5 Data-driven digital strategies for ANZ governments

The Australian Government has set a bold vision for 2030 through its Data and Digital Government Strategy, which aims to deliver simple, secure, and connected public services for all citizens and businesses. The accompanying Implementation Plan outlines steps to harness world-class data and digital capabilities. Similarly, New Zealand's digital transformation journey, outlined in its Digital Strategy for Aotearoa and Action Plan, focuses on improving public service delivery through enhanced digital capabilities.  

To achieve these aims, agencies in both nations need a clear-eyed view of their current website challenges to meet them effectively. Siteimprove’s tools and features can help do that.  

The state of digital government in Australia & New Zealand 

Many of the challenges Australia and New Zealand face are the same ones seen around the world: aging populations and increased consumer expectations. In 2022, these dual pressures caused Australia’s ranking on the United Nations E-Government Development Index (EGDI) to drop to 7th place, its lowest ranking in a decade. (The E-Government Development Index creates its ranking based on “three important dimensions of e-government, namely: provision of online services, telecommunication connectivity, and human capacity” for United Nations Member States.) 

Similarly, New Zealand is continually striving to improve its digital services to meet increasing citizen expectations and enhance efficiency. While this internal, rather than external, performance pressure may seem less urgent, it does reflect the reality of the task. To maintain one’s digital space means constant upkeep to identify and fix inaccessible features or bulky UX. Think of it as a garden: No matter how well it’s been designed and planted, it can easily become overgrown and unwelcoming to visitors, particularly if the needs of those visitors change.  

Five opportunities for improvement that can guide you 

Both Australia and New Zealand’s respective digital strategy plans identify several key opportunities to enhance digital public service delivery: 

1. Adopt a maturity mindset 

Digital maturity is not simply a matter of being at the forefront of the latest tech trends. Rather, your agency has arrived at maturity when it’s poised to capitalize on digital trends as they happen. The COVID-19 pandemic is an example of an event that spurred tech trends: Governments worldwide needed to quickly offer digital solutions for remote working and learning, telehealth services, as well as vaccination and infection tracking apps. 

Improved digital maturity can enhance service delivery, evidence-based decision-making, and policy evaluation, and increase public trust in how governments handle their data. (As Deloitte’s Center for Government insights reports, there’s a direct correlation between constituent satisfaction with digital services and trust in government.) 

2. Prioritize advanced interoperability

If governments break down silos, they can reduce how often they collect the same information. Removing redundancy makes it easier to design and deliver services around people, rather than around how government is structured. (Deloitte also emphasizes the importance of user- rather than government-centric site design.)

3. Strengthen oversight

This expectation is twofold: Those guiding the process require a thorough understanding of what is needed, and strong oversight of the technologies invested in is essential. When these strategies are combined, they gain a comprehensive understanding of their current position and future goals. This insight helps them make informed decisions about resource allocation for data and digital investments, leading to cost-effective spending, reduced waste, and improved outcomes.

4. Replace outdated technologies

Dated, legacy technology is annoying and slows users down, but it also often leads to quick fixes that don’t properly address organizational needs and then become difficult to maintain. Before you know it, you’re dealing with technical debt, meaning IT teams must put more time and resources into maintenance than improvements. 

Technical debt, like any debt, puts organizations in a vulnerable position. Aside from slowing down your IT teams, eventual breakdowns at inopportune moments shorten important decision-making processes.  

This forces decision-making aimed at short-term wins rather than solutions that make the most sense in the long run . . . and can snowball, with one bad decision leading to more. 

5. Put trust at the center

As New Zealand’s strategic plan outlines, “Data is one of the most valuable assets the Government holds and must be managed like other high-value assets.” As Deloitte found, higher government trust led to better outcomes early in the pandemic, but while consumers now expect services from food delivery to ride sharing at the push of a button, governments face additional expectations:

“To retain citizens’ trust, [governments] need to digitize services. But effectively digitizing services likely requires public trust. Moving government services to the digital domain requires not only that citizens enjoy the experience — they must also believe their sensitive data is being properly used and safeguarded. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, many countries struggled to implement digital contact-tracing solutions due to citizen pushback.” 

In a word, ease of access needs to be balanced with — and even advance — establishing and maintaining trust.  

How Siteimprove can help 

All those strategies sound well and good, but the question is always how. With decades of experience tackling digital challenges that are unique to government bodies, Siteimprove offers a suite of tools and features designed to support the digital advancement of any country: 

1. Prioritize improvements by impact: Whether you’re primarily focused on website performance, accessibility, or improving the content experience, Siteimprove breaks down issues into easy-to-understand, prioritized lists. You don’t need to be an expert to understand the guidelines to remedy issues, which means team members can focus on optimizing service delivery and enhancing user experience efficiently.

2. (Easily) identify trends with data: By connecting user analytics directly to content experiences, Siteimprove helps analyze critical visitor behavior and conversion patterns. This data-driven approach supports evidence-based decision-making and policy evaluation and doesn’t hide these insights within settings or reports that require extensive training to understand.

3. Strengthen current tools with integrations: If you’re reluctant to abandon platforms you already use, know that Siteimprove’s robust integrations include CMS plugins for leading platforms like Optimizely and Sitecore, as well as browser extensions and connectors your favorite productivity tools. We also have the Siteimprove API, which lets you create flexible solutions to meet your team’s needs. Whether it’s the DXP, CMS, marketing automation, Power BI, or task management solutions, Siteimprove enhances the full capabilities of the government’s existing digital ecosystem.

4. Free up time with automated error-spotting and accessibility checks: The burden of manual UX improvements can bog down even the best plans for digital improvement. Our automated tools can find common accessibility issues like insufficient color contrast, missing alt text, and poor button design, and we also offer the ability to set custom policies specific to your needs to ensure consistency and compliance with terminology across your digital properties. These custom policies let you set your own rules for automatic testing, so you can check for things specifically needed by your audience, local requirements, or per internal policy. Time spent fixing mistakes is reduced and frees up time for teams to focus on more strategic, innovative work.

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While the path to digital modernization for government organizations in Australia and New Zealand is clear, none are immune to the barriers faced by nearly all government institutions: Bureaucratic processes, budget constraints, and the challenge of coordinating across multiple departments. These hurdles are real, but the need for a streamlined, citizen-focused digital experience is more pressing than ever.  

To navigate these complexities and speed up your digital transformation, talk to one of our government entity experts today — they’re ready to help you identify the challenges you face and help you achieve your digital goals efficiently and effectively. Remember, by prioritizing impactful work, enhancing data analytics, integrating digital tools, focusing on accessibility, and promoting interoperability, government organizations can build more efficient, effective, and trusted digital public services.