UK lagging behind other European countries on digital government, according to Capgemini

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The UK is lagging behind its European competitors on digital government, according to management consultancy Capgemini.

The company recently assessed 34 European governments’ progress towards digitising their services for its eGovernment 2016 Benchmark report, carried out on behalf of the European Commission.

The report looks at governments’ progress towards digitisation by rating measures such as the availability and usability of public services online, government transparency and how much control citizens have of their data.

It found that while the UK performs generally well on user centredness, cross-border mobility and mobile readiness of its services, it is falling behind when compared to other European countries such as Germany and France.

The UK is classed as a ‘moderate performer’, the lowest grouping of countries in the report which are performing and growing below average in this area, along with most of eastern and southern Europe.

The rest of northern and western Europe is classed as either a ‘steady performer’ or ‘accelerator’.

According to Capgemini it is the slow roll-out of the UK Government’s identity assurance programme Verify is holding the UK’s progress towards e-government back.

The online authentication system allows people to use services entirely online and offers a single-sign on for services across government, which cuts down costs on paper processes and offers secure access to personal data.

Niels van der Linden, the Capgemini eGovernment Benchmark project manager, said that the UK “would hugely benefit from a full roll-out across its government tiers” and urged it to work on expanding the programme.

The Government Digital Service (GDS), which launched Verify in May this year, has previously come under fire for its slow progress on the project.

However, Jessica Figueras, chief analyst at Kable, has previously told Holyrood’s sister site PublicTechnology.net that the main problem was the “wildly unrealistic expectations for roll-out" that were set initially.

This meant that "slow and patchy delivery” was seen as a sign the system had failed.

"The fact is that Verify is an incredibly ambitious programme and the fundamental concepts behind it were untested," she said.

Meanwhile, GDS has recently launched a set of local government trials of the service in England, as well as work to establish if other online platforms can be used to verify people’s identity, indicating that it is pushing the verification service out more broadly.

By doing so, the nation has the chance to boost its rating, said van der Linden, because other elements of its work – such as its focus on user needs – are highly rated.

“UK citizens enjoy greater user-centricity thanks to the ease and speed of which they are able to access services,” he said.

“This is particularly the case when it comes to offering ‘mobile-friendly’ services, where the UK finishes second. With the UK’s verification system running at full speed, we’d expect the UK to improve its position overall.”

The eGovernment Benchmark study acts as a comparison guide for 34 European countries, offering recommendations for those below the average on how they can up their scores.

These include putting user need first, improving accountability, looking at new outsourcing models, sharing services between departments and measuring all the aspects of digital services to help improve decision-making.

It also looked at the distribution of expertise across the continent. Although it notes that, overall, there has been a “cautious acceleration” of the use of eGovernment systems, it identified a widening gap between the best and worst performers – some of which show “no signs of catching up”.

Van der Linden said that the “digital diagonal” of countries from the south-west to north-east of Europe – including Spain, Estonia and Norway – was “pushing Europe forward” and could inspire others.

“However, we should be careful that pushing does not turn into dragging as the gap with lagging countries is growing faster than is acceptable in a digital single market,” he added.