The importance of a segmentation-based engagement model in digital government

A similar pattern emerges for digital explorers. Although the smallest segment with only 15% of all respondents, this segment is looking to make use of emerging technologies and exhibits higher willingness to share data with government to do so. The cohort tends to be younger, more educated, and more urban than other segments. With 63% of digital explorers reporting anticipating an increase in their use of government digital services in the future, this segment can be a strong driver of growth in digital public services.

While satisfaction and eagerness are the dominant sentiments in the aforementioned segments, traces of skepticism and mistrust were found in the other two. The digital skeptics, comprising 28% of the respondents, reported data security concerns that limit their interactions with government agencies. Only 20% of them have frequent digital interactions with governments. This cohort has people of all age groups in almost equal measure. Over half of the skeptic respondents lack a bachelor’s degree, and a quarter of them are unemployed or underemployed, the highest among all cohorts.

The digitally discontent account for 20% of respondents and reported similar patterns of infrequent interaction with government. While the skeptics are concerned about data security and privacy, the discontents are more mistrustful of government in general. The group reported also being the least satisfied among all the four groups. People in this cohort are generally older than those in the other groups, are from rural areas, and with lower incomes. Due to these reasons, it’s often difficult to reach people in this cohort through digital services.

It is also important to remember that these segments are not rigid. Culture and geography can act as differentiating factors. Take the digitally engaged segment, for instance. While the global average of this group is 37% of respondents, the group constituted nearly half of respondents in Singapore and the United Kingdom, but was as low as 15% of respondents in Japan.

Stepping up the digital interaction game

Government leaders could begin by focusing on something they have in common: a desire for better government services. Prioritizing value-based service delivery can help them give their best shot at achieving their digital transformation goals. After all, it is hard to overlook services that make lives easier.

In many ways, this is how commercial technology solutions are adopted. Our research shows that even though respondents don’t trust commercial tech companies as much as the government when it comes to data protection, they are highly satisfied with services like shopping on e-commerce websites, interacting on social media, and watching internet streaming content.¹ Notably, even discontents respond positively in this area. When it comes to accessing government’s digital services, however, 50% of digital discontents surveyed cite complex websites as the biggest barrier. Our research has shown that reducing the friction and improving the customer experience of those websites can help improve trust in government, and by extension their interaction with government’s digital services.²

A next step for government leaders could be to tailor their approach to address the varied needs of each segment. Here’s how they can go about it:

The digitally engaged

• Highlight improvement of existing services. This segment is already engaged and satisfied with government services. Showing how new services can act as an enhancement over their existing services can help increase adoption and continued engagement.
• Ambassador of government services. Those in the digitally engaged cohort can act as ambassadors for governments and promote government’s digital services by sharing their positive experiences online. Governments can also co-design and co-create services with these users to make digital services more user-centered.

Digital explorers

• Show that government wants to stay ahead of the curve. Despite perceptions of being slow, government is often an early adopter of new and emerging technologies.³ Reinforcing the message that governments care about digital innovations can help digital explorers stay engaged with government services.
• Treat explorers as pilot users. Although digital explorers cite facing barriers in accessing government services, they still frequently interact with governments more than any other cohort, indicating their commitment to use and explore digital government services. As agencies gear up to use advanced artificial intelligence and generative AI for their services delivery, explorers can serve as a pilot cohort for agencies to test ideas and gather feedback before scaling services.

Digital skeptics

• Incentivize data-sharing. Security is important but there will always be risks. Highlighting the tangible benefits of sharing data can help digital skeptics determine if the benefits outweigh the risks. While acknowledging concerns, emphasizing the benefits such as improved services, personalized experiences, and potential gains can help create a more compelling case for increased engagement.
• Offer more transactional digital services. The cohort hesitates to share data for integrated service delivery, such as life event services where agencies proactively meet citizens’ needs. Governments should, instead, offer them more one-off transactional digital services that address their needs and increase their convenience without compromising privacy.

The digitally discontent

• Work through the local community to highlight value to users. Vaccination programs during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that in communities that mistrusted government, lending ears to a trusted local voice can help accelerate adoption.⁴ This is especially important for older, more rural segments like the digitally discontent that may be more difficult to reach and less receptive to online messaging.
• Deliver integrated experiences through omnichannel service delivery. Governments should deliver digital solutions while also recognizing that this cohort will more likely prefer alternatives like interactive voice response systems, call centers, and walk-in options. Delivering services through an omnichannel approach that provides a seamless and unified service across multiple channels can enhance the engagement of this group.

Offering tailored digital public services can make service delivery more responsive, citizen-centric, and seamless. Implementation should include governments understanding the needs, preferences, and behaviors of their users; and tailor the communication, data collection, data-sharing and channel of service delivery based on the preferences. Thanks to advances in digital technologies, insights from behavioral science, and new data management tools, governments can take significant strides to make this happen.

Appendix

About the survey

In November and December 2022, Deloitte surveyed 5,800 individuals to understand their use of government digital services in 13 countries. The survey results are weighted for age, income, and gender (figure 2).

Segmentation construction

We summarized numerous ordinal scales (Likert scale questions) of individuals’ attitudes toward and behaviors concerning government digital services into combined scales that more closely resemble interval and scale data. We used a series of cluster analysis methods to classify four digital citizen segments from the summary scales. Analyses were conducted in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences using the hierarchical cluster function to explore clustering options, scree plot to decide on the optimal number of clusters, and k-means cluster to classify each respondent to their respective digital citizen segments.