I was also disappointed to yet again see no mention of Internet marketing. We get over a third of referrals from Google. Optimising that is essential if citizens are to find our websites. That this is not part of the remit for eCitizen is remakable and just shows the vast disconnect between eGov practice with building websites and commercial best practice.

It often seems to me that we consistently build sites with several bricks missing when this just wouldn’t happen in the rest of the Web.

It is up to you guys to show leadership in these areas because – on the ground – much change is only happening following government edict. Practically, in my job, you taking these issues seriously would be a real help.

There are a number of obvious ways you could do this which would simply duplicate what Australian and American governments have done. For example usability.gov reaches right down to the frontline and provides practical examples and simple methods in plain English. Another thing you could do is run a usability audit and ‘name and shame’. This would certainly catch many eGov sites (esd-toolkit being the most obvious, see the countless postings complaining about its usability).

If I’m really pushed, I guess my only major suggestion for further improvement is to encourage the public sector also to transform the government services they deliver – there is much good talk of for example of really important stuff like closing channels and self-service but I still get the impression that the model behind it all is transformed delivery of the same, or similar, services – I hope I’m wrong. What I’m
getting at here is that whenever a new technology is introduced the initial reaction is to use it to deliver the same services more efficiently but in
time people often realise they can deliver different services. I’m anxious to shorten that time as much as possible and would look to the Strategy to do that by for example encouraging experiments with different services.

As a starter for ten, I would suggest a vision of a public sector whose image is transformed from that of a highly visible gatekeeper of hard-to-obtain services to a supportive organisation, always there when needed: in short an integral part of living that is rarely if ever
consciously accessed. The example I would offer immediately – there are a few – is the Belgian Crossroads Bank (an information bank, not a financial one) enabling the payment of benefit cheques without the need for people to
lodge a claim (of course this raises a whole series of issues on eg information sharing which are well covered by the Strategy).

On one smaller point, in para 37 where those responsible are encouraged to tell users what the benefits are of them using eGovernment services, I’d suggest going further and making it public policy to share that benefit directly with users as many are now starting to do (eg Companies House, Oyster) – it’s sad but true that there is lots of evidence from eGovernment take-up around the world that most people will only use a service if they see a direct personal benefit (typically in time, money or quality of service) – “reinvestment elsewhere in pubic services” is unfortunately not a strong motivator for most people.