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Governments throughout the Anglosphere have begun talking about ‘Digital
First’ or ‘Digital by Default’ in the last couple of years. In 2012 President
Obama launched the US Roadmap for Digital
Government. The Cameron government in the UK launched the Government Digital Office in 2011 with
the intention of delivering ‘digital by default’ government services. Here in
Australia, Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull is a big proponent of
this idea, launching the Digital Transformation Office a few weeks
ago. Turnbull delights in visiting startup incubators to deliver soliloquies
about how Government needs to become more responsive and support tech
companies. The big idea of Digital by Default though, is that government
departments should assume that the way people want to access information and
services is online, with other channels a secondary consideration. In many ways
this is a bit of a no-brainer; but there’s a catch. The great danger of digital
first government is not that it will fail, but in how it measures success.
A concept that has become de rigeur in the software
startup world is ‘user centred design’. This approach seeks to
arrange the system around the needs and desires of the user, rather than
forcing the user to adapt to the requirements of the system. If you’re thinking
that sounds like the opposite of most interactions with government, you’re not
alone. Indeed, virtually the first thing the Australian Government’s new
Digital Transformation Office has done is release a Digital Service Standard for government
departments, focussed on making their services user-centred. This is
the first step governments need to understand when becoming ‘Digital by
Default’. Unless the design of government services is ‘user centred’ digitising their delivery won’t make a whole lot
of difference.
An example of this is eTax, the ATO’s software program
introduced in 1999. eTaxwas only available for Windows PCs until
2013, and replicated the paper ‘Tax Pack’ forms. It was always clunky, and when
a version for Macs was finally released in 2013, it was buggy and confusing to install. eTax may
have been digital, but it certainly wasn’t a joy to use. Last year an
alternative, in-browser system, MyTax,was finally introduced. MyTax is
considerably easier to use, though the authentication process is still
cumbersome, and last year it was only available for those with straightforward
financial arrangements.
Reducing costs ...by passing them on to you
eTax did, at least, have the virtue of maintaining more or less the same
usability of the paper Tax Pack. Other moves from State and Federal government
to go digital have actually reduced usability. The Victorian
Government annually publishes the Directory of Victorian Public Libraries.
Until around 2008 this was produced and distributed in hard copy to all public
libraries in the state. Then, the State Government suddenly discovered a desire
to ‘reduce our environmental impact’ and announced that henceforth the
Directory would be ‘published online’. What this means in practice is nine PDF files posted to an obscure web page.
Of course, the only reason to publish something in PDF is if you want to retain
the formatting so as to enable someone to print it out. Not exactly reducing
paper use. Needless to say, the user experience of clicking and searching
through nine PDF files rather than flicking to the dog-eared and specially
coloured page in a hardcopy is significantly poorer.
The fate of the Directory of Victorian Public Libraries exemplifies
what happens when governments go ‘digital by default’ for the wrong reason.
It’s transparently the case that the Directory is ‘published’ as nine separate
PDFs instead of one hardcopy because the State Government wants to pass on the
printing costs to local Councils and library corporations. If the goal was to
digitise in order to provide better service, it would have been turned into a
searchable database.
This is how ‘digital by default’ currently works in Australian
government. The goal is simply to reduce government overheads by passing the
cost of production down the line. It’s Uber for Government. Just as Uber
requires workers to provide and service their own vehicle, Government is
looking to require citizens to BYO internet connection or smartphone in order
to receive services. But this excludes those who need government support the
most. Just as Uber simply ignores laws that it finds inconvenient,
Digital by Default government aimed solely at reducing costs ignores citizens
it finds inconvenient. Not only does this break the implicit rules of social
democracy, it misunderstands the nature of many government services.
Friction
What we call reducing bureaucracy in government, increasing productivity
in business, and removing friction in the app economy are all more or less the
same thing - removing as many human interactions as possible. This might save
money, but if you’re providing a service rather than a product it is very easy
to take it past the point where service quality starts to diminish. Digital be
Default needs to be squarely aimed at improving the quality of government
services, rather than a way to treat Baumol’s cost disease. RFID in libraries is a
good example of this. Library services focussed on reducing costs and becoming
more efficient have introduced RFID as a way to reduce staff. Library services
focussed on high quality service have introduced RFID in conjunction with new
service models centred on interactions rather than transactions - retaining
staff numbers but giving them more time to provide quality advice and
experiences instead of merely transactions. Public libraries have always been
more than mere book repositories. For many people, libraries are a place of refuge
from a depressing and hostile world - a rare place with familiar faces and
patient interlocutors. This is, as they say, a feature, not a bug.
Digital by Default must not lose sight of some of the positive outcomes
from current government service provision. Whether we’re talking about food
safety permits for restaurants, talking to real humans in public libraries, or
minimum manufacturing standards for car brakes, it’s important to remember why
we designed things that way in the first place. Sometimes when there’s no
friction, people die.
Perspective
Turnbull, Cameron and Obama are all very rich white men
in positions of power, but you merely need to be comfortably middle class to
lose perspective. The same people who think public libraries were obsoleted by
Google now call for all Government interactions to be appified, digitised and
vaporised. Who wants to use the phone or go in and talk to a person anyway?
People without your privilege - that’s who. The elderly, the illiterate, those
without an internet connection and those who have simply run over their data
limit for the month, people with complex combinations of needs that your software developer didn’t anticipate:
these are the people who need to sit down with a real person. Seen from this
angle, Digital by Default government - far from empowering citizens - breaks
the very bonds that created social democracy in the first place.
So Digital by Default - sure, bring it on, people like me will love it.
But your solution has to account for those who don’t or can’t love it, in a
meaningful way that isn’t simply shoving them over to their local library to
deal with (as so many state and federal government services do). It’s 2015 -
the default way to get information and services from government should be
digital, and it should be user-focussed and easy to use. But the non-default
analogue option needs to exist, and be user-focussed and easy to use as well.
Instead of Uber for the privileged and a once-a-day bus for the rest, let’s
build government that’s like self-driving cars for everyone. Anything else is
bullshit.
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