Josh Koenig is a Co-Founder of Pantheon, a platform for extraordinary websites with a goal to put the internet’s magic in everyone’s hands.
Imagine this: You need to renew your driver’s license, apply for benefits or access public health information.
You head to the relevant government website, but instead of finding what you need, you find a labyrinth of outdated pages, clunky forms and information that seems frozen in time. You’re used to banking, booking appointments and ordering groceries online, so why is this so challenging?
Unfortunately, this is the reality for many Americans using government websites.
As someone who’s worked for years with public service organizations modernizing their digital presence, I get the frustration—but I also recognize the scale of the obstacles: legacy systems, entrenched bureaucratic processes and a culture averse to risk. (Note: While this is true of many organizations, it’s especially prominent in the public sector and worth considering for anyone looking to sell digital products and services to this group).
Despite this, there’s ample opportunity: Governments urgently need to catch up to better serve their constituents. Here’s how they can get there—and why they must.
The digital disconnect has a high price.
Ever since the pandemic, the demand for online services has grown. Visitors cumulatively spent 7.7 billion days on federal government websites in the last decade. State and local governments serve millions more daily.
Online service is a near-ubiquitous expectation: 89% of Millennials expect organizations to use technology to shape their customer experiences, and 73% believe online experiences are more important than in-person.
And yet a 2023 White House brief noted that 45% of federal websites are not mobile friendly and 60% have accessibility issues. When they’re unable to meet the needs of their users, governments ultimately fail at their mission. For taxpayers, that’s unacceptable.
User experience must come first.
The cardinal rule for any website—whether public service, B2B or B2C—is to know your audience. But I can’t count how many sites I’ve worked on that outwardly mirror the complexities of their organization’s structure, as opposed to their mission or purpose. When Conway’s Law goes to the extreme, you run the risk that the website reflects internal politics, diminishing the user experience.
A good website gets the basics right: intuitive navigation, up-to-date information and readily available answers to key questions. Look and feel standards should be baked in from the outset and must include core performance goals as well as accessibility requirements.
A high-quality user experience is the result of high-quality processes for content management, web development and stakeholder buy-in. If you’re collaborating with public sector teams, you need to arm them with what they need to deliver. If internal users can’t do their best work, the visiting public will feel it. That means giving them autonomy.
Given the amount of information to manage, administrative staff have to be empowered to own their content—and be able to update it without IT’s help. Likewise, if you want to deliver meaningful functionality for constituents, web developers need to focus on systems, not building things out page by page.
Think of the website as an evolving product.
Traditionally, people think of building a website like building a house: Start with a blueprint, get contractors to build it and move in (or launch) when it’s complete. But that’s not how great digital experiences are delivered. In fact, “moving in” to a new website should be considered the beginning of the journey, not the end.
For tech leaders working with governments looking to modernize their digital experience, one of the first things my company shares with our customers is that modern web teams approach web development more holistically. They use a WebOps approach: getting the site live, gathering feedback and driving continuous improvements.
A regular cadence of incremental upgrades will ensure the site keeps up with evolving user needs—internally and externally. But you’ll need to set expectations and adjust culture with your development teams to adopt this new way of working—and build credibility with stakeholders for them to trust you if you’re not “doing it all” with the first launch.
One trick to reinforce the importance of iteration? Make a bigger deal of your first site update over the launch itself. Recognize the initial go-live, but throw your victory party when version 1.1 (or 1.0.1) gets shipped.
Finally, quantitative metrics can also help set a “north star” for this journey. Consider adding specific measurements around task completion such as form downloads or fee payments (if that’s your use case) or a tastefully implemented Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).
Government sites will benefit from clear goals and automated reporting—otherwise, they risk losing their way in a thicket of stakeholder demands.
Change is hard, but the results are worthwhile.
Anybody who has worked with this sector (or within it) knows: It’s not easy for governments to modernize their digital assets.
Legacy systems and deeply entrenched roles make it difficult to change established ways of working. Add to that a high bar for information accuracy that requires multiple layers of iteration and approval, and progress can come to a standstill.
Plus, unlike in the private sector, a distinct lack of competition can lead to digital stagnation despite mandates for digital-first service delivery.
Government institutions must consider the best use of taxpayer resources—and that means placing longer-term bets on their investments. But when change does happen, it can yield incredible results.
Investing in public systems and processes that support and advance our collective digital experience is not only good for individual users, it’s also good for our cities and states and for the effectiveness of our governments. Citizens may soon insist on it. They are quick to call out poor customer service online, and they will expect their governments to bring their digital services into the 21st century.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
