Accenture Says eGovernment Is Not Enough

Consulting firm Accenture just released a study, "Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations, New Experiences," the company's sixth annual report on government service delivery. See the full release from today here:

Governments Must Move Beyond eGovernment Initiatives to Enhance Customer Service for Citizens, Accenture Study Finds

Accenture studied the service maturity of 22 national governments in North America, Europe and Asia; it also surveyed 9,000 respondents about their experiences interacting with their governments online, in person and by phone.

How do citizens prefer interacting with their governments? This excerpt from the release is revealing:

"The citizen survey found that while most citizens prefer a number of different methods of communicating with governments, they continue to rely on more traditional, offline channels. Despite the relative Internet savvy and familiarity with online government in some countries, the telephone continues to be the predominant means citizens use to communicate with government. Over the past 12 months, 57 percent of respondents had used the telephone to interact with government, as opposed to only 22 percent who had used the Internet. Yet despite its popularity, the telephone is consistently ranked as the least easy form of communication across all countries surveyed."

Marty I. Cole, group chief executive of Accenture's Government operating group, commented: "This year's research shows that governments cannot afford to invest all of their effort and resources in developing the online channel alone to keep pace with citizen demands. The entire government organization must become focused on delivering services to citizens that are tailored to their needs and circumstances, and are coordinated across the various channels of interaction."

Accenture's study ranks and evaluates governments' online, or eGovernment, programs. As in the last five years, Canada ranked highest, followed by the U.S., Denmark, Singapore and Australia.

Accenture found that governments are not doing that well delivering next-generation services. This excerpt gives some specifics:

"A majority of citizens (55%) believe government is being effective when it acts as a single, seamless entity that can remember all of the details of a citizen's previous contact. However, an average of only 24 percent of citizens across all countries reported the government actually being able to do so. In the United Kingdom, which scored highest in this category, only 38 percent said the government remembered all details of a previous contact. Even in Canada, which ranked number one in overall maturity ratings this year, 70 percent of the respondents claimed that the government had forgotten at least some details of their previous transactions."

AB -- 4/6/05