Digital is ushering in a new era for public services in Europe and redefining the relationship between state and citizen. Herein lies an opportunity for European governments to accelerate public service transformation and be more connected to their constituents.
Digital consumers are also digital citizens. As such, they increasingly expect their governments to provide the same high quality digital services they enjoy from commercial organizations. At the same time, substantive reforms are taking place in all European member states against the backdrop of increasing strain on public services. The need to make these services sustainable and future-proof is a matter of urgency. Governments must be ready to make a bolder and more sustained investment in this transformation.
The European Centre for Government Transformation is a research centre and practitioner-driven community, founded in 2009 by Accenture, the Lisbon Council and the College of Europe. In a series of essays commissioned by the European Centre for Government Transformation, leading thinkers from across Europe share their vision and pragmatic ideas on how governments can act now and deliver public services for the future. All the contributors highlight the critical role of digital technologies to support this transformation and provide strong examples to illustrate how, by focusing on action and execution, governments in Europe can achieve digital-era governance:
1. Digital democracy and the digital citizen
- Co-designing and co-creating with citizens by opening legislative processes to constituents and enabling constituents to vote or engage digitally with their political representatives.
- Enhancing the share of participatory budgeting at local and regional levels, allowing people and communities to decide their own priorities.
- Shifting all interactions (beyond transactions) to self-service in a citizen-centric approach that encourages communication and access.
2. A new digital “operating model”
- Developing a national digital strategy that is based on design principles like “digital by default.”
- Accelerating the use of pervasive technologies like social media, mobility, big data and cloud to leverage their full potential and embed user-centricity in any future service design.
- Creating a simplified and personalized service design emulating high-quality private and entertainment services.
- Reinventing a leaner and more agile center of government.
3. Digital innovation pathfinders and digital entrepreneurship
- Launching digital transformation pilots by identifying the top 20-25 key government services and transforming these to an end-to-end digital public service
- Embedding innovation labs/centers in administration, for example, initiatives like MindLab, a cross-government innovation unit in Denmark
- Creating new digital economies and entrepreneurship to allow governments to provide more value-added services and bring in other actors within the service ecosystem.
4. Digital leadership, skills and transformation of the public service workforce
- Appointing digital champions across key agencies to lead the transformation initiatives within their agencies and equip them with digital tools and skills.
- Developing strong digital competencies through a deep-dive immersion program.
- Empowering leaders, and incentivizing them to work across agency boundaries and encourage them to explore innovative approaches.
Discover the opportunities and challenges of public services in the digital age by downloading the collection of essays How Europe Can Lead Public-Sector Transformation
