From Supply to Demand:
Shifting the focus of government online

by Alex Langshur and Scott Proudfoot

Those leading the push to move government online must be feeling good. Following ambitious agendas, aggressive timelines and significant investments, they are nearing the e-government goals set in the late 90s. Canada has consistently ranked at or near the top of the Accenture e-gov survey in the five years since its inception.

Internet use has grown steadily – 64% of households have at least one member of the family using the internet; 66% of connections are broadband. Canadians routinely turn to the internet to read the news, purchase products (40% of households shopped online in 2003) and research products and services. Canadian e-gov investments are coming on-stream just as the market demand for such services is maturing.

This indicates remarkably prescient policy-making by public sector managers in developing and funding these initiatives.

Time to break out the champagne? Maybe not quite yet. A close read of the Accenture survey points to gaps in the development and implementation of robust performance measurement frameworks. Such frameworks are critical for governments to tangibly measure, track and transparently report on the benefits, successes and value of their online initiatives. Demonstrating the link between policy, programs and outcomes will be a prerequisite to achieving continued political support and investment. Key to such performance measurement frameworks is measuring the degree of citizen ‘take-up’ and adoption – the services are there, but is their use being maximized?

This last point is far from trivial. A recent poll in the UK found that 73% of the general public had not noticed the impact of e-government despite huge investments over the past five years. Similarly, polls released by the Federal Computer Weekly Group and the Pew Foundation found very poor public awareness of e-gov resources in the US. The reaction in the UK was swift. Parliamentary committees pressured the Labour government to renew its focus on the take-up of online services and the government had to re-launch its main public portal. The US government used a high profile print and media ad campaign to raise public awareness and boost traffic to the firstgov.gov portal (but meanwhile Congress has cut back the funding of the GSA Electronic Government Office.)

Erkki Liikanen, the Information Society Commissioner of the European Union, warned recently that too much emphasis has been placed on the e-gov ‘supply side’, and that EU governments should switch to understanding and measuring the demands so the value for money and benefits can be assessed. “Meeting this challenge requires we develop the capabilities to define, measure and benchmark.”

Clearly, governments have done well getting online but there has not been the same level of focus on developing robust performance frameworks that provide the type of information that delivers insight on what citizens need, use and value.

According to Gilles Morin, vice president of IT Business Services at Export Development Corporation (EDC), “Understanding how to use the web and how it can help to redesign your service offerings is a big learning curve for those used to dealing in a traditional person-to-person fashion.” EDC has made careful, targeted investments to create a robust performance measurement framework that provides detailed feedback on the impact and success of their online initiatives.

The results have been encouraging, with the web channel now processing up to 74% of the 26,000 credit approvals completed each year. Morin advises, “There is a strong appetite at our board for information related to the web. They expect us to use this channel to serve more customers and generate growth.”

The EDC example highlights the benefit of having an informed audience when reporting on site performance. Many senior public sector managers still measure website success based on the crudest form of traffic data, namely hits or page views. Many are unaware of the level of insight available from their web channel. Few even realize the web channel can be considered a running ‘poll’ that provides unique insight on citizen and stakeholder needs.

Measuring website effectiveness has become a booming industry. Lumped under the generic term ‘analytics’, private sector and nonprofit organizations that consider the web a core communication channel have developed electronic dashboards to track key website performance metrics. They monitor customer behaviour to understand what works, why it works and then plough that learning back into the site through incremental improvements that lead to better outcomes. Unfortunately, many tools designed to support these initiatives, particularly commercial of the shelf (COTS) tools, are not well suited to the needs of the public sector.

The profit motive is not the only reason to invest in the web channel. Delivering an excellent experience to users helps build credibility – an important factor in citizen-centred service. The experience of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) is a case in point.

“Through detailed measurement, we determined that our website was a core information channel used by our stakeholders,” says Gene Nyberg, NRTEE’s CEO. “We decided to explore if we could turn some of the outcomes identified in our priorities and plans into indicators tied to website traffic patterns.”

The results surprised everybody. “The insight we were able to gather helped us shift how we view performance reporting: it’s gone from being an end-of-pipe process to one that is ongoing and integrated with program management,” Nyberg says. This has had significant value for program directors because it enables earlier, incremental program responses.

Making performance reporting ongoing rather an annual event is a paradigm shift many, but not all, have made. In an environment where programs are under increasing pressure to demonstrate impact and relevance, having in place tools that provide ‘early warning’ signals is valuable to program managers. The objective nature of traffic data from hundreds of thousands of visitors provides a clear-eyed perspective on which programs are connecting with their target audiences.

Daniel Breton, director of services for Fisheries and Oceans Operations Communications, sums it up: “It’s a matter of priorities. You need to be able to show that you are delivering the best you can to your stakeholders with the money you have.” Failure to use systems to incrementally report performance against goals is increasingly high risk.

Based on the leadership demonstrated so far, we should expect the Canadian public sector to become an international leader in transparent reporting of impacts, outcomes and benefits of e-gov to their citizens. Breton concurs. “Looking ahead I see positive outcomes (from our GOL investments). The government is sending the right signals about the need for better standards, more horizontal cooperation and increased integration based around services. I believe that we’ll see Canadian government websites improving much more in the next five years – quality is going to increase exponentially.”



Alex Langshur and Scott Proudfoot are principals of Hillwatch EServices, an Ottawa based analytics firm specializing in the public and non-profit sectors.