Will tangled processes derail the vision of Personal Government?

What if public administration was no longer public, but personal? What if public services — from the state to municipalities, from health authorities to emergency services —operated on our terms as citizens, completely redefining our relationship with the public sector?

In late spring ’24, Nortal Finland had the honor of speaking at the State Expo in Helsinki, on the theme “Personal Government”. The presentation was about citizen-centric public administration services and our vision of an advanced citizen portal, (where, by the way, the Estonian government is pulling ahead compared to Finland!).

To our delight, the speech sparked so much thought in the audience that afterward there was a queue of participants wanting to discuss and ask questions at our event booth. The vision of personalized public administration is both intriguing and well-received, but there are still obstacles to overcome — one of them being a tangled mess of systems.

Personalized public administration will become a reality in the post-digital era – or will it?

Traditional public services have been digitized throughout the 2000s. From the 2010s onwards, face-to-face and paper-based services have also been completely replaced by their digital counterparts. Gradually, the most advanced municipalities, cities, and agencies have even started to look at their services across society, rather than individual developments.

Now, in the 2020s, we are already moving into the post-digital era, where citizens should be able to enjoy a “personal government”. The focus shifts to the citizen’s current life circumstances, instead of service pathways shaped by individual public entities. This requires turning the traditional view of government, it’s plethora of regulations, rules, authorities, and services inside-out to focus on what the citizen should experience – their data, their contextual opportunities, and obligations, and reducing or hiding away everything else.

This development is often seen as a manifestation of the citizen portal, which on a mobile device – or other devices – contains all your information, opportunities, and responsibilities. Public services are always in your pocket. The portal simplifies interactions with public administration, with everything you need just a few clicks away.

Fewer hands stirring the pot

However, the vision of human-centric, accessible, proactive, and reliable citizen services cannot be realized if the underlying systems and service processes are tangled like spaghetti: solutions and systems don’t communicate, information doesn’t flow, and service paths aren’t connected.

On top of the challenges posed by a confusing technological environment, research institutions such as Keva also predict that up to one in three people working for the Finnish state/municipalities will retire by 2030. This means that within five years, there will be more citizens in need of services, but fewer people available to run them, even with the support of back-office systems.

It’s unrealistic to assume we could recruit the same number, or more, of employees for municipalities, cities, and government agencies. Additionally, the traditional viewpoint or belief that only another human is able to render services in a way that also feels human, shall be challenged. This means we need to make things more efficient.

From Alt-Tab fatigue to truly productive work

Low-code/no-code solutions have made giant strides in recent years, enabling the rapid development and flexible customization of public administration applications, automation, and software robots without in-depth programming skills.

Each of us can probably recognize the situation where we are trying to get a slightly more complex task done, but the workflow requires constant jumping from one application to another. Switching between screens using the Alt-Tab is fairly painless, but copying data from one screen to another is hardly what most of us dreamed of doing.

Low-code solutions play a key role in improving the efficiency and modernization of the systems and processes underlying public services. Instead of €10 million system modernization projects, low-code tools can be used to agilely build a composite layer on top of the underlying systems. This layer orchestrates workflows so that there is no longer any need to jump between different systems. Instead, opportunities for faster and more flexible citizen service development, fewer human errors, better data flow, and less time wasted on routine tasks are achieved.

Low-code tools in action

Low-code tools can for example help automate repetitive tasks such as reading and pulling together documents and reports, or processing and filing permit applications. Filling in forms, sending notifications, and copying and updating data can also be handled automatically. All this frees up the time of the constantly shrinking workforce for more complex and value-added tasks.

From a systems perspective, low-code solutions can help connect disparate products, solutions, and databases. They enable seamless integration of different services, making information sharing and decision-making in real-time.

With low-code solutions, a citizen’s personalized public administration could therefore genuinely rely on seamless data transfer between different authorities, rather than experiencing delays, errors, and costs caused by human intervention at each interface.

Steps toward the vision of Personal Government

Personal Government in Finland does not have to remain just a vision. Progress is already underway, but sometimes it’s worth shifting our focus from the tools and interfaces visible to citizens to the systems and processes that make these services possible, i.e. the underlying systems and processes. Today’s low-code tools offer the potential for significant advances in data usability, routine automation, and process streamlining – without the need for multi-million-euro systems projects.