Public administration recently experienced unprecedented digital acceleration due to the pandemic, which created a period of urgency for the implementation of online services. Now, the challenge is to maintain and improve these benefits to citizens and public employees over time. In order to achieve this, and be prepared for the future, public services must be redefined as digital-by-design. 

But have public administrations experienced the necessary digital evolution that makes it possible to achieve continuous improvement and what are the critical elements towards achieving that goal? 

Making the case for change

“Given competing priorities and structural barriers to change, many [public sector] agencies bet small - making changes piecemeal and spreading investment thinly across services and channels. Such efforts may lead to incremental improvements but fall short of delivering the impact government leaders (and citizen customers) expect.” McKinsey

Determining the most relevant elements for the Public Administration is crucial. Achieving this is possible once we identify the goals to be reached: fulfill the growing digital demands from citizens. 

In this context, governments need to offer authenticated, secure, and personalized experiences for their users that unify disparate services in one place in order to reduce support costs and improve satisfaction.

Aware of the context, we have listed the key elements that every organization, in the Public Sector, must prioritize in their digital strategies in order to implement a real digital public services ecosystem - no matter what their level of governance is (whether it is a local, federal, central or municipal level). 

 

Strategic Priorities

1. Immersive citizen portals where users can complete transactions  

“Determining where to focus is essential for leaders with finite resources looking to truly move the needle on experience—and to promote critical outcomes linked to those efforts”, E-Government Survey 2022: The future of Digital Government, United Nations.

In modern times, public administrations need to help facilitate very direct relationships with citizens in order to help them fulfill their responsibilities or leverage their benefits. To enable this, a new generation of portals must offer authenticated, secure, and personalized modern digital web experiences, up to the expectations of many citizens who are accustomed to managing their daily activities in the online world. These online channels will allow citizens and businesses to digitally self-serve common processes and services from a unique and personal web experience. Giving users autonomy reduces congestion of the public services, shortening waiting times, and freeing up employees to focus on higher value tasks. 

 

2. Fully integrated ecosystems 

“Removing these outdated systems and replacing them with less expensive and more efficient new technologies will facilitate digital transformation, help Governments adapt to evolving societal demands linked to increased digitalization, and support the development of efficient, fully integrated systems that streamline government processes—including the management of national crises and emergencies”, E-Government Survey 2022: The future of Digital Government, United Nations.

Public administrations often have large outdated tech stacks that result in siloes, overruns in maintenance cost, lack of process efficiency, and data management problems. Replacing everything at once, however, isn’t realistic. It is essential to have unified access to siloed data through a single view, which results in a much better experience for government users, whether citizens or government employees. Thus, an integration platform is critical, as they permit all your systems to communicate with each other, allowing public organizations to solve one of their main challenges in an affordable way. 

Most importantly, having a strong integration platform allows you to create delightful modern experiences while hiding your disparate legacy tech stack from citizens and employees. 

 

3. Empowered non-technical public employees with the ability to rapidly create new well-designed web pages or sites without IT help

“Digitalization can transform public services – but is being held back by a lack of capabilities and outmoded ways of working.”  Ernst & Young

There are many benefits to enabling any employee with the technology that allows them to rapidly create well-designed and on-brand web pages or sites without IT help. The most obvious benefits include: freeing up IT employees to work on bigger projects, improving efficiency, increasing business agility, lowering costs, decreasing content publishing times, which increases the transparency between government and citizens, generating a more engaged and involved society. 

 

4. Personalization at scale

“Bringing personalized services to an ever more diverse population – and, critically, doing so at speed and scale – requires an agile, adaptable organization and an empowered workforce, focused on driving exceptional outcomes for those they serve.” Accenture

Public entities are challenged to quickly meet the individual needs of citizens. However, legacy tech stacks often make that cost prohibitive or impossible. Tackling a broad and heterogeneous audience, with different needs and digital capabilities, we need a refined intelligence that can discriminate and guide web personalized experiences in a scalable way. 

Creating concrete experiences by segments, user attributes, or behavior is key to maintaining a quality citizen service. Technology helps agencies to create personalized web experiences that tailor content for your most common audiences. Because tools need to be extendable and scalable so digital leaders can adapt them to continuously evolving scenarios.

 

Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) as Government Transformation Enablers

DXPs in government have made it possible to connect the public sector to the citizenry while laying the foundations for reimagining public services. DXPs provide the following business capabilities which support the above strategic priorities.
 

• Enable agility through the creation of digital solutions such as websites, citizen portals, or employee portals that allow 24/7 accessibility with personalized experiences from any device.

• Allow for the creation of personalized web experiences that tailor content for the most common audiences.

• Enable all non-IT employees with tools to create experiences, automate processes, and deliver information and services to citizens.

• Enable class-leading integration of legacy technologies to create modern experiences.

• Increase employee productivity through unified tools, citizen self-service, and process automation.
   

Prepare for the future of government

Learn more about how Liferay DXP can enhance your organization with robust and reliable technology to build public services that citizens and employees love.