News
Research suggests the UK public is ready for a more digital government
August 2022 by Utimaco
A recently released report by Utimaco has shown that the UK’s general public has conflicted attitudes toward the increasing digitalisation of public services. On one hand, 50% of respondents indicated that they prefer using digital services over paper, when possible, with a further 23% having no preference. Only 20% preferred to use physical documents.
The most common reason for preferring digital services was faster processing times, with 57% of respondents citing this. Greater convenience followed closely behind with 56%, though only 10% of respondents believe that using digital services are more secure.
The research, ‘Circles of Trust: How the UK Public Perceives Digital Risk‘, surveyed internet users across the UK, Germany, and Spain to discover their attitudes towards security in the government, healthcare and automotive sectors, as well as their general feelings about internet security. The answers to all questions told a similar story: respondents were generally enthusiastic about connected technology but worried about the potential security problems.
The survey was broken down by age, gender, and locale. As one might expect, scepticism of digital technology increased with age, but surprisingly it was quite common amongst younger people. In fact, the group who was least enthusiastic about using government services digitally was the 18-24 cohort, 45% of whom preferred digital interactions compared to 46% of the 55+ group. The youngest group was also least likely to feel that the digital information held about them was secure (32%) and only 50% believed that digitalisation would lead to faster processing times, versus 65% for the 45-54 group.
There were also significant differences between the various regions of the UK. While 58% of Scottish respondents, and 57% from the South of England prefer digital interactions, only 38% of Welsh respondents did so. They were not any more or less worried about security than average but were twice as likely to suggest there were no advantages to using digital means to interact with public services (22% of Welsh respondents versus a national average of 11%). They were also much more likely to cite a lack of personal interaction and difficulty using computer systems as disadvantages with digitized public services.
In general, the results of the report show that there is strong support for digital public services throughout the UK, but that worries around security may be holding back their wider adoption. Government bodies should be looking seriously at their security systems to ensure that there are no large-scale breaches that can erode trust, and at how they communicate to their users how they are being protected.
“It is extremely important that as the public sector increasingly embraces digitalisation, it understands what the general public think about this major shift in the way we are asked to manage our lives,” says Ansgar Steden, Chief Revenue Officer at Utimaco. "We see that overall most people from most UK demographics are enthusiastic about the speed and convenience of digital services, but worries about security remain. By concentrating on next-generation security, governments can provide better service, save money and keep their users secure."
The survey results form part of the larger whitepaper that examines similar attitudes towards the government, automotive and the digital ecosystem in general, across the UK, as well as Germany and Spain.
