Mind the gap: self-service vs. assisted-service

While I was at the Ohio Digital Government Summit this week, I was reminded of the challenge governments have balancing self-service channels vs. assisted service channels. My co-presenter discussed some statistics on citizen Internet usage from Connect Ohio’s 2010 technology assessment survey (see survey here). There were a couple items in this data that highlighted the situation governments face when optimizing channel interactions with constituents.

First, the stats showed that there is a significant gap between the number of people that transact online with the private sector vs. with the public sector. In the survey, about 60% of Ohioans transact online with companies. In particular, 74% will buy something online and 62% will bank online. But far fewer people transact online with government—only 45%. This gap suggests there is excess demand vs. usable supply of online government services. It seems reasonable that the same number of people would be willing to bank online as they would be willing to use online government services. And, because online self-service is usually cheaper to operate than assisted-service channels, this suggests a fair bit of untapped cost saving potential available to governments still.

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