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Explore digital transformation resources.
Uncover insights, best practises and case studies.
Explore digital transformation resources.
Uncover insights, best practises and case studies.
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Digitalization in governments can change the way societies work, lead to an improved human development index, and save billions of dollars. How? By building and offering proactive public services (PPS). PPS refers to public services that require zero or minimal interaction from citizens, while making maximum use of automation. Think tax declarations that take seconds, social benefits automatically deposited into your bank account, or a new driver’s license in the mailbox when an expiration date creeps close.
The first wave of public sector digitization focused on making services accessible online. The next iteration is about automating these public services, so that they require as little interaction from users and service providers as possible. Proactive public services (PPS) represent the pinnacle of this new wave of digital public services. In their most sophisticated form, these digital public services can be designed entirely without user interaction – offering unparalleled, frictionless access to public services.
In essence, PPS are digital public services that are being proactively provided to users whose eligibility has been predetermined by the service provider. The concept of PPS is not new. It emerged within broader debates around government service digitalization in the 2010s, and over the past few years several definitions of what constitutes such services have come out in academia. It is closely associated with (but not the same as) other concepts such as life event-based services and “applicationless” services. PPS differ from these concepts in that they are proactive, triggered by events, and range from proactive information to transactions.
Proactive public services are part of a wider transformation towards proactive government that delivers users public services without waiting for formal requests. It implies a capacity to anticipate societal and economic developments, as well as users’ needs, by capturing real-time information and applying it to re-design services.
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