Moving public services online: How Europe can meet its urgent challenges

By Solveigh Hieronimus, Senior Partner and Leader of the McKinsey Center for the EU

Digitizing public services has the potential to not only provide fast, high-quality services to citizens at lower cost, but also help boost satisfaction with and trust in government institutions. With the announcement of the Digital Compass for 2030, my recent article identified three dimensions of excellence that could help Europe become a true leader in this space: integrated user journeys, automation, and interoperability. In this follow-up, I will share a brief perspective on how Europe could work towards turning this ambition into reality.

The European Commission has set an ambitious target for 2030: making 100% of all key public services available online across all Member States. But other countries are moving faster. Innovators at different levels of government, from Estonia to New South Wales to Dubai, have already built scalable, efficient digital platforms that deliver a seamless customer experience rivalling that offered by the private sector.

Following the publication of the Digital Compass, Europe has the potential to become a true leader on digital public services by focusing on three dimensions of excellence: seamless mobile user journeys, automation, and interoperability.

However, while the rewards of a seamless online experience can be dramatic, building state-of-the-art digital experiences remains challenging for many governments around the world. They typically need to overcome three main barriers that frequently impede turning ambition into reality:

• A lack of a whole-of-government mandate. Most public services are still distributed across departments, agencies, and geographies, making it challenging for governments to offer a single front door and integrate journeys across touchpoints.
• Fragmented legacy IT architecture. Public services typically run on a wide range of IT systems, some using outdated technology managed by a diverse set of actors. Many governments will look to learn from best practices from private-sector platform development, with system consolidation and adherence to modern architecture principles such as low-code and cloud-only.
• Conservative culture and lack of digital talent. Creating digital products and services requires quick, flexible collaboration and decision making across functions and areas of expertise. In government, that likely means adapting some of the rigid processes (and mindsets) in civil service where appropriate. Governments might also want to consider new approaches to attract and retain first-rate digital talent.

How Europe might speed progress in digitising public services

Providing public services, digital and otherwise, is still largely the purview of Member States, but the Commission could play an important role in helping the EU reach its digital transformation goals by 2030. It is already collecting and sharing insights from the Digital Economy and Society Index, eGovernment benchmarks, and so on.

Building on these and other efforts, the Commission might consider three additional steps to reach its 2030 vision:

1.  Gather data and insights. First steps could include collecting benchmark data on the use of digital public services, such as adoption rates and user satisfaction. Benchmarks could then inform design, regulatory, and adoption initiatives and provide policymakers with metrics supporting funding programmes and tangible results.

2.  Create a digital public services factory. Benchmarking, regulation, and funding criteria are necessary in the planning process but building real digital assets that work in unison across the EU will likely require concentrated efforts over many years. A new EU-wide digital public services factory could help Member States overcome the obstacles they face.

3.  Consider a pilot with a Member State. The Commission could collaborate with a Member State that wants to leapfrog towards the 2030 Digital Compass vision for public services, raising interest across the EU and providing a blueprint for others to follow.

The Commission has set out an ambitious goal for making public services available online that is achievable and essential to maintaining the trust and support of the people. Making this goal a reality will help establish Europe as a true global leader on digital public services to deliver better services faster at lower cost to hundreds of millions of EU citizens by 2030.

What is your experience with challenges and successes on the path to digital government? Join the conversation in the comments below and let me know if you’d like to learn more on this topic.