Egovernment must put users first

The route to egovernment success is to get inside the head of the citizen or business using the service, according to the former chief information officer of the successful Canadian government programme.

Canada spent almost a year running 200 focus groups across the country to find out what citizens wanted and how they used the internet, Michelle D'Auray told delegates at a seminar organised by think-tank the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) last week.

'The first principle fundamental to the Canadian strategy was to put the individual and/or organisation making use of the service at the core,' she said.

'We literally tried to turn ourselves inside-out to appreciate how people trying to access government services worked and what they wanted.'

The most notable difference between D'Auray's role and that of Ian Watmore, the recently-appointed head of egovernment in the UK, is that while Watmore has a largely persuasive role, D'Auray's brief included a budget of Can$880m (£380m) over six years. Half of the budget was spent building a single central authentication infrastructure to be used by all departments' online services.

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