The annual ‘Leadership in Customer Service’ survey of e-government deployments globally by Accenture revealed that in general the leading governments are introducing services on a par with the best of the private sector. Governments that have led the way, however, are now at a critical junction having ‘reached the limit’ of their current approaches and need to re-assess and re-craft their customer service strategies.
According to a report from Accenture, government agencies with the best record for customer service have focused on interactive and sophisticated services that are comparable with private sector firms. The report raises concerns about the potential for Ireland, along with Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, to fall behind.
The deployment of mission-critical e-government to e-citizen projects over the past number of years will present a number of key issues for government IT decision makers to consider over the next 12-18 months, according to the report.
Good quality information can be defined as information that meets or exceeds the expectations of all processes or information consumers who use that information. The expectation may be that the information conforms to a certain format, that all relevant information is complete, that the information is consistent (i.e., John Smith isn’t flagged as female), that the information is accurate or that the information is not duplicated.
While the pace of e-Government rollouts in Ireland has been impressive over the last number of years, there are a number of key issues for Government IT decision-makers to consider over the next 12-18 months. Top of the agenda will be issues such as project portfolio management; addressing the gap on the haves and have-nots; future-proofing of planned rollouts; and applying performance management matrices. As e-Government gathers further momentum in Ireland issues such as these will be increasingly significant to functional and technical leaders in various government and public service areas.
Read more: Ireland: The role of managed services will become central to e-Government initiatives