1. Citizen Connect
Deloitte Digital’s Response to Citizen Engagement
“The Citizen* as the Integrator”
Government’s approach to self-service is often siloed
along agency/service lines, which can provide an
inconsistent experience for its citizens. As a result, the
citizen may become an unintentional and frequently
unhappy self-integrator of government services. They
can be redirected from one static website, or even from
one physical building, to another, and have to keep
track of different user-IDs, to-dos, web links and status
of applications. People who share their journeys may be
kind enough to post helpful hints on social media to assist
the next person in navigating a particular life event such
as how to get a driver’s license or how to register their
business. For the most part though, many citizens are on
their own in navigating these experiences. Even though
some governments are starting to innovate in
this area and offer easy-to-use service guides to their
citizens, the general public is still searching for more
streamlined, quality, services.
“The Silo Reality”
Many government entities are built around the concept
that agencies should primarily focus on their own services,
for their own set of users. This inherently translates to
a limited view of how a single citizen engages with the
government from a 360-degree viewpoint. The result is
that many citizens often engage with public sector entities
in a disparate, fragmented manner. In addition, it can
mean that some government entities are losing money
on duplicative processing of information and not taking
advantage of analytics and intelligence across systems that
enable government to be more effective and efficient
with fewer resources.
“Safety First”
Linking data and information to create a better citizen
experience is no small challenge, neither technically
nor philosophically. Even if it were easy to connect all
government systems and link citizen records together,
privacy concerns would still exist. This leads to a
conundrum — those governments that want to provide
a seamless experience for its citizens are likely to run
into roadblocks in creating a common system of record
for a citizen due to privacy implications of such a
comprehensive system. Through innovative technology,
Deloitte has uncovered a way to help address this
concern by linking data across protected, encrypted data
stores that do not require a “golden record” for each
citizen. This helps protect the anonymity and privacy of
the very citizen that the government works to protect,
while also helping to reduce duplicative data entry for
citizens and providing a central point for interacting with
government agencies.
“Enter the Vault”
Moving to this new reality, or what some might believe
is a greatly improved citizen service experience, involves
adding new citizen engagement capabilities such as:
• Support the finding of information through life
events or other categorization that is meaningful to the
citizen, not based on how government silos have often
been established
• A wizard-based system to guide the citizen through an
intelligent decision flow to get them to what they need
• The ability to apply for government services from
a single user interface, with access to see the status
of various pending applications without going to
multiple websites
• Ability to interact with government agencies through
web, mobile and social-enabled channels
• Connections to social media to allow for collaboration
amongst citizens and government
• The ability to securely store personal information in one
place, where it can be maintained, but only passed into
application forms or guides with the citizen’s consent
Businesses
Leg
al
FormsLicenses
Public
Safety
VoteBenefits
Transp
ortation
ConsumerEducation
Citize
nship
Social
Support
Networking
“The Expectation Gap”
Today’s effective business models need a comprehensive view of the customer — one that enables both self-
service and proactive, customer-centric support services. Many existing customer management solutions for
government are often immature, undeveloped and duplicative — and have not always been able to keep up with
technology advances which drive the application of new customer service models across multiple industries.
Government’s inability to meet their customer’s growing needs around mobile, social and customized access to
services continues to be an ongoing and ever evolving challenge for many public sector clients. Today’s citizens
are adopting new social and mobile technologies, driving the hyper-growth in areas such as social media and
mobile accessibility. This is drastically increasing the ‘expectation gap’ for those governments still struggling
to establish basic services. These expectations, combined with the continued challenges of delivering quality
services to citizens in the most efficient, effective and elegant manner, are driving changes in the way many.
*Citizen in this context refers to all residents, constituents, and members within
a community that abide by local laws, policy and regulation regardless of their
national origin or citizenship.
