The ACSI's E-Government Satisfaction Index shows e-government scores at 75.2 on ACSI's 100-point scale for a second consecutive quarter, the highest it's been since the index began in 2003. Year over year, the Index improved 1.5 percent. Meanwhile, satisfaction for offline government services dropped 0.3 percent to 68.7.
What do these numbers mean? Citizens feel good about online government services, as the U.S. government has developed and enhanced federal Web sites -- specifically e-commerce and transactional sites -- and career and recruitment sites. In other words, people prefer to go online for services rather than wait on the phone for information or stand in line at a federal office. And going online costs less.
"What e-government can bring to any government is not only the ability to improve services, but also improve efficiency and therefore lower the costs," said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results, a privately held company located in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Putting the information online is a huge step forward."
The report examines e-government from the federal level, but state and local governments can apply the same strategies to successfully use the Web to deliver services.
Some municipalities may be hampered by budget constraints. But compared to the federal government, Freed said, state and local departments could be better positioned to maximize e-government's potential because they work with less data and less overhead. Ultimately, as the report indicates, the success of e-government depends largely on giving the people what they want.
"The best way to move forward and make improvements is obviously listening to customers," Freed said, "which in the case of state and local government is the citizens."
Customer Service
In the report, citizens responded best to the improved transparency, navigation and functionality of federal government sites.In fact, some federal sites exceeded top performers in the private sector. For instance, the Social Security Administration's Retirement Estimator and iClaim both scored 90, beating out ACSI e-commerce champion Newegg.com (88) and Amazon.com (86). E-government also scored better than news and information sites and online brokerage and investment (74).
But overall, e-government hasn't been able to catch up with private-sector industries, such as portals, search engines (83) and e-retail (82).
"Satisfaction with federal Web sites is flat this quarter, so it may be a little early to say if e-government is in a plateau or about to hit its stride," Claes Fornell, ACSI founder and University of Michigan professor said in a release. "But federal agencies need to continue to adapt to the needs of their citizens, and those needs vary from agency to agency. That's what the private sector does so well. And if e-government can do the same, we can expect satisfaction to resume its climb."
Governments should study the strategies of popular private-sector sites, which, Freed said, set the standard for what users expect when they go online.
"The bar is being raised continuously by sites like Amazon, eBay and Google," Freed said. "Our expectations of the Web experience will be based on those private-sector sites."
Customer Feedback
The ACSI report comes out as President Obama enters his second year in office. In 2009, Obama pushed for increased transparency with a number of open government initiatives. His stance reflects e-government's strong performance in the last two quarters, which underlines one simple truth: Transparency earns trust.According to the report, citizens who are highly satisfied with a federal government Web site are 52 percent more likely to trust the government. They are also 80 percent more likely to use the site as a primary resource, 77 percent more likely to recommend the site and 51 percent more likely to return to it.
These numbers illustrate the power and potential of e-government. On the state and local level, Freed said, governments should take a tactical, day-by-day approach to developing online services. One idea, he added, might be to create an e-government task force to specifically handle the measurement and management process.
"There's an immense amount of information available," Freed said. "Creating an environment where citizens can find what they're looking for is no easy task. Obviously it will require an investment up front. But after that, there's a huge benefit to the improvement and consistency of information and the cost structure."
