It’s like Uber but for the Social Contract

Governments throughout the Anglosphere have begun talking about ‘Digital First’ or ‘Digital by Default’ in the last couple of years. In 2012 President Obama launched the US Roadmap for Digital Government. The Cameron government in the UK launched the Government Digital Office in 2011 with the intention of delivering ‘digital by default’ government services. Here in Australia, Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull is a big proponent of this idea, launching the Digital Transformation Office a few weeks ago. Turnbull delights in visiting startup incubators to deliver soliloquies about how Government needs to become more responsive and support tech companies. The big idea of Digital by Default though, is that government departments should assume that the way people want to access information and services is online, with other channels a secondary consideration. In many ways this is a bit of a no-brainer; but there’s a catch. The great danger of digital first government is not that it will fail, but in how it measures success.

A concept that has become de rigeur in the software startup world is ‘user centred design’. This approach seeks to arrange the system around the needs and desires of the user, rather than forcing the user to adapt to the requirements of the system. If you’re thinking that sounds like the opposite of most interactions with government, you’re not alone. Indeed, virtually the first thing the Australian Government’s new Digital Transformation Office has done is release a Digital Service Standard for government departments, focussed on making their services user-centred. This is the first step governments need to understand when becoming ‘Digital by Default’. Unless the design of government services is ‘user centred’¹, digitising their delivery won’t make a whole lot of difference.

An example of this is eTax, the ATO’s software program introduced in 1999. eTax was only available for Windows PCs until 2013, and replicated the paper ‘Tax Pack’ forms. It was always clunky, and when a version for Macs was finally released in 2013, it was buggy and confusing to install. eTax may have been digital, but it certainly wasn’t a joy to use. Last year an alternative, in-browser system, MyTax, was finally introduced. MyTax is considerably easier to use, though the authentication process is still cumbersome, and last year it was only available for those with straightforward financial arrangements.

Reducing costs ...by passing them on to you

eTax did, at least, have the virtue of maintaining more or less the same usability of the paper Tax Pack. Other moves from State and Federal government to go digital have actually reduced usability. The Victorian Government annually publishes the Directory of Victorian Public Libraries. Until around 2008 this was produced and distributed in hard copy to all public libraries in the state. Then, the State Government suddenly discovered a desire to ‘reduce our environmental impact’ and announced that henceforth the Directory would be ‘published online’. What this means in practice is nine PDF files posted to an obscure web page. Of course, the only reason to publish something in PDF is if you want to retain the formatting so as to enable someone to print it out. Not exactly reducing paper use. Needless to say, the user experience of clicking and searching through nine PDF files rather than flicking to the dog-eared and specially coloured page in a hardcopy is significantly poorer.

The fate of the Directory of Victorian Public Libraries exemplifies what happens when governments go ‘digital by default’ for the wrong reason. It’s transparently the case that the Directory is ‘published’ as nine separate PDFs instead of one hardcopy because the State Government wants to pass on the printing costs to local Councils and library corporations. If the goal was to digitise in order to provide better service, it would have been turned into a searchable database.

This is how ‘digital by default’ currently works in Australian government. The goal is simply to reduce government overheads by passing the cost of production down the line. It’s Uber for Government. Just as Uber requires workers to provide and service their own vehicle, Government is looking to require citizens to BYO internet connection or smartphone in order