Smartphones: building blocks of new models for public service

Digital mobile technologies have changed much of what we know about public service delivery models. Do smartphones have the capabilities of becoming the building blocks of new models for public service? 


By Joel Bellman

20 Feb 2015

Deloitte’s TMT Predictions have narrated the rise of mobile consistently for five years.  This year is no exception, with the prediction that there will be one billion smartphone upgrades in 2015.  On face value it’s easy to assume that the mobile revolution is a boon for retailers and telecoms companies but of limited relevance to Whitehall.  This could not be further from the truth.

Our recent State of the State Report referred to 2015 as “Government’s inflection point” because public services are likely to change beyond recognition during the next Parliament.  Regardless of the makeup of the Government, the need to stop spending outstripping revenue is urgent.  Today’s citizens are not willing to accept a reduction in standards.  The way that public services themselves are configured has to change in order to deliver outcomes with less cost, bureaucracy and deadweight.

Digital mobile technologies have changed much of what we know about public service delivery models.   For the last sixty years, Government has designed processes around the presumption that service delivery happens in a place – a processing centre, a government office, a call centre.   In the last decade many public bodies have embraced telephone and online delivery to replace paper and face-to-face contact, but these changes pale compared to the upcoming impact of mobile.

The mobile paradigm pushes “place” to the extremes of customer need.   At one extreme, place is irrelevant:  regardless of where I am, I can have mobile access to services.   At the other extreme place is essential:  my device has built-in GPS, camera and connectivity, so I can use my location to drive services such as traffic advice, reporting breakages, emergency management and job search.

Smartphones have capabilities that are becoming the building blocks of new models for public service: 

1. They can talk to you, reducing barriers to digital literacy and creating new ways for people with disabilities to consume services

2. They can take photos, enabling users to provide evidence to Government instantly and digitally, potentially ranging from images of rent books and childcare costs when claiming benefits to images of wounds or hazards when liaising with care providers

3. They can show notifications, becoming vehicles for asynchronous communication such as doctor appointment or tax deadline reminders

The sheer ubiquity of smartphones means that they are rapidly overtaking web browsers as the primary way that people access online services.  Of course the universal reach of public services means that there may always be a need for assisted digital alternatives.  But by the end of the next Parliament we may look back and marvel that Government ever expected any citizen or business to fill in a paper form, turn up to an office or use any public service that needed human beings for any step except the frontline of delivery itself.
  

 

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