Government in 2030: Six emerging themes that will affect citizens’ interactions with governments.

1.The role of digital in government. By 2030, today’s millennials will be in their 30s. Most of the adult population will be digital natives, not having experienced life before the web, Facebook, etc. How will that shape their expectations of digital and government? Would they be more at ease with digital pervasiveness, or would then be tomorrow’s activists?

2. Service Design is about designing across touchpoint and channels. I envisage that by 2030 it will harder to distinguish when a user moves from touchpoint to touchpoint or channel to channel, making the need for great service design a must. For example, As you approach the customs desk at an airport, your digital passport will have already been checked remotely, well before you reach the desk. There will be overlaps between touchpoints without clear hand off points, making it harder to recognise them; this will be the case for both digital-to-digital touchpoints as well as digital-to-physical ones.

3. Design ethics. Big data and AI could ‘improve’ personalisation and anticipate user behaviour. That raises a number of ethical questions. Government departments need to be aware of and have an approach to dealing with ethical questions. For example, government departments are currently looking at voice activation of services. A simple question of the AI assistant’s gender will need to be considered. Should they be female, male, or genderless?

(The first genderless AI voice: https://www.fastcompany.com/90321378/the-worlds-first-genderless-ai-voice-is-here-listen-now)

4.Behavioural economics. A favourite of previous governments may resurface as government departments will have more data to use to make more compelling ‘nudges’.

5. Digital identity. An old debate, but how do you connect digital government services and identify citizens in the absence of a national identity card? This will be as much a question of ethics and personal rights as it will be a technical challenge to solve.

6.Policy design. Policies need to be designed in the same way services are, that is, following design and agile principles. There may be a need for a design toolbox for policy makers to help facilitate a more iterative and user centred approach to creating policy.