In every nation, while delivering citizen services, governments face, more or less, similar challenges. Whether it is the borders and immigration, whether it is law and order, legislation, essential services, documentation, or other areas.
They must compete for the same talent as the private sector in terms of salary, job satisfaction, and career sustenance. They must also be able to maintain huge volumes of data for long timelines and make those silos interoperable. Furthermore, they must be able to adjust to the changing nature of citizen demands and transformation within their countries.
With such high expectations and significantly different competitive organisational cultures internally, it is not surprising that services from the government and public sector in each nation tends to lag as compared to leading private sector industries. In a recent survey across a range of countries, McKinsey found users of public services rated them on an average at 5.5-6.0 out of 10.0 points, implying scope for improvement.
With many of the nation’s industries, taking a lead in digital transformation and coping with the challenges of the pandemic, governments and public sector institutions have realised they cannot be left behind. By lagging in service quality, on a day-to-day basis, governments risk losing the trust and confidence of their citizens. And in most cases, this erosion of confidence has already been set in motion.
Moreover, this expectation from the government to perform is enhanced when the nation and its population are in crises, as we continue to face in the post-pandemic phase of things.
On the flip side, efficient government services that deliver outstanding customer experience create satisfied citizens, who are nine times more likely to trust their governments. They are also less likely to keep making follow up visits and subsequently overwhelm administrative services. In addition, the probability of satisfied citizens to seek consumer forum redressals, seek visibility in social media, and resort to litigation, is much lesser. All these can be advantageous when there are national and global upheavals.
Automation can be implemented by introducing robotic process automation (RPA). With RPA, routine tasks including data extraction and data cleaning are executed by computer devices. Automated and smart workflows integrate tasks performed by humans and machines, for example, optical character recognition converts handwritten, typed, or printed characters into machine-encoded text.
Automation can also use machine learning and algorithms that are trained to learn from results, without an overriding set of programming rules. Latest trends include natural language processing for automated analysis of text and speech generating specific outcomes. Such intelligent agents are added to the virtual workforce creating versatility and adaptability.
Once the decision to automate citizen services is underway, government departments can aticipate the following benefits:
Reduction of errors
Automation of tasks can vastly increase the speed of operations while ensuring that human related errors are virtually eliminated. Errors stemming from worker fatigue and distractions are eliminated.
Empathic and caring services
Since humans are freed from monotonous and laborious tasks, they can focus on more caring and engaged services with citizens. These could be for the benefit of senior citizens, complex task management, and support cases, without adding on more workers.
Bringing in AI
Once automation has been established and is operational, it is a good time to start considering personalised automation driven by artificial intelligence. By training the data, automation can start recognising human related decision-making and can execute them over time.
Decision makers in government and public sector organisations also need to realise that automation of the workforce is hugely disruptive for the workers. The project champion needs to have a range of skills to drive the automation initiative and being able to drive a change management exercise is fundamental.
A specialised and experienced consulting partner, brought in at this stage, can help to avoid the typical obstacles that arise and not reinvent the wheel. A typical point of failure that first time organizations make is to underestimate the complexity of implementing the changes.
While working with a specialized partner is key, project champions need to be able to continuously communicate to decision makers and workforce, leverage those workers with digital skills, and focus on the journey rather than specifics. They also monitor the impacted workers and processes and ensure workers are reskilled and adapted for their new roles. Additionally, they focus on the most important objectives of automation which are simplicity, reliability, and consistency.
Finally, success is a blend of the technology solution, the readiness of the organisation to change guided by the champion, and guidance from a specialised partner.
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
