Introduction

It's been eight years since the U.S. government went online. At first, e-government meant a passive presence on the Web -- government Web sites provided information but did not allow citizens to interact with them. The second phase has seen a growing number of governments and agencies using the Internet to allow individuals to interact with government -- from paying taxes to renewing driver's licenses. This paper focuses on what we believe should be the next phase of e-government -- breaking down bureaucratic barriers to create functionally oriented, citizen-centered government Web presences designed to give citizens a self-service government. Overall, however, the work of rebuilding and transforming government for the digital age is only just beginning.

But while the first two phases largely presented technological challenges (e.g., writing the software and entering information), moving to the third phase presents much more fundamental organizational, political, and bureaucratic challenges that will not be easily overcome. Governments remain organized according to political and bureaucratic imperatives, not according to what makes most sense to citizens. This is reflected in the fact that most governments today use the Web to project their own self-images online, organizing their Web sites in ways that reflect how government personnel view their world, not how the average citizen views the world. As a result, creating customer-centered digital government requires the government to change its outlook in fundamental ways, with the focus being placed on the needs of citizens/customers. This requires presenting the government's Web presence in ways that are intuitive, easy to use, and without jargon, confusing program names, and acronyms. It means focusing on information and transactions people want, rather than information government wants them to have (e.g., a picture of the department secretary accompanying its latest press release). It means putting people in touch with solutions to their problems, not just giving them access to the agencies' own programs or services.

More fundamentally, customer-focused digital government requires moving from separate departmental Web sites and computer systems to a seamless Internet presence, organized around the citizen's needs. To make this work, integration must occur not only between agencies at the same level of government, but also between different tiers of government and with the private sector. Even if the solution is provided by a different tier of government, by the private sector, or by a nonprofit agency, a government Web site should help the user locate it. Citizens usually don't care if they are dealing with their local, state, or federal government; they just want an answer or help.

Currently, most government agencies are stuck in Phases 1 or 2, with some still not even online -- far from the ideal of integrated digital government. Now is the time to accelerate the move into Phase 3. A majority of Americans have never accessed a government Web site, and only three in 10 Americans use online government services once a month or more. Nonetheless, 73 percent of all Americans believe that e-government should be a high priority -- and this includes a sizable majority of those who do not use the Internet. Without doubt, government has a mandate for change.

Moving to this third phase will require resources, political leadership, and hard work. But most fundamentally, it will require a radically different view of government.

This report lays out a number of recommendations to help local, state, and national policymakers move toward integrated digital government:

1. Design Web sites to reflect citizen needs, not internal bureaucratic imperatives;
2. Don't think that Web directories constitute customer-focused government;
3. Create intergovernmental sites;
4. Empower e-government advocates to cut through bureaucratic barriers;
5. Allocate funds for cross-agency (and cross-governmental) innovative, customer-focused e-government projects;
6. Allow users to personalize pages;
7. Allow P3P enabled "cookies" on government Web sites;
8. Make state and local government Web sites easier to locate by allowing them to use the .gov domain;
9. Obtain continual feedback from Web users;
10. Create a best practice site for e-government innovations so all levels of government can learn from leading-edge applications; and
11. Ensure adequate investments are made up front to make the transition to customer-oriented government.

The Benefits of Customer-Focused E-Government

Before delving into this third phase, this report examines the benefits of customer-focused digital government and briefly reviews our progress on phases one and two of digital government.

A slew of e-government reports have emphasized the benefits of online government. As an organization that primarily provides services, government is in a prime position to reap the benefits of all kinds of digital technology, not just the Web. Many governmental tasks can be carried out more effectively and cheaply through the Internet. According to a report commissioned by PricewaterhouseCoopers, "Electronic service delivery could change human resource deployment patterns and improve organizational performance." The report found that once Web sites were 'bedded down,' e-government freed up staff from routine tasks so they could provide better service to in-person customers.

E-government that lets more citizens (and businesses) interact with government through self-service online applications (e.g., filling out electronic forms) should lead to a cheaper government. Just as is occurring in the private sector, once a large share of citizens are using the Web for self-service interactions with government, more expensive paper, voice, and face-to-face transactions are likely to shrink, allowing government to gradually downsize, while retaining or even expanding the quantity and quality of services they provide. If at the end of the day government spends billions on technology without cutting costs in other parts of government, the investments will have fallen woefully short of their promise.

Customer-focused e-government also makes interacting with government much more convenient. Tasks that previously required a visit to a government office or a telephone call during office hours can be performed by users whenever and wherever they please. E-government is likely to be of particular benefit to those who work long hours, the elderly, and those with mobility problems.

Yet the really significant benefits of e-government will come from re-engineering all government to take advantage of the Web -- creating a fundamentally different sort of government that provides much more value to citizens. But in the meantime, customer-focused digital government can serve as a powerful solvent to bureaucracy and the "stovepipe" barriers that keep information from flowing across agencies. Creating customer-focused e-government will and should lead to pressures to create the same kind of government in the offline world -- a world in which citizens (and businesses) who interact with government by mail, telephone, or face-to-face are not stuck in separate "stovepipes."

So far, however, policymakers have been slow to recognize that reaping the benefits of e-government requires more than replicating the existing bricks and mortar structures of government in the online environment. This appears to be particularly true of the Bush administration, which seems to view e-government as simply another way to improve management and cut waste, fraud and abuse, rather than a way to fundamentally re-engineer government for the New Economy. Their "mainframe" vision of government is woefully out of touch with the need for a "networked" vision of government.

Blueprint Keywords: Extra DigiGov Extra Digigov Extra Rego

Andrew Leigh is a Frank Knox Scholar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He can be contacted at andrew_leigh@ksg02.harvard.edu. Robert D. Atkinson is vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute and director of the New Economy and Technology Project at PPI.