It is 2022, and US government is ripe for adopting digitization for two main reasons: the benefits (cost, security, ease just to name a few) are significant and the touchpoint are numerous (331 million citizens and counting).
When most people think of government, they do not consider it a first mover for adopting innovative technology, but the desire is there. According to an Accenture survey, more than 65% of public service leaders have cited creating a personalized citizen experience as a priority. More than a mere preference for policy makers, digitization in government is now being adopted at a faster pace than ever before. There are plenty of good examples of implementation to mention.
Here is one to start: Nearly all US citizens must file a US federal individual income tax return each year. If you submit your return online, you are the beneficiary of this digital government process. E-filing is a huge improvement on completing form 1040 by hand. It also saves the time spent mailing the return at the post office and the cost to send it to the IRS. Best of all, because of the digital process, the tax refund arrives more quickly. Citizens are not the only ones to benefit from this simplified process, so too does the Internal Revenue Service. Between 2010 and 2015, the IRS budget decreased in part due to increased electronic filing. It is no surprise that converting a paper return into a machine-readable format is costly! The more user-friendly digital process also means government resources are freed up for more important things. Customer engagement and satisfaction are also improving; in 2020, 94% of all individual tax returns were filed electronically! Mother nature is equally pleased about this change. Electronically submitting an income tax return is an environmentally friendly alternative to printing and mailing.
Sadly, not all government processes have transformed like this one though, and there is far from broad-based support for digital government by key decision makers. It is the reason many government agencies at the federal and state level still employ legacy and paper-based processes using mainframes or cloud-based systems to process transactions.
Take the Department of Motor Vehicles, a government agency that many adults in this country have interacted with whether it was to apply for or renew a driver’s license or title a new car upon sale. Citizens know all too well that these processes are cumbersome and paper-based: long lines and wait times at the DMV office, piles of paper to manually fill in, and the result: a paper license or title mailed home weeks later. For the DMV, these paper-based processes are costly, inefficient, and prone to human error and unnecessary delay. Even moderately sized states use an estimated 18 million sheets of paper per year to process car titles!
A digital solution for DMVs would be one that modernizes their title and registration systems. For citizens, a digital vehicle title would be profoundly better than what they experience today, lowering costs, increasing security, easing the transfer of ownership, and improving customer satisfaction. As was the case with electronic tax filing, digitization is seamless for citizens and innovative for government. Digital systems replace legacy ones for a fraction of the price, which is a direct savings to taxpayers. A digital process is also more secure for government, and the time efficiencies and cost savings realized by this transformation allow them to pursue other priorities.
The DMV is just one interesting example of the future of digital government, but the good news is interest in this idea of digitization is on the rise. We, as citizens, eagerly await the simplification and savings of all these once onerous and costly government processes.