| Life event | Median proportion of country assessed URLs that are for 'national' services | Number of countries where less than 50% of assessed URLs are for 'national' services (out of 34) |
|---|---|---|
| Business start-up and early trading | 91% | 3 |
| Regular business operations | 83% | 4 |
| Family life | 61% | 13 |
| Finding and losing a job | 86% | 4 |
| Moving house | 23% | 28 |
| Owning and driving a car | 49% | 17 |
| Small claims procedures | 66% | 11 |
| Studying | 37% | 25 |
| Table 3.12.C in the original 2019 publication | ||
14 Digital services
The digital services indicator in InCiSE is defined as the user-centricity and cross-border mobility of digitally-provided public services and the availability of ‘key enablers’. A changing world and digital environment provide the impetus for a civil service to ensure modernity and remain user-centric for the public. In doing so, efficiencies should be achieved to enable cost savings in processes while also allowing for further accessibility of services. The OECD has supported this view of potential benefits: “ICT is increasingly used to support broader public sector development objectives … by changing service delivery approaches by creating personalised, high quality services to users, thereby increasing user satisfaction and effective service delivery; facilitating major work organisation and management changes creating back-office coherence and efficiency gains; increasing transparency of government activities, and increasing citizen engagement” (Lonti & Woods, 2008).
The source data for the digital services indicator is the European Commission’s eGovernment Benchmark Report (eGBR) 2017 and 2018 reports, which provide data for 2016 and 2017 respectively. This is the same source that was used in the 2017 Pilot, however significant changes have been made to the way in which the data is extracted and imported. The 2019 edition of the digital services indicator is composed of 13 metrics, compared to four in the 2017 Pilot.
| Metric | Source | Type | Public sector proxy | Data transformation | Weighting within indicator | Definition of the source metric (e.g. question wording) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In theme (A) | Theme (B) | Total (C=A*B) | ||||||
| User experience | ||||||||
| UE Business start-up [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Online availability and usability of services to start a business and initial operations |
| UE Regular business operations [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Online availability and usability of services for regular business operations |
| UE Family life [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Online availability and usability of services for registering births, marriages and deaths |
| UE Finding and losing a job [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Online availability and usability of services to help when you lose a job and for finding a new job |
| UE Small claims procedures [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Online availability and usability of services for initiating small claims/magistrates procedures |
| Key enablers | ||||||||
| KE Business start-up [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Use of authentication and other enabling functions for business start-up and initial operations |
| KE Regular business operations [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Use of authentication and other enabling functions for regular business operations |
| KE Family life [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Use of authentication and other enabling functions for registering births, marriages and deaths |
| KE Finding and losing a job [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Use of authentication and other enabling functions for services when lost/finding a job |
| KE Small claims procedures [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 20.0% | 40.0% | 8.0% | Use of authentication and other enabling services for small claims/magistrates procedures |
| Cross-border services | ||||||||
| CB Business start-up [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 33.3% | 20.0% | 6.7% | Ability for foreigners to use business start-up services |
| CB Regular business operations [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 33.3% | 20.0% | 6.7% | Ability for foreigners to undertake regular business operations |
| CB Small claims procedures [new] | eGBR | Expert assessment | Yes | None | 33.3% | 20.0% | 6.7% | Ability for foreigners to use small claims/magistrate procedures |
| Tables 3.12.A & 3.12.B in the original 2019 publication | ||||||||
14.1 Imputation of missing data
Nine of the 38 countries selected for the 2019 edition of InCiSE have completely missing data for the digital services indicator. The 2017 Pilot of the InCiSE Index set out the use of Online Services Index from the UN’s biennial E-Government Survey as the external predictor for imputation. This approach is maintained for the 2019 edition of the InCiSE Index.
14.2 Changes from the 2017 Pilot
The data source used for the digital services indicator in the 2019 edition of InCiSE is the same as that used for the 2017 Pilot – the European Commission’s eGovernment Benchmark Report (eGBR). However, further investigation of the data and methodology of the report has led to a change in the metrics used by InCiSE. While the 2017 Pilot took four high-level metrics, the 2019 edition of InCiSE will use 13 more granular metrics.
The eGBR uses mystery shopping of eight ‘life events’ to assess the quality of digital public services in all 28 EU member countries and six other neighbouring/partner countries. These life events are designed to capture the majority of interactions that citizens and businesses have with public services in European nations. The services assessed by the eGBR include not only national level services but also those provided by sub-national and local governments. As InCiSE aims to look at the effectiveness of national-level civil services we investigated whether there was a way to exclude non-national services.
While the European Commission publishes the full underlying data for the eGBR, it is not easy to calculate scores based solely on the assessments of national-level services. So, an analysis of the data from the 2016 and 2017 reports was undertaken to look at the pattern of service delivery across the eight life events. The results of this analysis is presented in Table 3.12.C, and shows that for five of the eight life events more than half of the URLs assessed by the eGBR are recorded as ‘national’ level services. However, for the ‘moving house’, ‘owning and driving a car’ and ‘studying’ life events the analysis shows that in most countries the URLs being assessed are sub-national/ local services.
For each of the eight life events the mystery shopping exercise looks across three domains: ‘user centric government’, ‘transparency’ and ‘key enablers’; six of the eight life events are also assessed for the additional domain of ‘cross-border mobility’. As transparency is already covered in InCiSE through the openness indicator, including the eGBR transparency data could be seen as duplicating information already measured elsewhere in the InCiSE framework.
Therefore, in the 2019 edition of InCiSE rather than use the high-level averages for the four domains (as used in the 2017Pilot), the model uses the ‘user centric’, ‘transparency’ and ‘key enablers’ domain scores for the business start-up, regular business operations, family life, losing and finding a job, and small claims procedure life events. This approach removes scores for the three life events (moving house, owning and driving a car, and studying) where services are typically not delivered by national governments, and reduces potential overlap with the openness indicator by removing scores for the ‘transparency’ domain.