The Passport Services Digital Leaders Study

This study is the first in a series of assessments by BearingPoint’s Government and Public Sector team of the digital maturity of core citizen-facing public services as Government administrations around the world evolve and reconfigure their services and organisations for the ‘new normal’ society and economy.

The acceleration of digitalisation initiatives of new citizen facing channels and services is a key priority for Government organisations, which is further emphasized in the wake of current global pandemic. In addition to the traditional drivers for digitalisation such as increased service availability times and citizen access channels, new requirements to provide services with low/minimal face-to-face interactions have assumed higher importance.

BearingPoint’s citizen services maturity model incorporates the leading practices and capabilities that our consultants have developed from designing solutions to enable the effective delivery of public services for a wide range of central and local Government, social and healthcare clients.

Our study includes a review and comparison of the Passport Services provided by Government organisations in 20 countries worldwide, highlighting common service design features, unique service elements and digital innovations in the provision of the service to citizens.

Providing an outside-in, citizen perspective of a country’s Passport Service, BearingPoint assessed how they are designed and delivered, using a two-stage approach. Firstly, an assessment of the overall service maturity based on both general leading industry practices and our knowledge of future trends and possibilities. This focusing on a five-stage model for measuring the maturity of a Government organisation’s service capability and to what level service design is embedded in the organization.

Government and Public Sector organisations across Europe are accelerating their digitalisation initiatives as a result of the pandemic.  In addition to the existing drivers for improving citizen experience and service levels, the need to minimise interactions through physical channels and to redeploy staff to areas of higher demand has increased the priority of digitalisation projects.  This is a trend we are seeing across all areas of the public service in which BearingPoint is working including social and employment services, healthcare, local government and transportation, but with varying levels of maturity across different countries.

Andrew Montgomery, Global Leader Government and Public Sector

And secondly, a more detailed evaluation of the digital maturity of Passport Services included in the study was conducted. This included further analysis into the Passport Services that currently provide a partial or full online passport application service. This detailed evaluation was completed across three dimensions and over 40 criteria using BearingPoint’s established Digital Leader’s Study methodology.

The dimensions assessed include:

• The Online Service
• Service Offering
• Ease of Use

Digital Maturity Results

The graph below outlines in further detail how each of the countries scored in the Digital Maturity Assessment across all three dimensions.

Want to learn more about your country, please download a copy of our report. You can also get in touch with us - we would be more than happy to discuss the study results.