UK residents want more from council digital services

Three-quarters of local government leaders in a new survey said they had made progress with making key services available online, but just one in five residents agreed that the changes were significant.

This suggests a “giant gap between expectations and reality”, according to enterprise resource planning software provider TechnologyOne, which polled 500 senior local government representatives and 2,000 UK citizens.

Residents said lack of simplicity, slow service speeds and difficulty navigating interfaces were their main challenges when using digital services for purposes such as paying council tax, reporting a missed bin collection or applying for a permit.

Fewer than three in ten residents (28 percent) say their council values their input on improving digital services and only nine percent think their council has made significant progress in taking feedback from residents.

Resident experience

Just 28 percent of council respondents identified improving the resident experience as a major influence on their digital service delivery strategies. They ranked streamlining operations, improving decision-making, reducing costs, and increasing staff capacity as stronger drivers overall.

In the current inflationary environment, only 20 percent of councils said mobile apps are a digital investment priority, and 26 percent said the same for adding more digital payment options. However, these are expected to become more important over the next two years to improve resident experience, alongside addressing website useability.

On their biggest barriers to improving digital services, councils highlighted financial constraints (36 percent), inaccurate or inaccessible data (32 percent), bureaucratic processes (32 percent), and lack of internal alignment and collaboration (31 percent).

Global trend

Leo Hanna, Executive Vice President at TechnologyOne in the UK, said councils need to build continuous feedback loops with residents and improve the speed and accuracy of their decision making.

He commented: “Better systems are a crucial part of the answer, for two reasons. Firstly, digitally enabled councils are better equipped with the data they need to balance cost-reducing and service improvement needs. Secondly, allowing residents to interact with a modern digital interface improves their experience, just like they seamlessly shop from multiple stores in one transaction on Amazon, they can apply for a permit, pay a bill and register their dog all at once with their council.”

The findings back up research elsewhere in the world. An April study from Deloitte across 13 countries found that only 25 percent of citizens regularly interact with government through digital channels, despite most preferring to engage via websites. A key finding was that satisfaction with government digital services globally lags “far behind” those of private sector companies.