Tying Digital Services to Mission Achievement
How can you demonstrate that your website and other digital services are effectively supporting your agency’s mission? With rapid technological change, it’s not easy to track and report on the success of all your digital efforts, since tools and performance measures are constantly evolving.
The requirements in the Digital Government Strategy offer a framework for federal executive branch agencies to implement common performance and customer satisfaction metrics across all their digital channels, including Web, mobile, search, and social media. Reporting on a standard set of data can help you develop baseline success measures, and give managers the information they need to make data–driven decisions around digital services delivery.
Consider these other ideas:
- Cost Avoidance: Online interactions are generally much less expensive than in–person, so you should evaluate how much different types of transactions cost your agency, to illustrate money saved/cost avoidance when you can provide information and services digitally, instead of in–person or by phone.
- Non-Monetary Factors: Financial value is not always the most important factor, especially with online tools. Consider how your customers rate your online channels in relation to more traditional channels such as telephone interactions. Is the satisfaction rating higher for online transactions than in–person? If not, what can you do to address that?
- Benchmarking and Context: Baseline metrics enable benchmarking against other agencies or organizations who provide similar services. However, depending on your mission, success for you may look very different than for another agency. For example, success for a “portal” website can be shown by people spending a short amount of time on the site, since they are routed through the portal to where they need to go; but for an “informational” site, short time on site could mean that people are not finding what they need, so they’re leaving. Compare “apples to apples” and provide context around your digital metrics, to illustrate what the data really means.
Content Lead:
Alycia Piazza
Page Reviewed/Updated: August 20, 2012
