5 Ways to Improve Citizen Experiences in the Public Sector

Citizens are looking for convenient, secure, and fast digital services, like what they experience from the private sector. But a recent study from Deloitte found that across 13 countries, customer satisfaction from digital government services is 21 percentage points behind the private sector. 

So is your citizen portal meeting your citizens’ current needs? 

While many public sector organizations had to pivot to offer digital services for the first time during the pandemic, these makeshift solutions may no longer be enough to meet current citizen expectations and establish a foundation for an engaged community. 

Why Does the Public Sector Need to Improve Their Digital Experiences? 

Well if customers are already able to access government services online, what more needs to be done? 

Government leaders need to understand that serving their citizens in the way they desire to be served will lead to: 

• Increased citizen trust. 87% of respondents said that a great digital government customer experience would increase their degree of trust. And increased trust in the government will lead to higher voting numbers, increased community engagement, and a boost in goodwill.
• Less work for internal teams. Dissatisfied citizens are twice as likely to reach out for support multiple times. But if citizens have better experiences, are able to find the information they need, and can complete their tasks independently, then they won’t need to contact your team for help, freeing up time and resources, while also improving citizen satisfaction. 
• More efficient services. Not only is this beneficial for citizens to get what they need done faster and more easily, but automation and digitization can help teams reduce 60% of effort. 

Ultimately, enhancing citizen experiences is not just a benefit to the community, but it has the potential to fundamentally improve the relationship of the public to its government. Digital services are a way to better connect with your citizens and close the perceived gap between your agency and the community. 
 

5 Ways to Make Your Citizen Portal a Tool Your Citizens Want to Use

So then how can you turn your citizen portal into a tool that can actually help citizens? Here are five ways to improve your citizen portal to improve citizen engagement and trust. 

1. Leverage AI to meet citizen needs faster

   You may be cautious to use AI, especially within the public sector; however, AI can be a powerful tool to help assist citizens more efficiently.
   
   Use AI to: 

   • Power chatbots and self-service assistance. This allows customers to get answers to common questions or navigate to the content they need. For the citizens that aren’t able to find the answers they need through a chatbot, the system is able to redirect them to a live rep. 

   • Translate content quickly. By using AI to translate content on pages, this can help you reach more of your citizens and convey information to them more easily. 

   • Create content or images instantly. Your team is busy with other priorities. But with AI, they can have AI assist with content creation and image generation. For example, if a notice about a road closure needs to go out as soon as possible, you can use AI to generate a short blurb regarding best safety tips and create an image as the blog header. 

2. Increase transparency and keep citizens informed, more quickly

   Trust needs to be at the foundation of the public sector. While there are various ways for government organizations to grow their constituents’ trust, one way is through better online experiences. 

   According to a recent study, 87% of respondents noted that a great digital government experience would increase their trust in public organizations.

   A key factor in delivering the great digital experience your citizens are looking for, is the accessibility of content and updates. Citizens want to be able to easily access important content, such as budgets, policies, and reports, updates, or other crucial alerts. This transparency helps build greater trust and goodwill with your organization. 

   However, presenting citizens with the most up-to-date information and assets will require a robust CMS that allows your team to easily make updates and create new pages, without needing IT assistance. 

3. Provide personalized recommendations to guide citizens
   53% of survey respondents say they would be willing to share more personal data with government agencies for greater convenience and efficiency. Leverage personalization in ways that both help streamline citizen experiences and convey your commitment to their wellbeing. Some examples include: 
   • Crafting a personalized onboarding experience. When citizens first log onto your portal, they should be guided through a tailored onboarding experience based on what they need to accomplish on the portal. This helps citizens feel valued and at the same time empowers them to make the most of the tool. 
   • Providing content and service recommendations to progress citizens on their journey with useful related content or related services based on what they’ve previously accessed. 
   • Surfacing relevant search recommendations based on past search results, location, household, and other relevant segmentation factors. For example, if a citizen who has children searches up “Summer Events”, the first search results should include family-friendly events, rather than late night events like concerts.
      
4. Streamline citizen interactions through a single interface 

   Your citizen portal may link out to several tools to allow citizens to pay for bills, submit service requests, or apply for permits. While your system may not have the capabilities to handle some of these processes, this requires your citizens to leave the portal and go to a different site or tool to complete them. 

   Instead of forcing citizens to navigate through several different tools, deliver a seamless experience by integrating these tools onto a single interface. Now citizens can just log into their citizen portal to complete the necessary processes. In fact, 51% of citizens would increase use of government services if they were offered an integrated portal. 

   This not only helps citizens save time with a more cohesive experience, but will also help your organization consolidate access to data, systems, and processes in a single location. 

5. Give citizens peace of mind through secure digital experiences 

   Public sector organizations have become a popular target for cyber threats and attacks, making protecting citizen data all the more critical. However, aging infrastructure and outdated systems leave these organizations even more vulnerable to cyberattacks.
   
   To ensure the safety of your citizens, you must ensure that your citizen portal provides:

   • Strict access control and user authentication. Implement robust identity management with multi-factor authentication and single sign-on to ensure only citizens are able to log in. 

   • Strong data protection measures, such as anonymizing user data and exporting/deleting personal data. 

   • Protection against security vulnerabilities and exploits, such as CSRF attacks, clickjacking, content sniffing, and more. 

     Additionally, AI can be leveraged to strengthen security measures by detecting and combating fraud. Banks and other financial organizations are already using AI to spot outliers and suspicious behavior to determine if fraud has actually taken place. 

     Whereas traditionally, investigating possible fraudulent behavior would have been incredibly labor-intensive, AI can accelerate the process to monitor fraudulent claims, detect tax fraud, or prevent identity theft. This not only reduces the workload on your time, but ensures taxpayer dollars can be leveraged more efficiently towards other priorities.

Overcoming the Challenges to Deliver Excellent Citizen Experiences

But these experiences can be held back by a number of common challenges in the public sector industry, including: 

• Aging technology and legacy infrastructure that make it hard to move onto new tools. 
• Data silos that prevent data from being leveraged in automated processes or personalized experiences. 
• Multiple external solutions or tools that citizens use or need to be connected to. 
• Internal resistance to new technologies and methodologies. 

Delivering better citizen experiences should be a priority for all of the public sector to improve citizen trust and engagement. If the idea of improving or even building a new citizen portal to accomplish those goals may feel daunting, there’s a solution that can help you.

With Liferay Digital Experience Platform, you can overcome these challenges and use a robust platform to deliver the engaging, secure experiences your citizens are looking for. Liferay DXP is a complete platform that gives you native functionality with a flexible architecture to build a citizen portal that meets your unique requirements and citizens' needs. 

For over two decades, Liferay has provided secure and engaging solutions for the public sector including organizations like the U.S. Navy, NASA, the Council of Europe, and the City of Burbank. Additionally, we partner with Carahsoft to support public sector organizations across Federal, state, and local government, education, and healthcare. 

See how Liferay DXP can help you today.