Whether it likes it or not, the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital will be held primarily responsible for the success or failure of SAAQClic. Minister Éric Caire has an interest in not slipping away: this is his first real test at the head of this ministry.
Éric Caire publicly released his ministry from any responsibility at the end of last week. “I cannot make my teams responsible for a project that existed before they were set up,” he told The Press.
This is where he is wrong.
O captain, what captain?
Because the ministry appears as the government authority behind the operations of SAAQClic. It is he who authenticates the users of the platform.
The ministry’s presence on the SAAQClic site is clearly visible at least three times during the registration process for the SAAQ portal. The first time: the new registrant must check a consent box “for my personal information to be used by the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital to verify its accuracy”.
Later in the registration process, you must consent this time to the sharing of personal data between Revenu Québec, the SAAQ and the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital to confirm the accuracy of certain information.
Here again, what we understand is that Éric Caire’s ministry presents itself as the puppeteer who pulls the strings when various online government services must interact with each other. It is the authority that validates the proper functioning of the machine.
Publicly disclaiming any responsibility afterwards rings false. You have to wonder how the Legault government would have reacted if the SAAQ had launched its portal with total success. Would he have simply congratulated the organization and its independent management, or would he have tried to earn some of the praise?
We all know the image of the captain on his boat: the captain is the last on board when leaving a sinking ship. It is a bit strange that the one who must lead the major digital shift of the entire Quebec government abandons ship in the first wave…
User experience
Seen from the outside, SAAQClic is the first step towards a window and a digital identity giving access to all of its services. We can already imagine that other problems like those observed in recent days at the SAAQ will occur in the future.
Unsurprisingly, the first problem with the SAAQClic site is not the site itself. Because from a strictly functional point of view, it meets expectations. When you have the right information to register, it doesn’t take five minutes and you can access all of the SAAQ’s services, right from your home computer.
SAAQClic is not the most ergonomic site in town: rather than the Internet user being guided very gently towards the tasks he wishes to accomplish, he must go there a little gropingly, and it seems almost guaranteed that it will run into error messages at least once or twice.
The expression “user experience” dear to web programmers these days must not have been mentioned often in the offices of the SAAQ when thinking about the platform… But at least we don’t queue outside in cold weather .
A shift that is not technological
The importance of the user experience is not to be neglected both on SAAQClic and for the continuation of the digital shift attempted by Quebec. Otherwise, this turn will not take place, and the whole project will end up on the side of the road, in the ditch.
User experience is the feeling that sticks in people’s minds after visiting a website, store, or any other place of interaction with a business. If the feeling is positive, the user will tell his relatives about it. It creates a ripple effect. It’s the start of something that can go viral.
If the sentiment is negative… Let’s just say that you often only get one chance to make a good first impression.
Minister Cairo must realize by looking at the SAAQClic site that his role is not a technological one. His task is first and foremost human: he must convince the majority of people who do business with the SAAQ and who do not want to use the Internet to do so that it is the best way to obtain satisfaction.
This is moreover the first observation made by the management of the SAAQ now that the site is online: it should have been better explained to the public what the new site allows to do, first, then it should have been explained to them that SAAQClic is much faster and more user-friendly than a visit to the counter.
Building Trust
This isn’t the first time a government agency’s digital transformation plan hasn’t gone to plan. Each time, the elected officials assure that it will be the last. The lesson to be learned is therefore rather simple: governments very rarely learn from their previous failures.
Seen by the Quebec population, the SAAQClic site is the first in a series of actions aimed at harmonizing government digital activities. There, we are talking about driver’s licenses and vehicle registration, but then it will be Revenu Québec, then it will be access to the health network, to the services of the Ministry of Education and to that of the Family, And so on.
Things are off to a bad start for this digital identity project. For a simple reason: we thought that the population would embark massively on the project – including people who fear like the plague the old PC which accumulates dust in their basement.
Let’s see if the lesson will be learned this time.