Digital public services: a major challenge for democracy

In recent years, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of inform­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies (ICTs) and their wide­spread adop­tion have encour­aged the digit­isa­tion of pub­lic ser­vices. By 2022, the French government’s IT ser­vices had digit­ised 83% of the 250 most fre­quently used admin­is­trat­ive pro­ced­ures¹. France is also a fully com­mit­ted play­er in the devel­op­ment of a mod­ern gov­ern­ment digit­al inform­a­tion sys­tem that meets the needs of cit­izens, as demon­strated by its rank­ing in 9th place by the OECD (score of 0.665 for the com­pos­ite indic­at­or), with two major strengths: the area relat­ing to user data and the area of open­ing up pub­lic data by default².

How­ever, the situ­ation remains mixed. On the one hand, a gradu­al increase in the use of online ser­vices (67% of adults have car­ried out at least one admin­is­trat­ive pro­ced­ure online) but, on the oth­er, a high level of aban­don­ment (32% of French people have aban­doned an admin­is­trat­ive pro­ced­ure online in 2021), reveal­ing the lim­its of dema­ter­i­al­isa­tion³. In fact, the Octo­ber 2024 obser­vat­ory of the State’s digit­al ser­vices⁴ iden­ti­fied six­teen applic­a­tions with below-aver­age user sat­is­fac­tion. By valu­ing the user’s opin­ion, this eval­u­ation helps to strengthen the bond of trust and to co-con­struct bet­ter qual­ity digit­al pub­lic ser­vices with the user.

Many research­ers are inter­ested in the emer­gence, devel­op­ment and adop­tion of digit­al admin­is­trat­ive ser­vices and are con­trib­ut­ing to the under­stand­ing of e‑Government⁵. Sev­er­al factors con­trib­ute to the suc­cess­ful imple­ment­a­tion of e‑Government by gov­ern­ment IT spe­cial­ists and its use by cit­izens: tech­no­lo­gic­al mas­tery, avail­able human skills, under­stand­ing of pub­lic policies and avail­ab­il­ity of fin­an­cial resources. The con­ver­gence of these factors means that ser­vices can be deployed that meet the expect­a­tions of cit­izens and thereby win their sat­is­fac­tion and trust.

Trust in digit­al pub­lic ser­vices is multi-faceted, since it is expressed in terms of the dif­fer­ent modes of inter­ac­tion: it con­cerns cit­izens’ views in the con­text of “Gov­ern­ment to Cit­izen” (G2C), those of pub­lic employ­ees in the con­text of “Gov­ern­ment to Employ­ee” (G2E), those of pub­lic bod­ies in the con­text of “Gov­ern­ment to Gov­ern­ment” (G2G) and those of private play­ers in the con­text of “Gov­ern­ment to Busi­ness” (G2B⁶). Each of the parties involved has dif­fer­ent expect­a­tions. Firstly, cit­izens are look­ing for pub­lic ser­vices that are simple, user-friendly and rel­ev­ant to their daily lives; they need to be able to trust that the inform­a­tion held by the admin­is­tra­tion is reli­able, that the rules are being applied cor­rectly and that they can lodge an appeal.

For their part, pub­lic ser­vants appre­ci­ate the avail­ab­il­ity of effect­ive, com­pre­hens­ive solu­tions that can be integ­rated into their work­sta­tions. They place their trust in applic­a­tions that are reli­able in terms of data qual­ity, the accur­acy of the res­ults obtained and the safe­guard­ing of their work. Fur­ther­more, pub­lic bod­ies have needs for con­fid­ence that go bey­ond data qual­ity, since they need a reli­able and resi­li­ent inform­a­tion exchange sys­tem (e.g. the State’s inter­min­is­teri­al net­work oper­ated by DINUM) as well as guar­an­tees of avail­ab­il­ity of cas­cad­ing applic­a­tions (e.g. the pay of State employ­ees is neces­sary for the Déclar­a­tion Sociale Nom­in­at­ive (Nom­in­at­ive Social Declar­a­tion), which is essen­tial for their deduc­tion at source, etc.). Finally, busi­nesses need great­er sim­pli­city and clar­ity if they are to have con­fid­ence in the State and there­fore in its digit­al ser­vices. The sheer num­ber of pro­ced­ures and con­tacts involved in set­ting up a busi­ness, man­aging its fin­ances and accounts or clos­ing it down is cur­rently the sub­ject of a cer­tain amount of mis­trust on the part of the private sector.

Trust in the State’s digit­al ser­vices is essen­tial if we are to devel­op their use. Indeed, when cit­izens have con­fid­ence in the digit­al resources avail­able to them, they are more inclined to use them on a daily basis for their admin­is­trat­ive pro­ced­ures, and also to recom­mend them to their friends and fam­ily. This sim­pli­fies life for users, who are no longer obliged to travel to obtain or pass on inform­a­tion, makes pub­lic ser­vices more effi­cient by enabling staff to con­cen­trate on the most com­plex actions, and strengthens the bond between cit­izens and their admin­is­tra­tion. To gain this trust, online ser­vices need to be secure, trans­par­ent, easy to use and tailored to indi­vidu­al needs. It is by meet­ing these expect­a­tions that gov­ern­ments can encour­age more people to use these digit­al tools and thus reduce the digit­al divide⁷.

The rela­tion­ship between trust and the use of digit­al ser­vices is well known to research­ers. In fact, in 1992 DeLone and McLean pro­posed a mod­el (now called the D&M Inform­a­tion Sys­tem Mod­el) that estab­lishes the rela­tion­ships between six key dimen­sions of the suc­cess of inform­a­tion sys­tems (IS): sys­tem qual­ity, inform­a­tion qual­ity, use, user sat­is­fac­tion, indi­vidu­al impact and organ­isa­tion­al impact. By ana­lys­ing numer­ous stud­ies, they demon­strated that these dimen­sions are inter­de­pend­ent and essen­tial for assess­ing the over­all suc­cess of an inform­a­tion sys­tem, and in par­tic­u­lar that there is a dir­ect link between user sat­is­fac­tion and the use of the digit­al ser­vice con­cerned⁸. This wide­spread mod­el was then refined with a view to imple­ment­ing digit­al ser­vices that rein­force this link of trust.

Recent mod­els on trust emphas­ise the import­ance of the qual­ity of inform­a­tion provided to users, the use of secure and con­trolled tech­no­lo­gies, and respect for demo­crat­ic prin­ciples in the coun­try con­cerned. When cit­izens have the neces­sary digit­al skills, research shows a cor­rel­a­tion between these factors and the adop­tion of digit­al services.

For example, the work of Thompson et al. shows that trust in the State’s digit­al ser­vices is ini­tially based on trust in the gov­ern­ment itself, before extend­ing to digit­al tech­no­lo­gies. This ini­tial trust gen­er­ally leads to user sat­is­fac­tion, which in turn can encour­age re-use of the ser­vice (Thompson, 2008). It is there­fore cru­cial to forge a close link with cit­izens. Policies to open up data and algorithms, pro­moted by DINUM⁹¹⁰, are a prom­ising approach in this respect.

In addi­tion, Alzahrani et al. enrich DeLone and McLean’s mod­el by intro­du­cing the notion of the ante­cedents of trust, the feel­ings of cit­izens and the bene­fits asso­ci­ated with this trust¹¹. To build trust, the authors stress the import­ance of the qual­ity of digit­al ser­vices and sys­tems. This approach is reflec­ted in ambi­tious nation­al ini­ti­at­ives such as the digit­al invest­ment plan¹² and the digit­al strategy¹³. In addi­tion, the repu­ta­tion of a ser­vice and the past exper­i­ences of users play a decis­ive role. A tax­pay­er who reg­u­larly uses “Impots​.gouv​.fr” without encoun­ter­ing any dif­fi­culties will be more likely to recom­mend this service.

How­ever, factors spe­cif­ic to indi­vidu­al cit­izens, such as famili­ar­ity with digit­al tools or admin­is­trat­ive pro­ced­ures, also influ­ence their adop­tion of online ser­vices. The report by the Défen­seur des Droits [French rights watch­dog] stresses that many people encounter dif­fi­culties in using online ser­vices¹⁴. Digit­al deploy­ment, train­ing and sup­port plans are there­fore needed to rem­edy this situ­ation. The “France Ser­vices” centres, which offer loc­al assist­ance, are an inter­est­ing ini­ti­at­ive to facil­it­ate access for the most vul­ner­able mem­bers of the public.

At the same time, the secur­ity of online ser­vices is a major issue. Secur­ity incid­ents, such as the one that occurred on “France Trav­ail¹⁵”, can erode pub­lic con­fid­ence. It is there­fore essen­tial to strengthen the cyber­se­cur­ity of pub­lic entit­ies by draw­ing on the recom­mend­a­tions of the ANSSI and adopt­ing new approaches such as pen­et­ra­tion test­ing, bug bounty and red team­ing¹⁶¹⁷.

Finally, Li and Xue pro­pose an adapt­a­tion of the DeLone and McLean mod­el to study post-use trust in pub­lic ser­vices in Chinese muni­cip­al­it­ies¹⁸. Their res­ults con­firm the import­ance of trust in the gov­ern­ment, the Inter­net and the qual­ity of ser­vices, while reveal­ing that the per­cep­tion of con­fid­en­ti­al­ity and secur­ity plays a less sig­ni­fic­ant role in this spe­cif­ic context.

To strengthen pub­lic con­fid­ence in the State’s digit­al ser­vices, it is essen­tial to imple­ment a set of best prac­tices. One of the first require­ments is to guar­an­tee trans­par­ency of access to and use of inform­a­tion. To achieve this, gov­ern­ment depart­ments must provide clear and access­ible inform­a­tion on the pur­poses for which data is col­lec­ted and the secur­ity meas­ures put in place, as required by the Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR). In addi­tion, cit­izens must be informed of their rights (access, rec­ti­fic­a­tion, oppos­i­tion) and how to exer­cise them¹⁹.

The ease of use of digit­al inter­faces is also essen­tial for build­ing user con­fid­ence. A user who under­stands what they are being asked to do, and the pur­pose of a pro­ced­ure will be more inclined to carry it out digit­ally, where­as a user who lacks this under­stand­ing will tend to seek human assist­ance to reas­sure them­selves. Digit­al ser­vices must there­fore be designed to be intu­it­ive and ergo­nom­ic, tak­ing into account the needs and skills of all cit­izens, par­tic­u­larly those with dis­ab­il­it­ies. The aim of the French State Design Sys­tem is to har­mon­ise the web­sites of French gov­ern­ment depart­ments, mak­ing them easi­er for users to under­stand and enabling mul­tiple access­ib­il­ity rules to be taken into account nat­ively (con­trast man­age­ment, col­our sys­tem, etc.).

Trust in the State’s digit­al ser­vices is ini­tially based on trust in the gov­ern­ment itself

It is also par­tic­u­larly effect­ive to involve cit­izens in the design of new digit­al pub­lic ser­vices. The work of Brand­sen et al. describes sev­er­al use cases with this object­ive of asso­ci­ation²⁰: firstly, the use of digit­al plat­forms to facil­it­ate social integ­ra­tion and access to pub­lic ser­vices in Sweden; then, the con­tri­bu­tion of inform­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies to pre­serving the autonomy of the eld­erly in Flem­ish muni­cip­al­it­ies; and finally, the use of wear­able tech­no­logy and smart­phones for remote health mon­it­or­ing of Hun­gari­an patients suf­fer­ing from chron­ic heart disease.

To improve the con­fid­ence of private or third-party organ­isa­tions (asso­ci­ations, pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies, etc.) in digit­al pub­lic ser­vices, pub­lic ser­vices need to put in place qual­ity indic­at­ors to assess and con­tinu­ously improve them. Indic­at­ors can relate to sat­is­fac­tion with each digit­al ser­vice, the level of avail­ab­il­ity of applic­a­tions, the num­ber of secur­ity incid­ents, the response time to user requests, and so on. In addi­tion, this trust must also be deepened in qual­it­at­ive terms, with the pro­vi­sion of clear and com­pre­hens­ive doc­u­ment­a­tion to facil­it­ate the use of ser­vices, and the estab­lish­ment of dis­cus­sion chan­nels to enable exchanges around each digit­al solu­tion, to inform of sched­uled main­ten­ance or incid­ents encountered, improve products, cor­rect anom­alies and anti­cip­ate new needs.

With this pro­gress comes a fun­da­ment­al chal­lenge: estab­lish­ing trust between the design­ers and users of pub­lic ser­vices. To achieve this, it is neces­sary to meet a num­ber of expect­a­tions: to offer com­plete trans­par­ency in the way data is used, to offer digit­al ser­vices that are ergo­nom­ic and easy to use, to guar­an­tee the secur­ity of sys­tems and asso­ci­ated data, and to meet the spe­cif­ic expect­a­tions of users, wheth­er they are cit­izens, pub­lic ser­vants or busi­nesses. Build­ing trust there­fore requires an approach that con­tinu­ously integ­rates tech­no­lo­gic­al aspects with more organ­isa­tion­al and human dimensions.

In addi­tion, build­ing trust nat­ur­ally requires the imple­ment­a­tion of best prac­tice in the areas of inclu­sion and access­ib­il­ity, since pub­lic ser­vices are primar­ily inten­ded to provide a ser­vice to vul­ner­able people. In addi­tion, par­tic­u­lar atten­tion must be paid to the secur­ity of data, sys­tems and com­mu­nic­a­tions to ensure that all users can be con­fid­ent that digit­al pub­lic ser­vices offer a bet­ter ser­vice than the pro­ced­ures that pre­ceded them. In this way, digit­al tech­no­logy is trans­form­ing the way in which pub­lic ser­vices are delivered, com­bin­ing imme­di­acy, ubi­quity and sim­pli­city while rais­ing the level of trust. This is why cyber secur­ity plays a fun­da­ment­al role in pre­vent­ing incid­ents that could des­troy, slow down or tar­nish the repu­ta­tion of digit­al pub­lic services.

In con­clu­sion, trust in digit­al pub­lic ser­vices can­not be dis­so­ci­ated from trust in the State itself. It is by invest­ing in strategies for trans­par­ency, col­lab­or­a­tion and secur­ity that gov­ern­ments can encour­age the adop­tion of digit­al tools. It is a pro­cess that, while com­plex, is fun­da­ment­al to build­ing an e‑Government that is both sus­tain­able and inclusive.