Best practices in building citizen-first e-government platforms

The data and insights in this article come from our report “State of CX in e-Government platforms,” which we spent more than a thousand hours researching (shoutout to our amazing experts). During the whole process, we aimed to identify the e-government market's current state and distinguish the best practices and recommendations from the chosen platforms.

Our research process combines desk research with expert knowledge and experience, which led us to develop a non-standard and original analysis methodology that includes a variety of user experience techniques and tools, such as:

• Platform mapping
• User flows
• UX audit
• Information Architecture

We have mapped and gathered insights from 14 e-government platforms. Here, you will gain priceless insights into the best practices for building citizen-first platforms. Let’s get straight into it.

Challenges in Public Service Design

With the rapid evolution of public services, governments must provide an exceptional customer experience for their users, which is essential for cultivating trust and ensuring a positive perception. However, for an e-government platform to be successful, certain design challenges must be overcome. That is why design principles must be adopted to ensure the platform's success. If you would like to learn more about the design principles in detail, check out our article on “10 principles of good design.”

Now, let’s go through the most common design challenges when building your own public platform.

The World Government Summit 2023 survey of e-government platform users in 29 countries revealed that only 56% of respondents found the overall quality of services satisfactory. As problems, users commonly listed:

• poor customer service,
• lack of information,
• long wait times to complete processes,
• high service costs.

Yet, among all kinds of digital solutions, governments simply must provide an exceptional customer experience. It’s essential for cultivating public trust.

However, it’s not easy to achieve that. Those who have done that have demonstrated progress by adopting a whole-of-government approach guided by strategic digital policies and a central coordinating entity.

While new technologies have the potential to help governments work more efficiently and responsively, digital transformation is challenging. The OECD Digital Government Index 2019 states that improving online services is a chance for governments to reconnect with people.

However, poor design can discourage citizens from using e-services and reflect poorly on the government's delivery abilities. Governments must consider citizens' broader goals and not just focus on making their own processes more efficient.

Finally, digital development is unavoidable, and failing to act or implementing improper measures can have costly consequences, including missed opportunities for economic and social growth and heightened risks related to cybersecurity and privacy.

So, as a takeaway from all of this – remember to adopt a collaborative, forward-thinking approach to navigate the digital era and ensure the effective delivery of public services. Ongoing challenges will underscore the complexities of this journey – but countries that have succeeded in taking a strategic and holistic approach to digitalization have seen positive outcomes, resulting in a competitive advantage and acting as a catalyst for growth.

Best practices

Now that we established all of the challenges you might encounter while designing your very own public platform, it is time to present some of the selected best practices to make this process as easy as possible.

Designing the platform as an open knowledge hub

When you are about to start creating your platform, put yourself in your user’s shoes. Basically, all users want to use a platform that is easy to navigate and can easily find all of the information they need. That is exactly why it is so essential to design the platform as a comprehensive knowledge base that is publicly accessible and can provide information on a variety of government topics, as well as guidance on how to navigate available services.

Introducing clear and visible navigation elements

To improve user navigation on government platforms, it is crucial to incorporate well-designed and intuitive navigation elements that effectively present the information architecture. This approach helps users intuitively engage with the platform, identify interactive components, and understand its structure. What is more, well-crafted navigation elements enable smooth movement through the government platform and increase user productivity.

Using accessible copy

Another very crucial thing is to ensure your platform is easy to understand for everyone. To achieve this, administrators should avoid jargon and use simple, consistent language. Those actions ensure clarity and consistency of communication across government platforms, reducing the risk of misinterpretation and improving the overall user experience. Trust us; the last thing you need is a misinterpretation of a government platform. Additionally, using standardized terminology helps everyone to understand the information efficiently, regardless of their literacy level. This inclusivity promotes engagement with a wider audience.

Providing step-by-step guidelines

It’s important to provide users with information about all the steps they need to complete to make them feel more confident when starting a process. This can be achieved at the very beginning of the process by preparing clear and easy-to-understand instructions in bullet points with understandable descriptions. It enables users to fully leverage the services offered by the platform.

Demanding two-factor authentication for e-identification

We all know how important cybersecurity is in these days. Especially when it comes to our confidential personal information, right? That is why when designing your own public platform, you should remember to include two-factor authentication. It provides an additional layer of protection, beyond just a password, by requiring users to provide both a password or PIN and a secondary element, such as a one-time code sent to their mobile device or email. Overall, this approach can help reduce the risk of identity theft and unauthorized access to users’ accounts, as well as make user accounts more secure and contribute to a resilient and trustworthy digital infrastructure.

Providing immediate feedback on user actions

While creating your platform, you always want to enhance efficiency and provide a better user experience. To do so, it is crucial to develop clearly visible feedback that instantly and precisely informs users of any errors or omissions in their information or any additional actions required. If you are not familiar with, for example, error messages, check out our recent article: “A short guide on how to write any error message”. Now, coming back to the best practices, adopting this approach fosters an environment of dynamic interaction. Whether submitting a query or filling in an application, assistance in providing the required information enhances a user’s sense of control over their actions on the government platform. In general, highly important – do not forget about this one.

Designing for diverse touchpoints

Now, of course, everyone who is designing a platform wants it to be both functional and visually appealing, right? It is also a very important point because if the website or an app is looking good, then users want to interact with it even more (of course, if everything works just fine as well). However, to do so, it is crucial to design it according to typical usage contexts and preferences. For example, implementing user experience patterns customized for mobile devices guarantees an intuitive interface that accommodates touch gestures and optimal spacing. This design approach ensures seamless navigation for users accessing the e-Government platform on smartphones and tablets.

Adapting content to local linguistic diversity

Accessibility is one of the most crucial aspects of today’s digital world. So, while creating your public platform, you can not forget about this. So, to ensure effective use of the government platform by diverse communities, it's essential that important content and services are available in different language versions for local cultural and ethnic minorities. Just imagine that someone from a different country will visit your platform, and that person can not do anything because the whole platform is only in your native language – not so accessible, right?

If you would like to learn more about digital accessibility, read our article, in which we discuss what it is and why it is so important.

Also, if you need any help in building your platform, feel free to send us a message. Our team is ready to help you unleash your digital potential.