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The Plateau
During the Internet boom of the late 1990s, government entities raced to develop Web sites, and high levels of e-government spending became the norm. Spending on e-government-related initiatives has continued to grow -- indeed, in 2009, the US government is expected to spend more than $71 billion on IT, of which an estimated 10 percent will be related to e-government.
While the total price tag for e-government services has risen dramatically, these outlays have not yet delivered on the promise of e-government. Public enthusiasm for government Web sites has waned. Americans' satisfaction with e-government, which rose steadily early in the decade, has started to decline. In 2004, Time featured three federal government sites in its list of the "50 coolest Web sites," while more recent lists contain at most one mention.
Illustrating this trend, one US government agency site was recognized as an innovator in online information and transactions and became a model for other agencies to follow, as it enjoyed user adoption rates that justified its e-government expenditures. However, more recent initiatives have failed to catch on with users, who regard the Web site as having become harder to use and new services as too confusing and complex. Nor is this phenomenon confined to the United States. One government agency invested millions developing a service that enabled citizens to manage their accounts with the government online, only to achieve a disappointing adoption rate of less than 5 percent.
What's more, data suggest that investments have not yielded major improvements in the operational efficiency of government. A random sample of six US government agencies suggests that administrative costs have increased by 7 to 12 percent per year over the past decade. Nor has public perception of government efficiency improved. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of US citizens who agree that "When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful" has increased in recent years, from 53 percent in 2002 to 62 percent in 2007.
Getting to the next level of e-government requires agencies to regard Web development as an integral part of the services they provide to constituents -- on par with initiatives such as call centers or field offices -- or, in the case of internal efforts, as important as an all-hands meeting. Web projects should be maintained as a consolidated portfolio with a centralized view of costs and benefits. Clear end-to-end ownership of the online experience must be established and reinforced, with accountability for user adoption rates and costs. Specific business goals -- more accurate processing, for example, or enhanced Web self-service to reduce incoming phone calls -- should be agreed upon at the outset of initiatives so that the objectives can drive the approach to design and implementation.
Line-of-business leaders should be responsible and accountable for driving Web initiatives, but to support them agencies should establish a dedicated product-management team -- consisting of designers, information architects, developers, and editors -- responsible for not only the initial development process but also ongoing improvements to usability and functionality. To keep up with real-time feedback, this team must have access to funding that can be adjusted on a monthly rather than annual or multiyear basis. The team should also be expected and empowered to make quick decisions, and rewarded for adopting a test-and-learn mentality so that it can feel free to shut down pilots or programs that are not meeting expectations.
The management of e-government efforts must also become much more data-driven. Assumptions should be challenged rigorously, and data from small, low-investment experiments used to guide decisions. Best-practice online businesses continually conduct experiments to improve the user experience. Google has stated that at any given time it simultaneously runs 50 to 200 experiments on its Web sites. Online government initiatives should adopt a similar orientation to determine, for example, what services are most in demand and how to make those services easiest to access.
Finally, governments must follow a structured approach to evaluating security issues. Organizations must balance the trade-offs between the benefits of implementing security decisions and the costs of restrictions, including financial impact and effects on usability, convenience, and adoption. When one agency realized that its Web team, IT team, and security team each had a different understanding of legal and security requirements, it clarified the requirements and assigned specific responsibilities. The security team was given full responsibility for assessing security, while the Web team was made responsible for understanding how security requirements would affect usability and deciding on the features in which to invest and launch.
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