80%
of respondents
like to com-
municate with
government via
social media
the service availability and maturity cri-
terion measures the government’s de-
velopment of its digital presence with
respect to dissemination and
electronic interactions and
transactions.
Khalid Al-Yahya,
Managing Di
-
rector, Ac-
centure,
believed that the UAE Gateway My
Gov was a good example of a unique
and comprehensive channel accessing
citizens at all federal government institu
-
tions.
“The new digital technologies, which un-
derscore the importance of speed and
mobility potentials, do not only change
the way some of us live, work and in-
teract with some others but also pro-
vide unprecedented opportunities for
the government to radically change the
complicated bureaucracies, enabling it to
become more flexible, more citizen cen
-
tric and more efficient and innovative”,
Al-Yahya said.
“The more governments shift towards
digitization and more efforts are exert
-
ed to ensure that most citizens have
access to the Internet and enjoy
digital skills and the ability to make
their voices heard with respect
to designing public services, the
more they will experience higher
levels of participation, account-
ability and public confidence”,
he added.
Al-Yahya went on to say that
most of the countries that re-
corded the best score in the
study had pumped sustainable
investments in their respective
digital governments and that
the countries which occupied
the top places were diligently
seeking to listen to the testimo-
nies of their citizens.
According to the report, high-
performance digital govern-
ments are concerned with sev-
eral themes such as focusing on
their digital strategy inherent in the
government’s agenda, public re-
forms, continuous long-term invest-
ments in key ICT assets and digitiza
-
tion of basic public services including
taxes, pensions and healthcare.
The themes also underline the neces-
sity of optimizing the power of new tech
-
nologies such as social media, mobility,
analyses, big data and cloud computing,
provided that this power continues to ex-
ist in the affiliated authorities and has a
robust culture of co-operation and data
exchange.
Digital Citizens
As far as citizens’ perception of digital
government is concerned, Al-Yahya said
Accenture explored the views of 5,000
citizens in 10 countries about the study
and found that most of the respondents
(81 per cent) wanted their governments
to provide more services through digital
channels and that many of them (64 per
cent) were interested in using social me-
dia for communicating with the govern-
ment.
Meanwhile, Barnard le Masson, Man
-
aging Director, Management Consult
-
ing, Health & Public Service Strategy &
Transformation at Accenture, said citi-
zens wanted to communicate and inter
-
act digitally with their governments round
the clock via their phones, noting their
online interaction with retail companies
and banks.
Digital services
“We found that there was a stronger de-
mand for digital government services on
the part of citizens in emerging markets
such as the UAE, India, Brazil and Saudi
Arabia. Some 80 per cent of the citizens
said they wanted to communicate with
the government through social media and
their mobile phones”, Le Masson added.
Public Services
Le Masson pointed out that the study
found that less than 40 per cent of the re-
spondents were satisfied with the quality
of the public services currently being pro-
vided in their countries. The study even
found that the more the most mature
markets such as the United States and
the United Kingdom faced greater chal
-
lenges in their budgets, the more the gov-
ernments focused on cutting costs and
trying to find a balance between making
more digital initiatives and minimizing
government spending, he said.
Citizen satisfaction
Some 80 percent of the respondents
in the UAE, which is one of the leading
emerging countries in digital government
services, said the government was pro-
actively dealing with their health, employ-
ment and education priorities.
15
April
2014
