In some cases this has resulted in completion of the SURVEY, in others personal emails (all polite, thanks John, Dan and others) and in the case of the e-democracy list, some supportive discussion, thanks Paul and Jeremy.

I’ll pick up some threads from Paul here, since they are very relevant.

• Channels – “who else uses channels?” “blunt usage”? – has anybody any favourite/preferred alternatives? I had the same problem with my research supervisors and the term “silo“. I also have a concern about channels turning into silos – now that’s worrying if you don’t like either expression! I still believe that customer/citizen contact should be managed as a whole with the I.T. that supports it.
• Drop-outs from online processes better than user satisfaction – but what about the other channels? The person wanting face-to-face at five-to-nine?
• “We still do not have a single central resource for gov webbies like the Australian state of Victoria has had for several years > http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/” – again but I like to see this across all communication/service channels?
• “Strategy is extremely patchy rather than holistic” – this is a ket element of my dissertation, its a Civil Service modus operandi if I’m correct. They have no idea what to do, so ask everyone else to provide exemplars, and then cherry-pick the best or in the worst instance the low-hanging fruit! At the end of the exercise, everybody is doing something different at public expense but central government have a model for all to follow, if it isn’t too late? Prime examples of this in e-government were Implementing Electronic Government Statements 1 & 2, the Priority Service Outcomes and a string of ‘national projects’.

The discussion continued and I’m looking forward to refining the model with such feedback.

My review of the literature had only revealed some complicated metrics as listed by Andrea di Maio and others, and targets such as National Indicator NI14. Along with that, having been managing an e-government programme I despised the Best Value Performance Indicator 157 and Priority Service Outcomes that had been the targets in England, they were of little value to the public!

I’d picked up the feelings that more recent reviews, such as the Irish lesson pointed to measures and also that customer satisfaction had a big role to play.

Companies like rol have proposed solutions such as govmetric and I think they’re getting there. My approach is to inhibit the use of targets and a pure reliance upon positive or negative feedback is the answer, and what I want from my suggested model.

If a customer/citizen (and there is a lot of debate about how we should view them, including the Cornford/Richter one) is satisfied or otherwise they indicate and leave feedback as to why. The feedback is used to improve the systems…

Simply that – satisfied/dissatisfied – if so, why? We’ll do something about it! Of course, we still need to measure usage of channels, all the channels, but with usage and satisfaction a great deal can be done to improve the service.

The next development is to cater for the customers that aren’t banging upon the door of any channels. Need, as per NWEGG, is one way but improving and simplifying access may stop us pushing the door from the other side?