When residents are able to renew driver’s license, pay taxes or conduct other government-related activities online, it can reduce effort and save the time spent in visiting physical offices.  Some states have even created personalized dashboards to allow people to track application status and get notices of upcoming deadlines.

This all sounds like a powerful use of technology to help taxpayers interact with their states. But the range of development of these “constituent portals,” is broad, though interest is high, according to “Constituent Experience: State Government IT Strategies”,  a new report by the National Association of State Technology Directors (NASTD). 

As one state respondent told the association, “We are early in the process. However, this is soon to become a top priority from our newly elected governor.’’ Another state added, “Our goal is to continue to work to improve the process, remove barriers for the constituent and create a positive interaction with constituents on behalf of the governor’s office.’”

So, where do the states stand? Some of the findings from NASTD:

• While less than 30% have unified constituent service in their states and a similar percentage do not, the good news is that almost 40% have such a system in process.

• Some 46% of states do not assess citizen satisfaction with their portal while 17% do so monthly and 27% do evaluations of this kind on a yearly basis.

• Less than 15% of state’s constituent feedback portals are fully integrated in a way that would help them make decisions and improvement initiatives.

Why aren’t the states further along? As the report explains, “93% of the states responded that budget constraints were a key challenge in implementing digital constituent services. Lack of experience (37%), low adoption rates (29%) . . . were smaller concerns. Several respondents commented that getting agency participation and support is also a significant challenge with one respondent stating that ‘agency resistance to change,’ is its biggest hurdle.” 

In future years, artificial intelligence could be a game changer in this field, with more advanced chatbots improving service delivery. In fact, 95% of states have integrated chatbots in their efforts to reach out to residents. 

(Personal note from B&G: From personal experience, less advanced chatbots create more frustration than they alleviate. Many chatbots which we’ve utilized take users through a series of queries, which – after a lot of questions and answers – ultimately refer the user to a sometimes very elusive human being.)

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