Digital leaders in government share a common task: transforming the way the government serves the public by using technology. Despite how simple that sounds, the task is quite complex and requires keen understanding of many elements that influence how governments make decisions and operate. That’s why we studied examples of digital public services around the world, at different jurisdictional levels, and across various mandates (e.g., public health, education, transport). As a result, we created a standardized framework that links customer, operations, and budget measures to mission outcomes and assembled a comprehensive inventory of typical metrics that digital leaders in public organizations can use to track the success of their digital initiatives. Forrester’s public-sector clients can access the full-version report and the digital metrics inventory file, including the step-by-step approach, using the links below.

During our extensive research and granular analysis of government institutions — which serve the public at local, regional, and national levels in North America, Europe, and APAC — we observed many challenges that governments of every type and size are facing but also the lessons from those who’ve managed to succeed. Here are the top three lessons learned.

Lesson Number One — What Comes First: The Agency Mission Or The Customer Outcome?

While looking at how some government agencies talk about their mission, we couldn’t ignore the feeling that there’s some confusion about what should come first: the mission or the customer. This “chicken or egg” dilemma is an existential one because it affects how government entities prioritize and execute their digital strategy. This got me thinking about something my old law professor said: “The law is made for the people, not the other way around.” If we agree with that piece of wisdom, then the customer is the mission! So in customer/digital experience speak, it means “bending the mission to serve your customers, not bending the customers to serve your mission”; that’s the most important lesson to begin with.

Lesson Number Two — Start Tracking And Reporting The Metrics That Customers (The Public) Care About.

There’s no shortage of numbers and statistics gathered — and sometimes transparently reported — by government agencies. But there’s a shortage of insights that customers (i.e., the public) would really care about. Ask yourself, “Who cares more about the number of downloads of a government app or total number of digital transactions: the government or the people?” If numbers tell a story, what story will these numbers tell the people who are — let’s not forget — the rightful audience? Instead, savvy government organizations track combinations of metrics that manifest outcomes created for the people, such as:

  • Achieving double-digit growth in children’s vaccination rate (outcome) as a result of online campaigns (proxy) and alerts (proxy) targeting new parents, including parents without insurance (proxy) and instant e-scheduling (proxy) for vaccination shots (proxy) to ensure the complete set of recommended vaccinations by age three (goal).
  • Shortening the average emergency response time (proxy) by fire and paramedic teams — thanks to automated monitoring devices and software (proxy) and alerts (proxy) — resulting in a double-digit drop in fatalities by fire and heart strokes (outcome), which are among the leading morbidities targeted for reduction (goal).

The lesson here is: Make your “digital story” about the stuff that people care about by using the right metrics.

Lesson Number Three — Learn To Tie Digital Metrics To Dollar Signs.

If you didn’t pay for it, it didn’t get built. Yes, budgets are important for digital ambitions, but what’s important to the budget holders isn’t your digital ambitions but “dollars and cents” (or Swiss francs, because they’re more trendy nowadays — pun intended). Specifically, what the budget bosses want to know is how the costs for the digital ambitions are counted, spent, and justified. Therefore, the third — and probably the least talked about — lesson is about how to connect your digital story to the money story. At Forrester, we’ve been talking about this for many years but normally by addressing the private sector and technology sectors, which are profit-driven and revenue-obsessed. In a government setting, without the focus on making profits, the financial talk comes down to budgets, which primarily means budget planning, cost accounting, and constantly trying to squeeze every ounce of efficiency per dollar spent. In that context, budget-savvy digital leaders are prone to using granular tech and operational resource accounting methods, hawk-eye cost controls, and superior business-case-making skills that make them more convincing. The lesson here is: Learn to speak the finance language and adopt the requisite discipline.