In a global ranking of the digital performance of government agencies, released by Adobe earlier this year, New Zealand’s overall scores put it in sixth place behind Canada, the UK, US, Australia and Singapore, and just above the EU.

However, more detailed analysis of the digital performance of 12 New Zealand government agencies, outlined in a new report “The digital face of government” from Datacom and Adobe, shows the online experience being delivered varies significantly across different public sector organisations.

In the global rankings, “customer experience” – which evaluates first impressions, options for self-service and agency identity – was New Zealand’s highest scoring area but analysis of the 12 agencies shows scores ranging from 59.74 (an “emerging” ranking) to 77.09 for the top performer, putting that agency on the edge of an “advanced” ranking.

Results for “site experience” – which looks at average site speed, domain quality, influence on SEO and ease of use on mobile – also varied widely from a “nascent” score of 38 (the lowest ranking available) to a top score of 70.

“One of the standout areas New Zealand agencies need to address is the mobile responsiveness of their sites, with speeds and functionality on mobile devices not matching the desktop experience for users,” says Datacom AD Digital Experience Platforms Elias Billeh.


Datacom AD Digital Experience Platforms Elias Billeh

 

“What we are seeing is that there has been a real focus on experience, which is a positive, but there hasn’t been enough consideration given to scalability and performance. We are also seeing the impact of search being considered an afterthought for a long time.

“That’s changing now but the way content is distributed and governed across agencies makes it harder to deliver search in a way that supports the experience that customers or citizens are after.”

In the final area of evaluation, “digital equity”, performance was uniformly low. All of the New Zealand agencies scored between 44 and 60, which equates to an “emerging” ranking. While New Zealand has web accessibility standards in place, the results were negatively impacted by readability and a lack of available multilingual content.

Datacom’s AD Transformational Engagement Lisa Casagranda says one of the simplest opportunities for improvement is more user engagement and then a readiness to respond and change: “Positive and engaging digital experiences are built on user-centred experience design, intuitive interfaces, personalisation, and a commitment to continuous improvement.


Datacom’s AD Transformational Engagement Lisa Casagranda

 

“This means proactively seeking people’s feedback and committing to ongoing testing, learning and adaptation.”  

Casagranda and Billeh also note that one of the factors contributing to the differences in performance – and creating issues with site authority and findability – is the distributed nature of New Zealand’s government online presence, which sits across separate agency sites and lacks a cohesive ‘single front door’.

“From my perspective, the most significant area of impact for Government’s Strategy for a Digital Public Service is delivering integrated public services (cross-agency), followed very closely by agencies having the right resourcing and leadership to make this happen,” says Casagranda.

“More value needs to be placed on human-centred service design and delivering online experiences that support people to achieve outcomes rather than facilitating transactions,” she says. “SmartStart and Business Connect are excellent examples, but they are only the tip of the iceberg.

“The Digital Government Leadership Group has a role to make agencies more accountable for delivering consistent and coordinated public services, which is statistically proven to have the greatest positive impact on people’s experiences of dealing with government.”

Better technology solutions also have a role to play. Billeh says, as digital platforms advance, they are enabling agencies to more rapidly address scale and performance issues.

“There are some relatively easy fixes that exist and we’re seeing a shift towards SaaS CMS or Digital Experience Platforms (DXP), that is helping address issues around scalability, performance, and security,” he says.

“With the right collaboration and alignment, today’s technology can enable an integrated public service, and we’ve seen this evidenced in the last few years with many large and complex organisations successfully creating really unified digital experiences for their communities and customers. The thing that still needs to be a major focus for every organisation is their content.”

The full report “The digital face of government” is available now.