Are You Prepared for the Next Wave of Innovation in Digital Government?

Technology is constantly evolving, as are the expectations of your digitally sophisticated residents and community members (aka customers). As your agency strives to keep up and increase digital engagement with customers, your website is more often than not becoming the central hub for enabling a better digital experience.

To help local government leaders like you prepare, we’ve uncovered nine of the more mature trends and have composed a “future-fit” checklist:

Trend #1 – Digital Customer Experience Gains Momentum

Among our client base, we are experiencing a tipping point of recognizing the need to create great digital customer experiences. This is translating into customer experience initiatives, often spearheaded by elected government officials.

How Can Local Leaders Prepare?

Turn to data to help justify a digital customer experience initiative. One way to do this would be to NOask residents to take a survey on your website to help you understand the satisfaction of their visit and areas for improvement.
Ensure alignment among internal stakeholders so everyone’s on the same page with the digital customer experience priorities for the coming years.

Trend #2 – Website Content Becomes More Discoverable

With so much content on a website, findability continues to be a major challenge for local government agencies. Simple updates like appropriately tagging images, using page headers, and implementing filtering tools can help users navigate a webpage more intuitively.

How Can Local Leaders Prepare?

Use analytics to determine what users are frequently seeking and make those items easily accessible from the homepage.
Add appropriate tags, metadata and keywords to make website information even easier to find.

Trend #3 – Web Accessibility is Here to Stay

Governments have trailed behind the web accessibility train, but with mandates in place, it’s time to keep up. Similar to creating accessible ramps to allow people to enter a building, it’s equally important to have a website that is accessible to those who are visually-, hearing-, and mobility-impaired.

How Can Local Leaders Prepare?

Appoint an accessibility coordinator who understands the laws governing equal access to government services, WCAG 2.0 standards and common website accessibility issues to help drive cross-department alignment.
Keep staff up-to-date on accessibility standards with regular training sessions when new members come on board so there are no gaps between departments.