Infographic: Today’s Challenges for e-Government in the UK
Based on a benchmark analysis of e-government services in the European Union, the following infographic compares key e-government indicators in the UK to their average values in the rest of the EU.
e-Government performance is presented across 5 policy priorities: User Centricity, Security, Cross-Border Mobility, Transparency, and eGov Usage.
Explanations of eGov Indicators
The benchmark of user centricity measures to what extent information about a service or the service itself is available online and how it is perceived in terms of ease and speed of use.
Transparency indicates to what extent governments are transparent regarding their own responsibilities and performance, the process of service delivery and personal data involved.
Cross-border mobility refers to the availability and ease of use of public digital services when residing in other EU countries.
How does e-Government in the UK perform?
With the release of the Gov.uk portal and the implementation of digital service design standards (with the help of the “Digital by Default” principles), the United Kingdom has reached a “fair” score on user centricity. Compared to the rest of Europe, it seems that users perceive online public services on average as “fair”-ly easy to use across the whole EU.
When it comes to the key enablers of digital public services, the UK lags behind. This is especially visible in the moderate score of the Security indicator, which measures the adoption of electronic authentication and virtualisation tools, such as the eID, SSO, eDocuments, and eSafe.
E-government users are also not satisfied with the level of transparency of digital public services, where the UK scores lower than the rest of the European Union (38 points, compared to 48 for the EU on average).
Nevertheless, there are two areas, where British e-services stay ahead of the European curve – the availability of cross-border public services and e-government usage in total.
Which UK users prefer e-government?
Younger generations prefer using online services more frequently than older generations (10% more users). Why do they go online to connect with government? Mainly, to save money, gain flexibility, and save time. On the opposite hand, people do not use online government services because they are simply not able to, or do not trust the digital channel enough.
For more information, see the “Today’s Challenges for e-Government” infographic below:
