Digitizing the Public Sector: modernize administration, simplify procedures and improve the citizen experience. Invent the public service of tomorrow !
In an increasingly digital society, the digitization of public services is becoming the main lever for modernizing administration and improving the citizen experience. It is also being embraced by public service employees, many of whom sometimes feel that they have better IT tools at home or on their smartphones than they do at work!
The dematerialization of procedures promises to simplify procedures, optimize accessibility to services and reduce costs. This digital transformation also paves the way for the development of innovative, personalized services, better adapted to the specific needs of citizens.
The aim of public authorities is to serve citizens and users, and this means making services available. And today, a number of these services are being digitized via websites, applications, digital tools, artificial intelligence… We can distinguish between two complementary axes: offering new services to users, and helping to simplify administrative complexity.
The government's direct aim is to offer new services such as impots.gouv.fr or service-public.fr, and more generally everything that can be set up to apply for a vehicle registration document, identity card or passport renewal...
As for the indirect axis, it is designed to respond to the administrative burden. The French state has been built up over several centuries, with legislation that has grown richer over time. The accumulation of laws, standards, texts and decrees has therefore become very significant. In fact, behind every user request there is a Cerfa (Centre d'enregistrement et de révision des formulaires administratifs) which must consider all existing possibilities, and there is no question of departing from it. Compared with the private sector, the public sector is subject to a very high number of constraints in its operations and in the provision of services.
"Digitization is there to facilitate the process, particularly in terms of speed, and to absorb some of the government's natural complexity. With the ultimate aim of serving the citizen."
Changing historical practices in the public sector is one of the challenges of digitalization. Digital transformation goes hand in hand with change management! Budgetary constraints can also limit the investments needed to modernize infrastructures and train staff. The complexity of administrative processes also means that we need to take a step back from the way things currently work, before seeking to dematerialize “as is”. Reproducing paper-based processes identically is often the cause of project failure, as it solves nothing! The need to ensure data security also adds specific constraints.
The State must be able to respond to a request for service in any circumstance and for any type of person. Each service must correspond to and be accessible to the entire population. The State must therefore take into account age, training and geographical location, for example. It is therefore necessary to set up physical meeting points throughout the country, especially in the most remote areas, to help and support citizens in need. In this way, we can fulfill the promise of digitalization for all: independently or accompanied, the form is the same for all citizens. The movement is already underway with the ANCT (Agence Nationale de la Cohésion des Territoires) and its "Conseiller numérique" program, whose mission is to support French citizens who are unable to complete their administrative formalities online on their own (among others).
Un autre défi réside dans la symétrie des attentions privé/public. Quand les utilisateurs n’achètent quasiment plus de logiciels mais des services, leurs attentes changent. Un citoyen va donc s’attendre à un haut taux de disponibilité des services, quelle que soit l’heure ou le jour de la semaine. De même, l’ergonomie doit être agréable (avec des menus contextuels par exemple) et l’expérience utilisateur (UX) optimisée. Cette symétrie des attentions est donc également un moyen de rendre accessible tous les services de l’Etat, avec une démarche simple et intuitive pour s’assurer que le citoyen chemine sans encombre jusqu’au bout d’une démarche.
Another challenge lies in the symmetry of private/public attentions. When users no longer buy software but services, their expectations change. A citizen will therefore expect a high level of service availability, whatever the time of day or day of the week. Similarly, ergonomics must be pleasant (with contextual menus, for example) and the user experience (UX) optimized. This symmetry of attention is therefore also a means of making all government services accessible, with a simple and intuitive approach to ensure that the citizen proceeds smoothly to the end of the process.
However, progress still needs to be made, particularly in improving digital interactions with citizens, as a significant proportion of users still report the administrative complexity they encounter online.
Another challenge for the State, which is a counterpart of this digitalization, is the exposure and security of citizen data, with a very strong context of potential cyberattacks. In 2023, 3,703 security events (compared with 3,018 in 2022) were reported to the ANSSI (Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d'information), which noted an increase in the number of incidents affecting certain sectors, particularly local and regional authorities. Local authorities and healthcare establishments are particularly under attack, accounting for 85% of public administrations that fall victim to a cyber attack (according to the French Ministry of the Interior, Service statistique ministériel de la sécurité intérieure). For a long time, the state's reflex was to keep a tight rein on its infrastructures and servers. Today, we know that this is not the right solution. It's precisely this difference in resources between a hospital or town hall (for example) and a Cloud giant that makes public structures easy targets. A sovereign Cloud therefore seems necessary, as it is more secure than on-premise hosting. While the French players are there (OVH Cloud, for example), this "move to Cloud" has yet to be initiated. Because this move to the Cloud will also have a virtuous side: greater speed, flexibility and power to meet the challenges already mentioned.
Historically, when a local authority or state agency makes an acquisition, it uses its investment budget. However, cloudification is based on a rental model (services), rather than a purchase model. The investment budget cannot be used for subscription. This is a real brake, and while the subject is already under study, there has yet to be a vote to get the ball rolling. The public sector therefore tends to opt for on-premise acquisition on their servers, for budgetary reasons.
There is also the question of data assets and their location within each public organization. To defend your data properly, you need to know its location and context at all times. The digitization of public services can be used to centralize data, following a data mapping exercise (via a CISO or DPO) to quickly locate the most sensitive data, secure it and potentially avoid a cyber-attack. This raises new issues of governance and knowledge of public data assets.
Simplification is certainly one of the main objectives and expected benefits. The aim is to give citizens all the keys they need to know where to turn for a specific need, and to find the right organization. The challenge of speed and efficiency is also high, for example, when responding to crisis situations (floods, storms…): users and businesses expect solutions to be put in place without delay on the ground, whatever the administrative burden. It is also an imperative in the context of Operational Excellence and Lean Administration approaches, in order to “do more with less”, and thus meet the challenges of local authorities faced with increasingly stringent requirements and shrinking budgets.
Ability to keep public services operational during crises thanks to digital solutions.
Encouraging citizen involvement and participation via interactive platforms.
More user-friendly, simple, multi-channel digital services, with 24/7 access and no geographical constraints.
Answers are faster, more transparent and more relevant.
Reduce manual work for agents, and increase mobility and flexibility. Reduced operating costs through automation and dematerialization of processes.
Better traceability of administrative actions, reinforcing transparency and accountability.
Improved control and protection of sensitive data.
Introducing innovative, personalized public services that better meet citizens’ needs.répondant mieux aux besoins des citoyens.
Modernisation et amélioration de l’image de la collectivité par son engagement dans l’innovation et l’efficacité.
Going digital doesn’t happen in a snap of the fingers: there are real challenges: budgetary constraints, recruitment difficulties, the proliferation of verticalized and unconnected applications…
However, even if the constraints are real, going digital is not that complex: this transformation should not be seen as a Big Bang, and the technologies and solutions exist. The key is to remain pragmatic and aim for efficiency! We advise local authorities to prioritize and move forward in stages, while keeping the target in mind from the outset to ensure a coherent, scalable information system architecture. All local authority IT Departments involved in dematerialization and digitization agree on one thing: the new services very quickly pose major challenges in terms of controlling data exchanges and eliminating information redundancy.
"Historical batch interfaces launched at night are no longer in phase with the demands for immediacy and responsiveness of these new digital uses !"
In addition to the rapid, centralized and homogeneous deployment of new internal services (HR, business optimization, etc.) and external services (citizens, associations, companies, etc.), local authority IT departments need to master real-time data transfer services to access all repositories and enable applications to communicate with each other. This requires information processing, transport, storage and security functionalities, and the ability to manage all types of files and/or database formats!
To meet these challenges, we have designed a range of software products 100% dedicated to local authorities and the State.
With these stand-alone and integrated offerings, you can :
VIADUC
AGORA
ATRIUM
MyDataCatalogue
APIM
FORUM GRU
FORUM RH
Connect'SIS
The IT consequences of deploying teleservices and online procedures are often the same: more and more data needs to be managed in harmony with business processes that are often spread across heterogeneous software.
Offering these new services via collaborative digital spaces means that data from different information system applications must be processed more rapidly, and shared while guaranteeing their (re)integration, with all the traceability and compliance constraints that this entails. These challenges also go hand in hand with the obligation for local authorities to open up their information systems via APIs, in order to embrace the concept of the "platform state" and facilitate the circulation of data with their entire ecosystem. These are just some of the reasons why public authorities need to set up a data integration platform to accelerate and succeed in their digital transformation.
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Our approach also reflects the convictions we have acquired through our contact with public-sector players :
In addition to our SaaS approach, we also continue to offer On Premise services, enabling local authorities to stay within their investment budget.
We provide the Gallery Blueway , a space accessible to all, where agencies and local authorities can share their projects and use those of others.
Our user portal makes it possible to manage the co-construction of projects, thus limiting the costs incurred by each party.
To meet the challenges of sovereignty, we work exclusively with OVH Cloud, and offer options such as HDS for the healthcare sector, and SecNumCloud to provide the highest level of security recognized by ANSSI.
