The federal government in Brazil will enable citizens to rate the quality of digital service provision and set minimum standards for online services; it has been announced this week.

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According to a resolution published by the Ministry of Economy on Tuesday (Jan 25), the user satisfaction assessment aims to ensure users have the right to participate in the evaluation of public services through "adequate, simple, reliable and anonymized data collection instruments".

In addition, the assessment is intended to provide technical information to support the design, monitoring and ongoing improvement of public services from a user perspective. It is also expected to inform the prioritization of digital improvement and prioritization efforts while also promoting transparency, as user ratings will be publicly available on a monthly basis in a ranking format.

Digital public services will be assessed in terms of satisfaction and perceived quality based on their experience with the service, according to the government. The user will indicate this on a five-point scale, with dimensions to be assessed, including clarity of the information provided, ease of use, quality of communication channels provided, service availability and the cost or effort spent to obtain the service online.

The resolution noted that such assessments will not be a mandatory step in service provision. The plan is to make the assessments available after the end of the last stage of service provision or towards the end of the intermediate stages of the standard service process.

The government bodies will be required to maintain data interoperability between their services and the user satisfaction assessment tool. In addition, they must ensure the data is not used improperly or contrary to the public interest.

Since the digitization of public services in Brazil gained momentum in 2019, about 3,400 citizen services are provided online: this corresponds to 72% of all services provided by the federal government. The goal is that all services will be fully digital in 2022. According to research published in 2021, the government estimates that more than 60% of the country's connected population - about 84 million people -- is using digital citizen services, which have seen a sharp increase in uptake since the COVID-19 pandemic.

From a financial perspective, the government reports that digital services so far generated savings of 3.1 billion Brazilian reais ($580 million), of which 2.3 billion Brazilian reais ($430 million) are savings relating to time and money saved by the population when accessing services, while the remainder represents government savings.

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