Make your digital services inclusive in 4 steps

In recent years, both public and private organizations have massively digitized their services. Many citizens and entrepreneurs welcome this because it gives them easier access to services such as information, certificates and subsidies. Most Flemish people also seem to participate digitally. According to the Digimeter (imec 2023), today 99% have at least one device to connect to the internet.

However, the same research and signals from the field ( Signal Bundle 2023 Primary Care City of Ghent ) show that a large group of citizens does not want or cannot use digital services. 38% feel that digital technology is being imposed against their will. Only 22% want to do everything online.

The King Baudouin Foundation's digital inclusion barometer ( 2024 ) shows the inequality in digital access. 11% of people with a low income in Belgium do not have internet at home, and 25% of them can only access the internet with a smartphone. While 13% of high incomes do not use e-administration, this rises to 30% for low incomes.

We believe it is important to take into account the needs of this substantial group of citizens so that they can obtain their right to services. This can be done by applying e-inclusion by design when we digitize services.

E-inclusion by design is one of four pillars that local authorities can work on to tackle digital exclusion (Mediawijs, ‘Wat is digitale inclusie’):

1. Digital access: governments give citizens access to digital devices, software and the internet

2. Digital skills: governments ensure that citizens increase their digital knowledge and skills

3. A support network: governments ensure that citizens get assistance from someone

4. E-inclusion by design: governments make their digital services as user-friendly and accessible as possible

To 'design for inclusion' means that you take the risks of digital exclusion into account from the start of designing your digital services. You do not expect citizens to adapt to your services, but you adapt your services to the citizens.

e-inclusion by design goes beyond accessibility (web accessibility). After all, you don't just remove barriers for people with disabilities. You also pay attention to socio-economic, social and psychological risks of exclusion: not having a smartphone or authenticator (e.g. Itsme), having limited language knowledge or digital skills, concerns about safety...

At the start of the blog post we promised you a concrete step-by-step plan, with methodologies and practical examples. Here we are!

E-inclusion by design follows the step-by-step plan of human-centered design — also known as service design or human-centered design:

1. Investigate the needs of your citizens, internal employees and partner organizations
2. Prioritize the needs your digital solution must meet
3. Use known principles of inclusive design
4. Test and improve your solution with users

At every step we make additional efforts to identify, prevent and resolve risks of digital exclusion. In this way we not only obtain a user-friendly but also an inclusive digital solution.

Put your (vulnerable) citizens first

In this first step you investigate what exactly citizens need and want with regard to the new digital service. You undoubtedly have many assumptions about that. But are they also correct?

How do you proceed?

• List your assumptions: what do you think citizens need, what prior knowledge do you think citizens have, and what preferences do they have?

• Indicate what you know for sure and what you do not know for sure

• Test your uncertain assumptions with user research.

  • You can use the administrative data in-house or existing research.

  • You can talk to citizens and observe how they use your (digital) services today - which we find even more effective and fun

Asking for honest feedback directly from citizens may be a bit outside your comfort zone. The experiments in the City Deal show that you can get started easily. For example: In Bruges, the project leader drew up a questionnaire with which she interviewed customers in the queue at the social grocery store. She quickly discovered that many customers of the social grocery store are not interested in a webshop and home delivery. They would miss social contact and not be able to see products with their own eyes. The conversations did reveal the need for a paper form to order products for the following week.

The example from Bruges shows that citizens at risk of digital exclusion are not always difficult to reach. Can you think of places in your own community where you can go to them? Can you appeal to members of the local accessibility council (for people with disabilities), the local elderly council (for older citizens), or a local association for people in poverty?

Take a look here if you want to learn more about how to conduct user research.

Listen to your internal staff

Digitising services touches more internal processes than we think. Digitisation has an impact on the work of internal employees and the applications they use. It therefore makes sense to involve front-line and back-office staff as well.

How do you proceed?

Create a 'customer journey' ('customer journey') of the current service and go through it step by step with a group of employees. A customer journey starts from the steps citizens go through to obtain a service: (1) discovering that a service exists; (2) finding out about it; (3) requesting the service; (4) getting the service; (5) coming back. On the customer journey, you indicate the needs and concerns you discovered in the user research. You now complement it with the needs and concerns of employees. You can also sound out the opportunities they see to improve the service and the internal underlying process for citizens and themselves.

Step 2: Prioritize which needs your digital solution should meet

The research in step 1 provides insights into what the digital solution and the associated service process require. Before you have a digital solution built, it is good to neatly list all requirements.

How do you proceed?

List what the website/application/platform must be able to do for citizens and internal employees. What specific requirements are there to ensure it can also be used by digitally vulnerable citizens?

Rarely are budget and time sufficient to fulfill all needs at once. It is therefore best to prioritize them into what is absolutely indispensable and what is just nice to have. You may even be able to eliminate some needs because research shows they aren't necessary after all. The prioritization determines what you will launch in the first version of your digital solution (MVP - 'minimal viable product') and what things you may add later.

Because choosing feels like losing, it makes sense to involve all stakeholders in the prioritization exercise. The managers of the service(s) that are being digitized, the IT manager, the communications service, the financial sponsor, the digital inclusion coach, ... each of them have their own view of the solution based on their expertise and responsibilities. Bringing together their expertise and interests increases the chance that the choices are coherent and balanced. Moreover, you are not alone in this difficult choice and you create support for the choices.

Step 4: Test and improve your solution

Did your internal IT department or supplier make a prototype of the digital solution? Or do you have a demo version available? Then it is very valuable to test that version with citizens before proceeding with final development/purchase.

How do you proceed?

• Look for potential future users. In particular, look for citizens at risk of digital exclusion. With five users you can go far!

• Think in advance of some relevant tasks that you can give to citizens in the test; For example, check whether you can make an appointment online in our municipality to request an e-ID; make an appointment to collect an e-ID; cancel an appointment.

• Sit with the test person at the smartphone or laptop. Put test person at ease: it is not them, but the digital application that is being tested. Give the tasks to the user one by one. Only intervene if the user is stuck.

Making your digital services inclusive is feasible and rewarding. This is demonstrated by the various experiments that the cities in the City Deal have set up over the past two years. We would like to thank the employees for taking this leap and share their learning lessons with us and you.

We hope that the step-by-step plan and practical examples in this blog post will inspire you and help you get started yourself!

Thank you very much to all partners in the City Deal 'e-inclusion by design' for the many valuable learning experiences that we can draw on for this blog post.