The quest for digital consistency
Public servants care. They care hard. They care about the issues, they care about the people, and they are genuinely eager to make a difference. In order to build upon that empathy, we need to help provide the skills, guidance, or support to act on their desire to build great digital services
There are pockets within the Government of Ontario which specialize in behavioural economics, or which routinely apply common service design techniques like usability testing, customer journey mapping, and prototyping; by and large, these techniques are still emergent and need to be supported as they gain footholds across the organization.
A solid understanding of who our users are, how they behave, and what they really need in order to interact with government digitally will help us build services and products that are useful and valuable to everyone in Ontario.
Creating a new normal
One way that we are supporting the creation of consistent digital service experiences in Ontario is through the creation of a Digital Service Standard. The Digital Service Standard will outline a series of principles and guidelines that all digital services must meet.
This standard, and the processes that support it, will help to ensure that all digital services provide consistent, high-quality experiences that are designed with the needs of real users in mind.
The Digital Service Standard will also be an important tool in helping to support the changes that are already happening within the public sector. Teams will need to make sure their staff have the skills and capabilities to meet the new Standard — skills that are rapidly becoming essential to a public servant in a digital era.
We fully acknowledge that standards alone are not a panacea for digital government. It will require time, culture change, skill development, and supported staff, but standards are a good place to start.
Towards digital standards
What are the next steps in the development of a standard like this? Fortunately for us, quite a bit of thinking has already been done on this topic, both internally in Ontario and more broadly, by our jurisdictional peers.
A host of digital government teams around the world, including the UK Government Digital Service, Australian Digital Transformation Office, and the United States Digital Service have all publically released digital standards of their own — we’re lucky to have so many great examples to work from.
Locally, ServiceOntario has completed substantial work to understand the common pain points that Ontarians encounter when using our existing digital services. User feedback surveys, social media monitoring, and targeted user testing have revealed that there is a fair amount of room for improvement in how government designs digital services. This information will be a valuable resource to help inform the development of the Standard.
Part of my job and the job of my team is to synthesize these existing bodies of knowledge into a set of principles that reflect both international best practices and the specific needs of Ontarians. It’s a job I’m excited to have.
We will be keeping you updated along the way as the Standard is developed.
