Since last year, the Australian Digital Transformation Office (DTO) has been working to transform the way that government digital services operate.
One of their leading projects includes a nine-week design process to create a GOV.AU prototype to improve online service delivery.
The new GOV.AU portal will be built around the citizens’ needs, rather than government’s structures. Paul Shetler, CEO, DTO, will attest to the fact that he looks to Singapore’s Government Portal as a model for the GOV.AU prototype.
This past week, the DTO team announced on their blog that their GOV.AU prototype passed its Alpha stage assessment against the Digital Service Standard criteria.
The international assessment panel that graded GOV.AU against its Digital Service Standard criteria, was comprised of an Australian assessor along with government digital specialists from the UK Government Digital by Default Service Standard Team.
In their review, they stated that the team behind GOV.AU demonstrated a deep understanding of user needs. Through establishing a broad multi-disciplinary team, the Alpha prototype was able to meet the DTO service design and delivery process.
The Digital Service Standard which GOV.AU was assessed against, although different to the UK standard, reflects similar principles.
It has been found that 55 percent of Australians face problems while trying to use online government services. Given this, it is a great milestone for the DTO team to know that their platform passed the Digital Service Standard.
What this means for Government Digital Services…
The Digital Service Standard is employed by GTO to establish a set of criteria for Government Digital Services to meet. This will ensure that their online services are more accessible and easier for users.
Ranking the GOV.AU prototype against this Standard represents the efforts of DTO to drive standardisation across government digital services.
The criteria under the Standard lays out expectations for: new and redesigned government services, high volume transaction services, and digital information services.
Before such digital services go live, they must adopt the Standard. Assuming they meet all of the criteria, they will then either conduct the Digital Transformation Office-led assessment or an agency self-assessment.
For Government agencies, this means that they not only need to pass the assessment, but need to maintain their service on a regular basis.
The Service Manager will need to: improve the service based on user feedback, show high levels of user satisfaction and transaction completion, and demonstrate that the cost per transaction is decreasing, while digital take-up is increasing.
As of now, the Digital Service Standard is in Beta stage and is seeking feedback to ensure that it can deliver high quality outcomes. Once it goes live, it will be in full functioning mode and agencies will be prompted to review their online services against the standard to ensure that the citizens’ needs are met.
