Regaining digital trust and enhancing digitisation in Australian Government agencies

Digital trust is a crucial part of today's working operations and is particularly important in government and public service sectors.

Documentation and communication services must be watertight when dealing with data that is often expansive and sensitive.

New research commissioned by Adobe has found that Australian Government agencies are significantly lacking in digital trust and not successfully utilising cloud and digitisation initiatives. Not only does this negatively impact public service outcomes, but it also slows workflow and prevents further infrastructure development.

As the pandemic continues to change the way we interact, digitisation has fast become one of the most crucial processes for businesses to adapt. Having a digitised ecosystem of documents, tools and data can help bolster security, improve workflow and ultimately to deliver great citizen experiences.

While the report showcases a growing understanding from Australian agencies of the need for better digital trust and solutions, there are still significant challenges that are clearly prevalent. Adobe, with the help of Forrester Research, hopes that this new study will provide insight and depth into the scale of the problems while also providing solutions and recommendations.

Agencies were generally found to be ill-equipped to address digital-document-enabled delivery and other digital services. Looking at digital enablement more closely, 68% of respondents said a lack of technology and tools is impacting employee productivity, and 58% said that their agency has difficulty maintaining security and confidentiality when controlling data. It was also surprising to find that only 14% of agencies reported to have entirely digitised their document processes.

So what are some of the barriers that are preventing agencies from implementing successful solutions and enhancing digital trust?

Adobe director of digital media B2B strategy and GTM for APAC Chandra Sinnathamby says it can be a number of things, but it mainly comes down to regulatory, security and adoption issues.

"The Australian Government has the IRAP (Infosec Registered Assessors Program) certification which is required for solutions, and this is often not a short process. It can take up to 18 months for solutions to be assessed at a government level," he says.

Foundational security layers are also often very complex and take time to implement, Sinnathmby says, and these are crucial to creating trust which is critical for adoption especially when citizens are sharing sensitive PII data.

There are many workflows that need to be digitised to improve citizen experiences, and often those that get done first are the ones that are most critical. If things are generally working fine even if they are manual processes, they are not focused on.

"Governments are motivated by different factors and typically they have been later adopters than the commercial segment. They tend to see how it has been adopted by commercial segment and reflect on how technologies can deliver commercial dividend," he says.

It is also paramount that there is a focus on digital trust with citizen services, as typically they are sharing more sensitive data when they apply for government services therefore digital trust is important for adoption. citizens need to feel that services are secure for them to share data.

"CX is not just the domain for commercial organisations, citizens are consumers and have the same expectations from government services," says Sinnathamby.

"We know that from pandemic citizens have increased the CX expectations and government agencies need to realise this and deliver better G2C services.

Adobe works with agencies to provide a variety of tools and services across a wide range of processes, helping them promote better digital trust and increase digitisation. With document regulation being one of the key focuses for many agencies, Adobe Document Cloud acts as a fully integrated system to help digitise and accelerate workflows at all stages.

"When creating a document, there is the create stage, the collaboration stage, and the execution stage. In each stage, we provide technologies that help digitise and accelerate the workflow," says Sinnathamby.

"Adobe Document Cloud also supports things like click to certify publishing and certified receipts, almost like registered mail. We invest in getting our solutions assessed, especially ones relating to electronic signatures like Acrobat Sign, so government agencies can have complete confidence that standards have been met."

The report also found that although most Australian agencies were falling behind when it came to digitisation, there was still a significant drive for change. Statistics showed that the top priorities for agencies over the next 12 months included improvement in the use of data for decision-making (70%), the acceleration of response to market change (64%), becoming a digital government for IT modernisation (62%), and improvement of overall risk management, including data security and privacy (62%).

It is recommended that having clear communication and end-to-end services can help reach these prioritised goals, and investing in collaborative practice when implementing digitisation strategy can greatly enhance agencies.

"I would say the same thing we say to our commercial customers. Think about the end to end customer journey or the citizen journey," says Sinnathamby.

"Look at every touchpoint and then see how you can improve it and how you can deliver the experiences in a seamless manner.

With strong partners like Adobe, agencies and private enterprises alike can regain digital trust and bolster secure and productive digitisation strategies.

To find out more about Adobe Document Cloud and to get in touch with Adobe about its services, click here.