraging capabilities such as:

• Connecting Disparate Systems

  Legacy systems that lack integration capabilities and scalability are common challenges for agencies. Hindering the goal of optimizing digital experiences, outdated technology also results in fragmented and incomplete data. Yet, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, more than 80% of government IT spending is on operating and maintaining legacy systems. Successful digital transformation hinges on the ability to bridge legacy and modern systems – combining data on a single, modern digital platform.

  
  In the case of the U.S. Navy, a lack of connected systems and databases prevented the expansion of a portal for sailors to manage their careers throughout their military service. Through the deployment of a DXP, the Navy was able to move everything to a single solution that met their performance requirements and delivered an improved user experience. Their DXP solution also allows future expansion of the portal so that it can continue to be a vital career planning tool for sailors.
• Driving Personalization

  Citizens naturally want streamlined digital experiences that address their specific needs, and a growing number of citizens are choosing self-service over direct human contact. With the right DXP, agencies can apply persona modeling, journey mapping, responsive layout, and data-driven design to increase personalization and relevancy. By learning and adapting to user behaviors and feedback, the personalization can increase over time, enabling experiences that are immediately personal, easy-to-use, and meaningful. And this type of contextual experience should be delivered across all live and self-service engagement channels, including mobile devices. 

  The personalization capabilities of a DXP have been uniquely leveraged by the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program, sponsored by NASA. An example of how this program used their DXP can be found with the solar eclipse of 2017. The team at GLOBE chose the identity management features of the platform to keep track of approximately 50,000 users taking eclipse-specific measurements. In the end, meaningful data obtained from the global citizen scientists was crowdsourced to better understand the earth’s system and global environment.
• Streamlining Content Management

  Insufficient and outdated data continues to limit government agencies’ ability to meet expectations – creating hassles for both citizens and government employees. Ineffective communication, difficulty finding information, and manual processing of paperwork all contribute to inefficiencies. A DXP can solve these common content challenges by managing the lifecycle of content from creation to publishing, storage, maintenance, and deletion.

  Effective communication means getting the right content to the right people at the right time. Whether working from home or in the office, operating in normal or crisis mode, ready access to current content is only getting more important. How organizations communicate to citizens and staff, onsite or off-site, will be front and center as they continue to achieve their missions. The best DXP brings together disparate systems and modernizes intranets to deliver the integrated and personalized, anytime, anywhere, any device communications that people need.

There is much work to be done in order to deliver optimal digital experiences for citizens. Recognizing this need is the first step on a long journey of digital transformation. For more resources, visit our government page.