Citizen Experience
Introduction
With the evolution of theories related to customer experience, the development of human participation and human-centered design models, and growing consumer awareness and intensifying competition among countries marketing themselves and their cities to attract distinguished minds, a new field has begun to emerge: Citizen Experience. What does this field focus on? Who is responsible for it? What are its benefits? In this article, I’ll provide a brief introduction to the topic and pose many questions that will help crystallize the concept.
What draws a person to settle in any city on this planet? What makes people emigrate and leave their homelands? What is the secret of Dubai, for example, as a city in the Middle East, and how has it managed to attract this enormous number of minds from around the world? As a very simple example, take a look at the friendly message below, provided by Dubai Police to a visitor to the city.
The secret of any distinguished city lies in an integrated, interconnected ecosystem in which the citizen encounters a distinguished experience at every element of interaction. Anyone wanting to move and live anywhere will think about a host of things, including but not limited to: the ability to practice their religious beliefs, good education for their children, the availability of good healthcare services, a good and sustainable economy, less environmental and noise pollution, smooth and fast government services, a transparent government with low corruption, leisure facilities, easy transportation with multiple options, a fertile investment environment, simplified and fast government regulations, electronic government services, distinguished security agencies, an independent judicial system, high readiness to handle potential environmental disasters, the reputation of local residents and how open they are to newcomers and to strangers.
Most of what was mentioned above are aspects that countries leverage to market themselves through the practices of city marketing. These countries pay millions of dollars to global PR firms to improve their external reputation. Don’t forget that this new generation gets its information through the internet and social networks, and learning about any city or country before moving there has become incredibly easy given the openness of information, the abundance of social networks, and review sites and forums where people express their personal experiences.
Serving people, and designing government services and facilities to suit their needs, has become a goal for many advanced countries. Some have established dedicated government agencies exclusively for this purpose. What are we talking about here?
You, as a reader — wherever city you’re reading from — I want you to think about all the things you encounter daily outside your home, all the things you interact with.
Let’s take streets as an example. Are the streets prepared for walking or cycling alongside being prepared for cars? Are there enough markings printed on the road or guidance signs mounted on the sides? Are there enough parking spaces, free or paid? Is traffic smooth or congested, annoying, and stress-inducing?
The image below is from Britain, which, along with Japan, is considered a leader in street-printed signage.
And while we’re on the topic of streets, how would you describe the clarity of building signs as you drive along the street looking for a particular place? Are they uniform or random? Are they easy for a driver to see clearly, or must they get out of the car to see them?
On a visit of mine to a government building in one of the countries, despite using Google Maps I got lost when I arrived — there was no sign at the entrance indicating that it was the entrance to such-and-such government entity. When I went in, I discovered it was a different government building directly next door, which delayed me for my appointment and embarrassed me in front of the person I had promised to meet.
Additional questions: In all government offices, are there considerations for people with special needs, and are the routes accessible to them? As we see in the example below, in Sweden it is a state policy that all government facilities be prepared to receive visitors who use wheelchairs for mobility.
Let’s think for a moment about noise pollution. Switzerland closes most of its airports to incoming aircraft from 11 PM until 6 AM to reduce noise so that residents living near the airports can enjoy comfortable sleep. By contrast, I filed a complaint in one Arab city about excavation work that began at 10:30 PM and continued until the following morning. I didn’t get any response to the complaint until twelve days later — by which time the excavation work had ended after lasting more than a week, and I had developed sleep problems.
Case Studies: Who Is Responsible?
By interaction side: if we’re talking about streets and everything that happens above or below them, the responsible party at the first level is municipalities or government agencies responsible for their development. But if we’re talking about something bigger, like the following question:
Can all the elements of any government’s ecosystem be integrated? And how can governance, human-centered design, big data, open data, customer experience science, government excellence initiatives, and city marketing all integrate and come together under one umbrella to deliver a distinguished human experience?
The responsibility falls on the state, through the Ministry of Planning, for example, as the body managing a large program comprising several projects. These projects would be executed by dozens of ministries and government agencies. The matter is not easy and is more like a transformation plan taking no less than 5 years and possibly extending to 10 years or more, due to considerations related to the scope of authority and the funding allocated for programs of this magnitude.
Policy Lab
A government body in Britain whose function is to redesign the state’s policies to suit the beneficiaries. It does this through several approaches that rely on the participation of beneficiaries in policymaking, or on hearing their voice through what’s called user research and ethnographic research. Their role later extends to confirming the effectiveness of these policies when they enter implementation. This trend of involving citizens in policymaking is tied to citizen experience because it ensures greater transparency for the citizen and reinforces their loyalty and sense of belonging toward the place they live in. The familiar debate we used to hear between some citizens — one saying “what have you given your country?” and the other replying “what has my country given me?” — becomes a beautiful shared sentence: “what can we, together, give our country?”
Take a look at the citizen-engagement guide provided by the Canadian Policy Research Networks.
Civil Enforcement Officer
Another example, also from Britain: there’s a job title appointed by municipalities — Civil Enforcement Officer — whose duties, as the name suggests, revolve around ensuring civility and achieving it. They issue violations for any manifestation that contradicts civility under their regulations, including violations related to incorrect parking, spitting on the street, throwing cigarette butts on the street, throwing chewing gum on the street, and noise pollution such as that produced by loudspeakers or modified car engines. I cite this example to illustrate that some countries have not just set standards to ensure a better citizen experience but have also appointed people to oversee enforcement and issue violations for non-compliance.
18F
This case is from the United States. It’s a company that provides support to government entities and organizations to help them transform the way they deliver services and make them electronic. The digital experience, in general, is fundamental to this generation in their overall assessment of the experience they had anywhere. Locally, the company Elm plays this role in Saudi Arabia. One of the simplest rights — allow me to use this word — is to have a unified login mechanism to access all government services across all ministries, instead of having to remember several usernames and passwords. They call this approach a single sign-on solution.
We unfortunately, at the company level (let alone the city level), do not have this simple service — you’ll find us using several passwords and usernames to access different internal systems. But it’s a matter of time, and this positive contagion will reach us, God willing.
Additional questions on the digital experience for government websites: How easy is it to access a particular piece of information? How accurate is that information? Will this information conflict with another government source providing the same information? This integration reflects the government’s maturity in managing information and easing access to it. The British and New Zealand experiences offer lessons — I find them leaders in this area. Saudi Arabia, too, has a notable achievement in this area with the National Portal (Saudi).
Closing
I’ll flag that the main benefit of delivering a distinguished citizen experience is moving the economic wheel forward, by enhancing the proportion of tourists and attracting distinguished minds. It’s also important to flag the term Human Experience, which is in circulation and expresses the sum of human experiences across the many areas currently each managed separately — including customer experience, patient experience, student experience, citizen experience, and so on — to become a general indicator made up of several other indicators. Currently, no country actually does quantitative measurement of its performance across all these experiences, but there are sites that do similar studies to assess countries’ ecosystems and rank countries on that basis.
If you think about moving to another country with certain criteria for emigration, the Prosperity Index website provides a global ranking of most countries in the world based on certain criteria. Take a look at the site:
Will we one day see attention to the human experience? Will countries establish dedicated agencies or ministries for this purpose?
Until that time, I wish you all a good life and warm regards.
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