G00274706

Government Portals Are Evolving to EnableDigital GovernmentPublished: 27 February 2015

Analyst(s): Glenn Archer

Citizen portals for federal, state and local governments have been used,with mixed success, for decades to provide information and to simplify andconsolidate online services. Good portals drive service improvement andvalue, and represent an ideal transition platform to digital government.

Key Challenges■ Many citizen portals are not being used by citizens to the degree expected. As a result, benefits

anticipated in the original business case are not being realized.

■ The failure to simplify and integrate policy to support digital government processes has forcedboth agency CIOs and whole-of-government (WofG) CIOs (GCIOs) in different tiers andjurisdictions of government, to compromise on the citizen-centric design of these portals. Thishas limited potential service delivery and constrained operational benefits.

■ Online credentials that are complex to obtain, difficult to use or simply not interoperable havecontributed to lower adoption and resulted in the CIO and the government business ownerbeing forced to abandon the portal and/or pursue alternative models.

■ State and local government CIOs, in particular, continue to experience declining investment ininformation and communication technology (ICT). Investment in portals to drive better serviceoutcomes is significantly constrained as a result.

Recommendations■ The GCIO should explicitly position WofG portals as a platform to enable multiagency service

integration, the transformation of business processes and a transition to digital government.

■ The GCIO should clearly set the expectation that portal success is dependent on citizencentricity, policy and business process redesign, together with engaged leadership, appropriategovernance and the authority to simplify and consolidate policy and business processes.

■ CIOs in all jurisdictions — federal, state and local — should choose a portal model that best fitstheir digital strategy. In particular, they should only choose an integrated/transactional portalwhere they have access to a strong and widely (or easily) adopted online credential.

■ In the absence of a common credential, agency CIOs and/or GCIOs should adopt a hybridmodel by leveraging an existing portal and the credential of another entity as a platform to hosttheir transactions, or as an authentication entry point to a program-specific agency's portal.

Table of Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................................2

Analysis..................................................................................................................................................3

Leverage Your Whole-of-Government Portal to Simplify, Integrate and Digitize Policy and Process to

Provide the Foundation to Evolve to Digital Government...................................................................3

Choose the Portal Model That Best Suits Your Current Context and Likely Future Direction............. 5

Take Great Care to Select an Online Credential That Is Fit for Purpose, Readily Obtained, Easily

Used and Sufficiently Secure............................................................................................................ 6

Case Study............................................................................................................................................ 7

Gartner Recommended Reading............................................................................................................ 9

List of Tables

Table 1. Evolution of Some National Portals........................................................................................... 8

IntroductionThe application of portals by government has changed markedly in recent years. The visionespoused by many governments over the past decade of a single "one-stop-shop" websiteproviding citizens with access to all government services would appear to be far more difficult thanmost Governments and many CIOs anticipated. Very often the expectations for portal usage havenot been achieved.

The consequences have been demonstrated starkly by the recent UN E-Government Survey 2014.1

The report shows that in the past two years nearly half of one-stop-shop government portals havedisappeared, and only a quarter of countries surveyed have implemented common accessarrangements for portals providing services across multiple agencies.

Based on the evidence contained in the UN survey, the details provided in the Case Study section,and through interactions with Gartner clients, there appear to be two primary causes behind thepoor outcomes for many government portals:

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■ The failure to simplify the policy, business processes and the respective roles of governmentagencies that underpin the advice provided and transactions offered on the portal. This is afundamental part of designing services offered on the portal to be citizen-centric and well-integrated (across agency responsibilities).

■ Choosing the wrong approach to the online credential that the citizen must use in order toauthenticate with the portal. If this credential is difficult for citizens to obtain, to use or justdifferent from credentials used by other government agencies, it will act as a disincentive for thecitizen to make initial and/or ongoing use of the portal.

These two issues — more than any others — have led to poor adoption of portal services. This hasresulted in many governments scaling back on the original vision, disaggregating the portal (byseparating the transactional elements from the informational elements) and/or moving to single-purpose sites. The precise model chosen and features supported by these portals now varysubstantially across jurisdictions within and between nations.

The reality is that most national and federal, and many state governments are investing and willcontinue to invest in portals. They are typically high-profile and well-resourced. GCIOs need tomaximize the outcome and benefit derived from these investments and leverage them as a platformor enabler to future digital government services. Local government portals are typically lesscomplex than those in other tiers, reflecting the fact that the range of services is narrower and thatthere are a smaller number of agencies to deal with. Being earlier in the portal life cycle does,however, provide local government with the opportunity to learn from the challenges of CIOs inother tiers. Many local government entities are actively investigating innovations such as "smartcity," as well as the emerging opportunities represented by the Internet of Things (IoT), based ontheir potential to improve asset value and utilization in local communities. Local government CIOsare well-placed, therefore, to investigate opportunities to further leverage advances in conjunctionwith their portal strategy. However, notwithstanding these opportunities, recent Gartner researchshows that ICT investment in state and local governments is down from 3.8% to just 3.6% of theoperating budget in 2014.

Governments should not see portals as a panacea. They will not (and cannot) replace the need forbetter program and policy design, and they can only partially overcome complexity inadministration. No one model is right for all federal, national, state or local governments. But it maybe possible to learn from those deployments that have been partially or substantially successful.

Analysis

Leverage Your Whole-of-Government Portal to Simplify, Integrate and Digitize Policyand Process to Provide the Foundation to Evolve to Digital Government

A core tenet of digital government is that services are designed to take advantage of data inoptimizing, transforming and creating completely new business models and government services. AWofG portal provides arguably the most valuable pathway to achieving this aim. Fundamentally, fora WofG portal to succeed it must by definition take a WofG approach. This requires engaged senior

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leadership, strong central governance and greater controls on investment to facilitate a moreconsistent approach to the design of services around the citizen and to explicitly hide thecomplexities of individual government agency responsibilities — especially when transactions needto cross organizational boundaries.

Unfortunately, individual agencies and their policy owners are typically quite unwilling to cederesponsibility and control to another agency — regardless of the larger benefits that might beachieved. The response by the U.K. government in establishing its Government Digital Service(GDS) and GOV.UK was an explicit recognition that this issue had compromised progress in thepast. The newly elected government chose to centralize the development team and give it authorityto redesign government services and to do so from the perspective of citizens, not the bureaucracy(see Note 1). As far as possible, the policy responsibilities for individual agencies are invisible to thecitizen.

There is compelling evidence to support the view that establishing an appropriate governance

arrangement is the most important factor in driving service transformation.2 In this context, the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently adopted a series ofrecommendations to advance digital government among member countries. Central to these was

the recognition of the importance of leadership and good governance arrangements.3

Governance arrangements will be fundamental to success. Subject to local practices, GCIOs inparticular should look to ensure that these are inclusive and supportive of innovation. In somecases, an agency with appropriate service delivery expertise may represent a good short- tomedium-term option to take operational responsibility for a WofG portal. However, given the morestrategic nature of the digital government agenda, it will be critical to implement a broadgovernance model in order to maximize the future potential of the portal.

Recommendations:

■ Government CIOs, in conjunction with their executive, business leaders and elected officials,should ensure that new WofG portals support the transition to digital government. In particular,they should avoid structuring the portal to reflect existing transactions, organizationalarrangements or nuances of the policy agenda. The portal must facilitate the development ofnew citizen interaction models — including mobile and those potentially facilitated through thirdparties — and ensure that the design incorporates a feedback mechanism to inform and drivechanges to existing policy and business processes.

■ In designing new portals or upgrading existing ones, government CIOs must take a holisticperspective in designing the site, emphasizing the need for the user design to be citizen-centric— not agency-centric. The citizen should be able to complete a transaction through the portalwithout being required to understand any agency-specific policy or role. The citizen shouldnever need to channel-shift — that is, move from digital to analog (paper/phone) in order tocomplete a transaction.

■ Government CIOs should look to inform and/or participate in decisions relating to governancearrangements for any citizen portal. Development and operational responsibility for the portalshould be vested with an agency that has been established for the sole purpose of supporting

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the portal or one that is appropriately skilled and experienced in service delivery. In particular,do not make a central or policy agency responsible, as it is unlikely to be sufficiently skilled, andmay suffer from a conflict of interest in terms of balancing policy outcome and service design.

Choose the Portal Model That Best Suits Your Current Context and Likely FutureDirection

As demonstrated by the Case Study analysis (see Table 1), we are witnessing the evolution of thegovernment citizen portal. Over the past decade, a number of governments have found it necessaryto invest, often multiple times, in order to overcome shortcomings in their original portal design andunderpinning business model. This has been an expensive and at times embarrassing learningexperience for some GCIOs and agency CIOs. However, some jurisdiction, such as Singapore andthe Netherlands, are consciously leveraging their success and are now positioning their WofG portalas a platform to support their transition from e-government to digital government. GCIOs have acritical role in helping governments to maximize the potential for the portal to succeed in the shortto medium term.

Gartner is seeing WofG portal designs starting to coalesce around four different portal models:

■ Informational/Referral — The portal contains information about government programs, policies,new initiatives and links to individual agencies. It may also provide access to government data(that is, open data and APIs). This type of portal does not require any authentication credential.

■ Integrated/Transactional — The portal is hosted independently of agencies and provides theability to fully complete a transaction with government that may cross agency boundaries. Itdoes so in a way that completely replaces existing paper-based services. This type of portalrequires the citizen to have a credential and to "log in" to the service. The precisecharacteristics of that credential will vary and may have differing levels of assurance.

■ Hybrid — A single large agency takes on the role of a lead agency and acts as the gateway toenabling access to online services for a broad range of agencies. The lead agency provideslinks to the other services and a facility to establish a single credential. It may also allow forcommon transaction, such as change of address, to be shared across all agencies.

■ Program or Initiative-Specific — The portal is established for a single purpose only. Often, theportal will require the use of a credential and typically the credential will be unique to this portal.

The critical issue for the CIO in any jurisdiction is to understand that all portals will evolve in duecourse. Predicting the path that any particular portal evolution might take can be difficult. Theparticular challenge for the CIO is therefore to maximize the value during each iteration andminimize the effort to support the transition to the next phase. The least preferred outcome wouldclearly be that of needing to decommission the portal early.

Recommendations:

■ The GCIO should carefully assess the primary purpose for which the WofG portal is beingdeveloped or redeveloped before choosing to adopt one or more portal models, In particular,issues such as a changing technology environment, the relative maturity and experience of

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government in its use of portals, projected citizen usage and behavior, the amount of fundingavailable, relative agency engagement, and, importantly, executive support will all form part ofthe consideration.

■ In choosing a technology platform and/or technology provider, the CIO should avoid lock-in —even at the cost of short-term savings.

Take Great Care to Select an Online Credential That Is Fit for Purpose, ReadilyObtained, Easily Used and Sufficiently Secure

A good online credential is necessary but not sufficient to ensure portal success. It won't guaranteesuccess but a poor one will ensure failure. If it is complex for citizens to obtain, difficult to use or notinteroperable, it will seriously undermine adoption. As outlined in the Case Study and Evidencesections, this relationship is perhaps not well-understood or appreciated.

The sample of WofG portals in Table 1 also demonstrates the wide array of both portal models aswell as approaches to credentials that different countries have adopted. It is in fact quite difficult toidentify any two countries that have adopted identical approaches to the issuing and use of onlinecredentials. There is also an obvious dichotomy between nations that choose to pursue agovernment-issued credential model and the more recent movement for government to make use ofcommercially issued credentials. The issue of citizen e-ID is covered in greater detail in "Tutorial:Successful Approaches to Citizen Electronic Identification Initiatives in Government."

In many countries, there is significant sensitivity to this issue from the perspective of privacyconsiderations, and this will typically reflect local culture and history.

As a consequence, suggesting examples of best practices can be problematic, as what is anacceptable model in some countries will not be so in others. It is also rarely the case that a CIO willhave the capacity to substantially influence the debate on this matter. What the CIO can do,however, is recommend the portal model most appropriate to the best credential that is available.

In some countries, such as India, governments have chosen to make a significant investment inissuing a unique biometric-based credential to all citizens — primarily to support electronic anddigital transactions. In other countries, an existing government credential may be fit for online use;these countries have been able to leverage this as a single common "logon ID." One of the bestexamples is Singapore, where the government-issued ID, known as SingPass, has been in place formany years. It is universally used to support a wide array of government services and, as aconsequence of how the ID has been issued, has been leveraged to support a range of financialand other services. Singapore has consistently performed well in regard to e-government metrics,and it is arguable that the quality of the SingPass credential has contributed to this.

The U.K. government similarly recognized the important role of the citizen credential and as part ofits decision to establish the new GOV.UK site has announced that GOV.UK Verify will provide thebasis of its future identity assurance arrangements. This model uses a range of commercial entitiesto independently establish the identity of the citizen to a certain level of assurance.

In some cases, governments have chosen to establish program-specific portals. The decision to doso is often based on the assumption that a narrowly targeted approach will be more likely to

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succeed in promoting and/or convincing citizens to adopt the new service. As outlined in the CaseStudy section, the experiences of both Healthcare.gov in the U.S. and the Personally ControlledeHealth Record (PCEHR) in Australia provide insight into the important role that obtaining acredential can play in terms of usage and adoption of program-specific portals. In general, thesetypes of portals, with poorly considered credential arrangements, are the subject to higher thannormal failure rates. They typically struggle to gain traction with the target audience and are, by theirnature, often established by entities with limited experience in delivering online services. CIOsshould advise against using this type of portal when any of these characteristics are present.

The cost and complexity of issuing and maintaining a credential is often underestimated. In the caseof local governments or smaller state governments that are in an earlier phase of their portal lifecycle, it is advisable to avoid introducing the additional complication associated with it if it can beavoided. If not, the most effective path would likely be to leverage a credential used by a higherjurisdiction or look to a commercial provider. Alternatively, they could consider participating in ahybrid portal arrangement.

Recommendations:

■ GCIOs and CIOs should use an informational/referral portal where there is no requirement orability to authenticate access.

■ Agency CIOs and/or GCIOs should choose an integrated/transactional portal only where theyhave access to a strong and widely (or easily) adopted online credential.

■ In the absence of a common credential, CIOs and/or GCIOs should adopt a hybrid model byleveraging an existing portal and the credential of another entity as a platform to host theirtransactions or as an authentication entry point to a program-specific agency's portal.

■ In lieu of establishing their own credential, CIOs in smaller jurisdictions, such as localgovernment, should look to leverage a higher jurisdiction's credential, make use of acommercial credential or participate in a hybrid portal arrangement.

Case StudyTable 1 reviews some examples of the evolution of WofG portals and the varying roles thatcredentials have played in this evolution over the past decade:

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Table 1. Evolution of Some National Portals

Country History

U.K. UKonline was replaced by Direct.gov.uk in April 2004. In Oct 2012, both Direct.gov.uk and the BusinessLink portal were replaced by GOV.UK. This site is progressively adding transactional services and inOctober 2014 commenced a public pilot program to allow citizens to obtain a credential from acommercial entity. Under the government's new GOV.UK Verify model, the government will not issue acredential.

Canada The new Canada.ca site was launched as an information/referral site in January 2014 as a single sitelinking to all Canadian government agencies with a consistent UI. Separately, the ServiceCanada.gc.casite provides access to a range of online services with a government-issued credential (MyCIC), and hasrecently allowed commercially issued credential (primarily financial institutions) to act as "sign-inpartners."

Australia australia.gov.au was launched in 2002 to replace fed.gov.au. The site underwent a major upgrade in2010. However, much of this functionality, including the online credential, was subsequently transferredto the new my.Gov.au in 2013, which is managed by the Department of Human Services. Today theaustralia.gov.au site is an information/referral site and my.Gov.au is a hybrid portal — allowing a range ofother government agencies to leverage its credential to obtain access to their services.

U.S. FirstGov.gov transitioned to USA.gov in 2007, primarily for "marketing" reasons. In July 2010, USA.govunderwent a significant upgrade, in particular to support mobile users. This site is an informational/referral site only. The announcement in 2011 of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace(NSTIC) has seen the establishment of Connect.gov as a program to allow commercial organizations toact as providers of a common credential for access to government services in the context of individualagencies having unique credentials.

Singapore gov.sg represents the Singapore government's primary information portal. An extensive range of onlinetransactions delivered in an integrated fashion are available at eCitizen.gov.sg, supported by what iseffectively a mandatory government-issued credential.

Source: Gartner (February 2015)

This sample of WofG portals clearly demonstrates the wide array of both portal models as well asapproaches to credentials that different countries have adopted.

Two prominent examples of program-specific portals — both in the health arena — includeHealthcare.gov in the U.S. and the Personally Controlled eHealth Record (PCEHR) in Australia.These also both provide valuable insight into the role played by the choice of online credential intheir ultimate success.

As has been experienced by both Heathcare.gov and PCEHR in Australia, the pitfalls of notunderstanding program complexity and/or drivers for adoption seriously compromise the outcome.The initial failure of Healthcare.gov has been extensively covered in "Use the 'Serious Crisis' ofHealthCare.gov to Boost Digital Leadership in Government" The challenges faced by PCEHRcertainly related, in large part, to the need to establishing a specific credential for citizens. Based onthe review of this initiative issued by the Australian government in December 2013, it is clear thatthis challenge was not well-understood or appreciated by the project team. As a consequence,PCEHR is now leveraging the hybrid portal, my.Gov.au, and may move from an opt-in to an opt-outmodel to drive takeup. The key learning from both of these initiatives is that failing to consider the

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technical issues and act on advice from the CIO can fundamentally compromise high-profilegovernment initiatives.

Gartner Recommended ReadingSome documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

"Use the 'Serious Crisis' of HealthCare.gov to Boost Digital Leadership in Government"

"Tutorial: Successful Approaches to Citizen Electronic Identification Initiatives in Government"

"Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals"

"How to Avoid the Seven Portal Pitfalls: User Neglect"

"Digital Government Is a Journey Toward Digital Business"

"2015 Planning Guide for Identity and Access Management"

"Hype Cycle for Privacy, 2014"

"Seven Best Practices Help EA to Support a Customer-Focused Digital Strategy"

"Use Journey Maps in User Experience Design and Digital Workplaces"

"Market Trends: Digital Business Opportunities in Smart Cities Need IoT Foundations"

"IT Key Metrics Data 2015: Key Industry Measures: Government — State and Local Analysis:Current Year"

Evidence

1 The recent UN E-Government Survey 2014 of 193 countries found that there had been a declinefrom 135 countries claiming to have a "one-stop-shop" portal in 2012 to just 71 in 2014. WofGportals are failing to deliver on what is perceived to be the simple task of streamlining access to abroad range of services across multiple agencies — a critical aspect of any one-stop-shop. Thesurvey shows that only 26% of countries had implemented common access arrangements foronline services across six or more government agencies.

2 "E-Government Success: A Global Benchmark and Segmentation," White Paper published by CSTransform, 2010. The critical importance of getting the governance model correct for e-governmentand online services has been demonstrated empirically in this paper, and shows that this is the"single most powerful factor" in driving service transformation.

3 OECD: Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies, July 2014.

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Note 1 GDS

GDS was established by the U.K. government as a consequence of a report to government byMartha Lane Fox in October 2010. A recommendation of this report was that the U.K. governmentestablish "a service culture, putting the needs of citizens ahead of departments" [italics ours] andthat a single website be the "government front end for all departments' transactional online servicesto citizens and businesses …"

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