December 29, 2008
I had started academic research before the Millennium examining the challenges to District Councils in England, this had confirmed my suspicions that a lack of integration, citizen-focus and partnership working were drawbacks, perhaps as a result of the centrally-imposed targets and laterly the Priority Service Outcomes that were to be detailed following 2001.
Even more contradictory was the lack of consideration for the Community Planning aspect of the Modernising Government agenda. I had discussed a joint piece of work with a regional university around examining citizens’ views of service delivery arrangements in parallel with views on meeting the electronic targets being attempted, but unfortunately pressures to meet the targets didn’t leave enough time to carry out the research further.
Following the target deadline I breathed a sigh of relief and was left attempting to embed the learning of the last few years with providing services in the manner wanted by the citizen. At this point I attempted again to consider the research and contacted a university that had a history of work in local government, digital inclusion and electronic voting, De Montfort, with a research proposal, which was accepted! Unfortunately or fortunately I was then seriously ill but the period of rest and recuperation gave me time to focus on reading and the the reading distracted me from the gravity of my situation.
The reading indicated that very little academic work had still been done on e-government and that studies by the likes of Gartner Research had revealed some quite complex systems for measuring electronic service delivery that were probably only fit for national governments. What was also revealed was a long running debate as to whether government was dealing with customers or citizens, with most of the votes in favour of calling the people a government deals with citizens, this included the Government of Canada supporting the move. Another long running piece of work review ended up around assessing customer satisfaction, which along with measuring the gap between expectation and delivery, has seen a great number of papers published but no great conclusions made.
The recent favourite approach in business is to employ customer engagement measurement rather than customer relationship management and this I conclude is a viable approach, which is that by pushing for and collating feedback from all customers, which, in the context of government, I prefer to call citizens, across all channels, we can try to improve issues in end-to-end services by correcting them using the feedback.
We still have a long way to go in channel management and I think citizen engagement management is a move in the right direction, it will also assist in both avoiding digital exclusion issues along with creating quality services, It was also the approach I took when I created the blog http://greatemancipator.com, in order to discuss these issues and promote them amongst practitioners. Academic research tends to be focused on learn-ed conferences, very wordy and expensive journals, so my approach of sticking the outcomes under the nose of anyone interested and asking for their participation seemed a sensible approach.
In the New Year I intend to have another survey along with starting a series of interviews with particularly appropriate individuals. Any volunteers or suggestions?
Season’s greetings and a prosperous new year to everyone!
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About me, Metrics, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement | Tagged: Canada, e-government, E-government metrics, Gartner, modernising government, research | 
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December 21, 2008
The latest report from Australia has an interesting comparison with the resent Socitm Customer Access Improvment Service one, if its fair to compare the national versus the local, although the Australian states that it compares “satisfaction with e-government across all tiers of government, compared with the more traditional methods of service delivery.” Interestingly, the’ve also expanded so that: “In 2008 the issues explored in the telephone survey were broadened to include the use of intermediaries to contact government.”
Some of the conclusions to the Australian report are:
“Use of e-government (internet and telephone) channels for government contact has continued to grow. Growth is being driven by increased use of the internet rather than the telephone. The internet is now the most common way people last made contact with government. “
“The level of dissatisfaction varies depending on the service delivery channel used: People who contacted government by internet or in person are less likely to be dissatisfied, whereas telephone or mail users are consistently the most likely to be dissatisfied. “
“There continues to be a need for governments to provide the telephone and in-person channels as well as the internet. “
“Government agencies also need to be aware that community expectations for government service delivery are increasingly being shaped by experience with private sector services and that service delivery standards need to be monitored on an ongoing basis. “
None of which I disagree with! The bizarre one being that Australians are most satisfied with their Internet service than telephone, which is a major contrast with the Socitm finding. Perhaps it would be different across all levels of UK government but I somehow don’t think so?
2 Comments | Metrics, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement | Tagged: Australia, Socitm | Permalink
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December 19, 2008
A useful post (bk-ni14-dec-2008) on the ESD-Toolkit forum, that some won’t have access to is a two page document from Bob Kamall of the Cabinet Office. It comes in response to issues raised at the Tower 8.5 event in London that I attended. It does provide a little clarity and may calm a few concerned individuals and authorities, giving them time to get their acts together and do it right.
An additional update is to my list of system suppliers for satisfaction and NI14 recording. Cmetrix advise me that their URL is actually www.cmetrix.co.uk. Version four is here: company-table-v4
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI 14, NI14, citizen, customer satisfaction, transformational change | Tagged: CMetrix, Kamall, NI 14, NI14, Tower 8.5 | Permalink
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December 18, 2008
I have to thank Rachel Flagg of the US Federal Web Managers Group for posting their white paper on the W3C e-government Interest Group. It’s a very interesting expression of their wishes for the future from President-elect Obama’s government IT and as such it is promising. It’s only four pages long, which also makes a change from many documents, public and commercial.
If the Cabinet Office think the U.K. has problems, the report states that: “There are approximately 24,000 U.S. Government websites now online (but no one knows the exact number).”
It also states: “Many agencies focus more on technology and website infrastructure than improving content and service delivery. Technology should not drive our business decisions, but rather help us serve the needs of the American people.” To which I couldn’t agree more!
One of the plans is that citizens will: “Provide feedback and ideas and hear what the government will do with them.” – Which is what this blog is all about!
Importantly it wants government to:
“Ensure the public gets the same answer whether they use the web, phone, email, print, or visit in-person. Agencies should provide multiple ways for people to contact them and ensure that information is consistent across all channels. They should be funded to coordinate all types of content targeted to the general public (web, publications, call center, email, common questions, web chat, etc). Agencies should be rewarded for delivering consistent information, both within agencies and across government.”
In the words of parliamentarians, here, here!
In case anyone wonders there is a Public Sector Web Managers Group in the UK, small and beautifully-formed, which has a lot of Paul Canning in it…
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Obama, Paul Canning, PSWMG, US Federal Web Managers Group | Permalink
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December 17, 2008
I appreciated the work that Andrea Di Maio of Gartner did on comparing e-government metrics, which demonstrated their complexity (reported here).
As a proponent of true e-government metrics (rather than targets) I also liked the chart that signfied that 2008 was to be the year when e-government metrics finally made it.
However, this week’s Google gift was the fact that the Gartner gurus are now blogging and have been doing so for a couple of months! The main thing that grabbed my attention was Andrea commenting on the Italian government’s use of emoticons and describing it as an oversimplification. I couldn’t find the link he mentions but I found a working one here
In this instance, I think Andrea has got it right again. Its probably thinking of them as emoticons which does them no justice, they’re a little more than that if properly employed, but he is right that more than a three icon choice is needed to improve services, constructive feedback is needed, if we are to have a parsimonious way of measuring citizen engagement.
This ties in with another gartner-related quote from Maritz, customer experience specialists:
“The technology “fix” of CRM that promised improvements to the customer experience simply didn’t deliver. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in technology solutions, a 2006 survey found only that five percent of respondents strongly agreed that technology has improved service quality. In fact, Gartner claims that more than half of all new customer-related technology initiatives fail.”
Page 5 – “Delight or Defection; the Pivotal Role of People inside the Customer Experience” December 2006
If they fail we need to be prepared that a lack of co-production in the design, development or review is probably to blame. However, GovMetric and others are picking up the feedback using iconography as a starter and my current list of suppliers in the UK market is here (company-table-v3).
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Andrea Di Maio, Gartner, Maritz | Permalink
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December 11, 2008
In the bid to place a rationale against electronic or transformational government there has been a further exercise to build an accounting process that supports it. Some have used Activity Based Costing (ABC) or a similar range of fairly simple tools to put figures on processes.
Quite a long while ago in terms of this new world I had concerns about electronic processes transfering costs to third parties or the citizen in this way and indirectly adding costs to their equations whilst subtracting them from government’s.
OK, not having to travel to an office to see someone and being able to ‘phone or do it via a web site is cheaper but a number of government bodies are not offering the web option and pushing services via the ‘phone – this may be easier for the council but frequently fails on the 24 x 7 x 365 preference.
Do these accounting methods handle both sides of the equation, the citizen and the government?
When electronic forms are made available or council documents posted electronically, the citizen or their representative might now need to print them out (instead of the government body) – is that cost and time accounted for?
This may be penny-pinching and nit-picking but I saw recent publicity claiming vast savings for online services when in one case they were only available by ‘phone on a nine to five basis and the other was Internet payment which actually costs the local authority a lot of money to establish and run.
Are we being economic with our economics?
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December 10, 2008
Two new works on NI14 have appeared very recently, one from CRM developer Lagan, the other from LGITU magazine. Both annoyed me! …
The Lagan report notably for making a number claims for e-payments as a means of avoiding avoidable contact, along with an interesting typo on page 12 that York got 19,050 Internet payments in 1997…other than that, in its bid to sell expensive CRM systems it failed to emphasise strongly enough that NI14 is a process issue and that as the new Socitm report points out, web sites appear to be currently creating dissatisfaction not removing it! I also note that the www.lagan.co.uk link shown on the back of the report doesn’t go to them, at least not on my Internet connection!
The LGITU reports the results of a survey sponsored by the IDeA, who are funded by government, so are hardly going to put down NI14.
Page 3 sees the statement that “The primary means of collating this information is expected to be an existing CRM system”. Who has said? It is also confused in the following sentences as to who and where it is collected – I thought all channels, front or back office?
On page 4 they state that the number of IT respondents indicates that NI14 is “not being seen as a key issue within technology.” Whiich I support as a view and as an action – its not an IT issue – IT is a potential facilitator to measuring or resolving issues but ‘avoidable contact’ is the most corporate issue of all and needs the attention at all points of contact be they front or back office or elected members.
NI14 is of little benefit itself and the additional work in capturing it will be a hindrance to the day job of public service. The perceived downside noted on page 6 that it may not be accurately reported is more of a certainty has missed the point – its not the cumulative figure that matters its the process of capturing demand failure at the points of contact that matters and then sorting those processes out.
Page 7 catches up with the rationale behind NI14 but the understanding of what its like to try and deliver services across multiple channels to a high standard on retracting budgets with performance indicators to record isn’t there.
The commentaries from CLG & IDeA are as expected, the ones from Mouchel and Microsoft also try and sell their wares. My colleague Steve Palmer hits a lot of points about NI14 on the head but of course is promoting the joint Socitm/GovMetric service which while not perfect in NI14 terms probably does a better job in picking up the citizen dissatisfaction data and helping improve the end-to-end – but there are others! (I published my list of alternatives here)
As to the data in the report - as with NI14, its the qualitative feedback that really matters and this was quite interesting, supporting all my fears and not so much the spin LGITU have wrapped around it in their press release.
Remember, its the one who pays the piper calls the tune!
Leave a Comment » | NI14, Systems thinking, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Lagan, LGITU, Socitm | Permalink
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December 8, 2008
In re-reading David Marquand’s excellent small volume (168 pages) as I continue to write up my dissertation, I ‘ve extracted a few choice quotes. I’d love to know if anyone can present reasoned responses why they are not nuggets of truth?
Marquand, D. (2004). Decline of the Public, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Page 135
“The goods of the public domain must not be treated as commodities or surrogate commodities. Performance indicators designed to mimic the indicators of the market domain are therefore out of place in the public domain, and do more harm than good.”
“By the same token, the language of buyer and seller, producer and consumer, does not belong in the public domain; nor do the relationships which this language implies. People are consumers only in the market domain; in the public domain, they are citizens. Attempts to force these relationships into a market mould undermine the service ethic which is the true generator of quality in the public domain. In doing so, they impoverish the entire society.”
Page 140
“[Yet] if the history of the last century has one sure lesson, it is that change imposed from the top, measured and policed by procedures contrived at the top, rarely produces the desired results. Command and control destroyed the Soviet Union, inflicted untold damage on Mao’s China, and went badly adrift during the post-war Labour Government’s planning phase.”
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December 3, 2008
A recent survey from supplier Rostrvm included the addendum that:
“Other problems identified by the contact centres include the ambiguity of what is required (19%), the necessity of training staff to comply (11%) and preparing the back office and service support systems to handle the extra data (10%). A further 8% would struggle due to a lack of resources and time constraints. Just 4% of the local authorities surveyed did not perceive any problems preventing them from meeting the target. “
I was actually surprised at the large numbers doing anything, although at the recent Tower NI14 event I was the only one who admitted their authority wasn’t being particularly active, I suspect I was the only one stupid enough to do so in front of the Audit Commission and Government Office!
The problem demonstrated by the survey is that in its true conception the indicator is not just for call centres and should cover all citizen contact be that face-to-face, email or web, so it needs to be dealt with as a CORPORATE issue! I wonder how many can truly say that?
The fact that ‘avoidable contact’ or whatever is not just for call centres is proven by The ‘Half-yearly review and results summary’ of the Socitm/Govmetric Customer Access Improvement Service where on page 8 was the revelation that not all channels are equal that whilst telephony was favoured for many there was an clear lead on the web for adult services and that in satisfaction terms the web was less satisfactory across all the services listed! This is a clear vote for Citizen Engagement Exchange to dig into the reasons why, especially when most of those using the telephone for all services were satisfied. I’m afraid the publication is for users and Socitm Insight subscribers so I can’t link to it here, but it just proves what those of us looking at the breadth of channels will have realised! It also showed just how great the web channel usage was compared with the others…despite lack of satisfaction.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI14, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement | Tagged: citizen engagement exchange, govmetric, NI14, rostrvm, Socitm | Permalink
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December 1, 2008
Having continually exercised my model against the literature and now against the supplers ideas, along with the growing challenge of government expectations for measurement, I am now reassessing it and fortunately haven’t found it wanting.
Where the model does need development is in ensuring that the expectations gap is met at the level of politicians, management and citizens. I’m currently concluding that the power of the model is proven by the fact that expectations are not the same across channels and that they also change with channel usage, also that using citizen co-development to transform channels is the ideal. I’m calling this ‘citizen engagement management’ and the review process whether that be that a dashboard, scorecard or whatever, the ‘citizen engagement exchange’.
Feeding into this ‘exchange’ we have the channels, the management and politician feedback to the citizen feedback, which may be management or political priorities, along with citizen and officer feedback, this provides some measure of importance to the feedback, especially if it is low or high from the citizen perspective i.e. lots of complaints or few. The output from the ‘exchange’ is then directed into refocusing management, reviewing processes or systems, or even examining how channels are used.
I need to re-emphase that engagement is qualitative and not about pure numbers, it is about watching out for the variation that throws processes, systems or management out of sync and putting them back on track. The ‘Gemba‘ has to be the whole, the end-to-end systems, and this is refined by the ‘exchange’, which is core of the customer engagement process.
company-table-v3 of the supplier list is now available with a further addition. These systems or applications are just a way of collecting data when engaging with the public, they only become of value when the information supplied is used to change existing practice.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: citizen engagement exchange, expectations, gemba, model | Permalink
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