Germany's IT Planning Board (IT-Planungsrat) is continuing to focus on increasing acceptance of eGovernment solutions and has provided analysis, guidelines and suggestions for further improvements. According to a report of the 18th meeting of the board in October 2015, improving access, and lowering barriers for both users and companies, thereby increasing the attractiveness of the services, are the main goals. A study has shown that this can only be achieved by improving and continuing to standardise form requirements and laws, with the aim of simplifying eGovernment through concerted action by all the players involved, from municipalities to states and the federal government.
To prove this, a working group consisting of representatives from federal, regional and municipal administrations presented an analysis of general public acceptance of eGovernment solutions. Identifying the ten most important criteria for acceptance of eGovernment solutions and including these as core suggestions for further work of the Planning Board will give politicians and planners clear advice for further actions, says Staatssekretär Andreas Statzkowski.
Policy Context
In recent years experts have been noticing a significant lack of acceptance of eGovernment solutions, especially when compared to the numbers expected, especially in Germany, although numbers have been receding all over Europe. To understand this, Germany's IT Planning Board set up the (temporary) working group "Attraktivität des eGovernments" in March 2015 and tasked it with developing suggestions to improve the use and efficiency of eGovernment solutions.
Four goals were defined:
- connect and contact communal administrations;
- find reasons for the lack of acceptance;
- suggest ways to improve this; and
- identify politically attractive core strategies for the Planning Board and make a report at the 18th meeting.
The working group identified four deficiencies: There is no use case and no benefit for citizens, corporate clients or even for administrations themselves. At the same time the existing eGovernment solutions do not meet standard usage experience levels - they are not self-explanatory or easy to understand, while at the same time lacking reliability with regards to the public services offered. In a nutshell: users feel that there is neither extra value nor usability nor access nor reliability as regards the results of the processes or the security or protection of the data.
Description of target users and groups
The study was accompanied by Fraunhofer FOKUS institute and was conducted in two tracks: firstly, existing studies on acceptance of eGovernment processes were analysed, with a focus on the customers' (citizens and companies) view, and here again especially focusing on reasons for disappointed expectations. The second part of the study was conducted with experts from German administrations, listening to their experiences and suggestions for improvements.
In a third step, the experts were allowed to develop ideas and concepts for individual improvements in special cases. These measures were then rated by all participants, resulting in a top ten list of suggestions which were then transformed into a list of actions suitable for recommendation at a political level.
Description of the way to implement the initiative
The study proposed ten major actions to be taken, ranging from IT to administrative tasks:
- Simplify the usage of electronic authentication with Germany's eID Passport;
- Remove all media disruption in terms of standard obligations to produce proofs both between administrations and users;
- Standardise eGovernment core rules (payment, infrastructure, portal sites, files and mail, eID, prioritise online processes, etc.);
- Define new levels of trust between standard eGovernment processes across all institutions and administrations;
- Standardise service portals, establish a common look and feel and coordinate marketing;
- Attract users by reducing fees or guaranteeing a shorter handling time for online transactions;
- Extend usage of QR Codes on legal and administrative documents;
- Online transactions will be prioritised to classical, analogue applications. But this also requires studies into the possible consequences of new eGovernment processes which will have to be conducted before the change takes place ("Gesetzesfolgenabschätzung auch für eGovernment Prozesse");
- Starting in 2017, German public services must be enabled to experiment with new eGovernment services. They will need a safe, secure, legally binding environment where they can experiment with new tools ("Experimentierklausel"), without being exposed to legal risks of any kind;
- eInvoice: force industry to use only digital invoices for payment. Existing open standards and tools (ZUGFerD) will be used to ensure compatibility with procurement and financial services.
The working group suggests most of these tasks should be further discussed and refined in newly created, specialised working groups that should meet on a regular basis.
Technology solution
Due to the limited timeframe assigned to the working group (and the temporary character of the group), it was not possible to develop in-depth advisories for implementation. Technologies like Single-Sign-On, eID, eSafe and the rather generic term "authentic sources of Information" rank at the top of the wish list, but as a first step a decision is needed about who is in charge of further project management of the measures suggested.
Main results, benefits and impacts
About two thirds of the citizens who do not want to take part in eGovernment prefer personal contact, about 34 percent do not know what eGovernment offers and one quarter does not have the skills necessary to accomplish these tasks online. Especially when compared to commercial offerings, public services' websites lack usability and acceptance among users, both being rated far lower than eCommerce websites, for example. The following graphic shows the main reasons why users do not take part in eGovernment:
German citizens are not forced to use eGovernment services. The study claims that therefore these services should provide the same standards of quality, usability and ease-of-use as commercial offerings. This is not the case with current websites, where clients are asked to fill in lots of data that are already available to the administration running the service portal.
The study also finds that German customers think there are too few service offerings (50%), claim that existing ones remain unknown (76%), and believe that they do not provide sufficient assurances in terms of data protection and security (66%). The NSA scandal, Facebook and historic predispositions have been shown to limit the level of trust that German citizens especially have in terms of entering private data on websites.
Local communities and administrations still play a key role in eGovernment services and marketing service portals. Nevertheless almost two thirds of public administrations feel threatened by data theft or the exorbitant cost of data protection.
Furthermore, the study concludes that Germany in particular has a very low level in terms of transparency compared to the European average (30/100 instead of 48/100 points).
Return on investment
The study and the report offer a concise list of questions to be asked by anybody involved in creating an eGovernment solution. Based on the four aspects - benefits, access, usability and reliability - IT planners and strategists are offered a valuable and time-saving tool. When looking for measurable criteria for the success of a service portal and, in particular, of an improvement measure, the authors have identified five items:
- number of clicks necessary to complete the task;
- number of visitors;
- number of dropouts;
- percentage of successful online processes compared to analogue processes;
- links and comments in social media.