Citizen-centric Government ICT landscape

Since the late 1990s, the Government ICT roadmap has shifted its focus towards citizen centricity. Citizens now expect services, more value, choice, transparency, and ease of use, all to be delivered through multiple channels. New trends in technology, delivery systems, financial models and citizen expectations are driving governments around the world to reevaluate how they deliver value to their clients.

SaaS, Cloud Computing and self-service portals are methods being adopted by governments around the world to conduct digital conversations and interactions with citizens to constantly enable and enhance their experience.

Getting ready to deliver

SaaS and cloud-based applications encompass much more than just providing web-based access to enterprise software. There is tremendous impact on the front end at the service usage point, as well as material impact across the public sector operations value chain at the back end. Some questions we need ask are:

Does your citizen experience embrace delivery via multiple channels?

• Citizen experience should be defined with clear end state architectures for processes and systems of the organization that support the experience
• Capabilities should be enabled across the organization and agencies/channels

Do you offer compelling experience during adoption and usage of the citizen services?

• Efficient delivery of the functionality your services provided across the customers' requirements
• Proactively enhance the citizen experience with new functionality and features

Is your digital channel enabled for efficient service delivery, and citizen support?

• Citizens can leverage lower cost digital channels in multiple functions
• SaaS provides new opportunities to meet citizens’ expectations

Key aspects of the digital transformation

Organizations at the forefront of the digital transformation have taken into consideration how being citizen-focused impacts the organization, agencies/channels, and the citizens themselves. Key elements involved in this transformation are:

• Leveraging Cloud Computing infrastructure, multi-tenancy architecture and the various SaaS deployment models
• Integrating the SaaS model with existing operating model
• Total citizen experience planning and implementation
• Accounting and revenue recognition related to SaaS models
• Security and privacy management for digital transformation
• Implementing metrics related to the SaaS model

Catch Pradip Bhowmick live on 7 October, 2009 at Interop Mumbai. Bhowmik will be speaking on SaaS. Download the Interop Conference Guide here

Pradip Bhowmick is Executive Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Write to him at  (pradip.bhowmick@in.pwc.com)