《哈佛商业评论》分析服务：数字时代的下一代公民支持

Next-Generation Citizen Support The public sector faces real hurdles to improving citizencare. Many governments and their agencies, especiallyat the national level, serve enormous numbers of peopleand manage extraordinary numbers of citizen services.These organizations are often saddled with outdated H I G H L I G H T S Ongoing advances in digitaltechnology, including cloud-basedcustomer-service systems andartificial intelligence,promise to The challenges to providinggood citizen care—outdatedtechnology, limited resourcesto spend on replacing thattechnology, and siloed While poor citizen care is an issue globally, the 2020 Federal Managers CustomerExperience Survey, which looked only at the U.S., is illustrative of the problem.In its analysis of the study, Deloitte, the consulting firm, found that budgetconstraints, outdated systems/technologies, and cultural resistance to change The consequences of poor citizen care can be significant. For citizens, it canmean slower, more convoluted citizen journeys and, in worst-case scenarios,an inability to access services or benefits that could make a meaningfuldifference in their health and welfare. For public entities, it can mean less Whilegovernments have noprofit incentive to improvecitizen support,they do have amoral incentive—as well as a There is hope for a brighter future. Ongoing advances in digital technology,including cloud-based service solutions and artificial intelligence (AI), promiseto pave the way to higher levels of citizen care if governments choose to take technologies directly and by working with third-party serviceproviders that have already integrated the latest technologiesinto their offerings and can implement and manage them FIGURE  Hamstrung by Outdated Technology Budget constraints and outdated technology hinder citizencare at U.S. agencies Percentage of federal managers rating as extremely or very difficult thefollowing challenges to improving the experiences of the people they serve. Challenges to Delivering GoodCitizen Care The challenges to delivering good citizen care—outdatedtechnology, limited financial resources to spend onreplacing or improving that technology, and siloed When Kit Collingwood joined the Royal Borough ofGreenwich, England, in 2020, to fill the newly created positionof assistant director, digital and customer services, she foundan organization in which each department was responsible “The lack of data and insight meant we couldn’t make gooddecisions at a cohort level about our residents,” Collingwoodsays. “It increased our costs and it increased the time taken Disjointed information systems also reinforced the feelingthat staff were operating in silos, which isn’t conducive to “If you’re a director of social care, you want to deliver reallygood social care services, but you are not directly responsiblefor the quality of the housing people receiving social care areliving in,” says Collingwood, by way of example. “But everyoneagrees that, if somebody is living in poor housing, it has an leaders want to provide better service but also because the “If you want to be living in a healthy society where thereis good civic engagement and democracy, then you need agovernment that’s responsive and working,” says Daniel Castro,vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation William Eggers, executive director of the Deloitte Center forGovernment Insights, points to another reason governmentsand their agencies sometimes fail to keep pace on thecitizen-service front: a lack of profit incentive. Unlike in “Government doesn’t get more money when it does thingswell,” affirms ITIF’s Castro. “There’s not a competitive This paper explores the challenges governments face indelivering better citizen care. It identifies opportunities they As a consequence of all these factors, many governmentorganizations—though certainly not all—have tended toapproach citizen service with less rigor than have theirprivate sector counterparts, says Mikhel Solvak, associateprofessor in technology research at the Johan Skytte Institute “It’s sometimes necessary to workwith technology vendors andconsultants from the private sectorwho, because of their experience inthis area, can bring a lot of best-inclass technologies together. Theyalso can help with introducinghuman-centered design practices, Overcoming the Challenges to Delivery Solvak and other experts in government operations identifyseveral ways the public sector can start providing citizen caremore like the care people are accustomed to in the privatesector. Those ways include employing the latest technologies Deloitte’s Eggers agrees. “It’s sometimes necessary towork with technology vendors and consultants from theprivate sector who, because of their experience in this area,can bring a lot of best-in-class technologies together,” he Better Taxation Services in Greenwich The Borough of Greenwich is just one of many governmententities working hard to raise the