TCD Masters’ programme assignment seeks to understand citizens’ experiences of and to identify recommendations for online government services
Minister of State with responsibility for eGovernment, Patrick O’Donovan TD, last Thursday (5th December, 2019) presented the prizes to the winning group in the TCD Masters in Digital Marketing competition.
As part of their programme, students of the MSc in Digital Marketing Strategy course, Trinity College Dublin, were tasked with reviewing citizens’ experience of online government services. The students investigated life stage events such as ‘becoming an Irish citizen”, or ‘entering the higher education system” as well as setting up a your own business, and have described the citizens’ experiences of the various processes, identifying challenges experienced and made recommendations to improve government digital services. As part of this exercise, the students engaged with citizens with the aim of understanding what the public like about digital government services, what they feel Government could do better, ideas for new online government services, and concerns and potential barriers.
Twenty research projects were submitted covering a diverse range of government services from starting your first job, registering to vote, booking an appointment with your GP, to starting a business, going to the small claims court and getting married. The four best were selected to present to a team of judges at today’s final. The judging panel included Barry Lowry, Government CIO, Mary O'Donohue, Director OGCIO, along with Ciaran Conlon, Government Affairs Lead, and Kieran McCorry National Technology Officer from Microsoft Ireland.
These research projects are part of a broader Enabling Digital Ireland programme, which seeks to capture the voices and experiences of people at different life stages and their experiences interacting with a range of government services both in a personal and business capacity. Projects such as this provide an important opportunity for members of the public to input directly into shaping matters, which affect them and their communities. This in turn helps the Minister to deliver on his commitment in the eGovernment Strategy 2017-2020- to explore ideas and suggestions from citizens as part of efforts to ensure Ireland remains a leader for eGovernment.
Minister O’Donovan said:
We were very impressed again this year with the Trinity MSc students’ research projects and the level of detail presented on citizen life event journeys. It was interesting to see how the citizen experience in Ireland compares to that in other countries. It is essential that the Public Service continues to develop digital services to meet the needs and expectations of our people and our businesses; in other words our services should be consistently easy and convenient to use. If we are going to claim that our digital government services are user-centred then it is essential to ask the citizens and businesses themselves and let them input into our future plans and designs. This research on our citizens’ experiences of using digital services is a key step to improving our delivery of Government services.
Notes for Editors
This initiative is one element in a wider programme of research being undertaken by the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO), under Action 1 of Our Public Service 2020, ‘Accelerate Digital Delivery of Services’. This purpose of this research is to assess the experience of customers of existing services to citizens and businesses, and to help identify government services to be prioritised for digitalisation, as well as online services that could be enhanced or improved
https://www.tcd.ie/business/research/digital-business/
https://www.tcd.ie/business/msc/digital-marketing-strategy/
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