Governments are working to make their public services more personalised and proactive to ensure that they not only meet people’s needs but are also accessible, inclusive and empowering for diverse population segments, particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged people.

Sweden offers an example of this trend in the difficult process of navigating the array of administrative tasks required when a loved one dies. Public authorities worked together to create Efterlevandeguiden, or Survivor's Guide, a website that gathers essential information (from the Tax, Pensions and Social Insurance agencies, as well as from private and social partners, such as funeral homes) and walks survivors through the various necessary steps. Going beyond the conventional bundling of services, Efterlevandeguiden is built around empathy; it offers support services for dealing with trauma and loss and paying special attention to overlooked survivors, such as children or elderly. In 2023, some 384,000 people used the website.

This case in Sweden and others show that governments are moving away from standardised, one-size-fits-all approaches to public services that can stay below their full potential to serve people. In an effort to make services more accessible, inclusive and equal, governments are addressing challenges and barriers certain individuals may face in accessing public services. And they are tailoring services to meet the needs of diverse population segments and communities. Providing relevant, understandable and accessible services allows governments to build stronger relationships with citizens, earning their trust and stimulating their engagement.

Governments are taking innovative approaches to ensure public services are tailored to people’s needs and preferences. Since its early stages, personalisation was intended to make the relationship between public services and users more direct, efficient and effective (Dijk et al., 2005[35]). Yet challenges have emerged, in particular, when service providers have to deal with a wide range of needs. Instead of reducing inequalities, they might unintentionally widen the gaps among different user groups (Pieterson, Ebbers and van Dijk, 2007[36]). Now governments are taking a structured approach to tackle these challenges, ensuring that proactiveness and personalisation efforts leave no one behind. Further, governments are harnessing the possibilities of technological infrastructures to building proactive public services, which do not require formal requests to be delivered, aiming at a user-friendly and frictionless interactions with users while contributing to improve services’ effectiveness and impact through their increased uptake (McBride et al., 2023[37]).

Governments are developing innovative public services to meet the needs of users in specific situations. This personalised approach aims to overcome traditional public service standardisation by driving accessibility and equity focusing on addressing the needs of specific segments of users. For example, in Serbia, TransportSign uses AI to make announcements available in sign language (see Box 4.1). In Brazil, the Izzistrit! Platform provides personalised information on best mobility options for people with disabilities. And the U.S. is streamlining post-disaster assistance through the development of a simple solution that is responsive to the needs of the specific segment of population affected by a disaster (see Case Study 3).

Governments are increasingly organising services around peoples’ needs, experiences and life events rather than around traditional administrative silos. This focus makes services more accessible and relevant and ensures that they address people’s needs at important or complex moments such as life events (e.g. birth of child, death of a relative), business events (e.g. founding or closing of a company, paying taxes), critical experiences (e.g. pandemics, natural disasters), and thematic areas or life domains (e.g. household, automobile, professional life, resolving a dispute).

These efforts prioritise seamless, multi-channel solutions that put the individual at the centre of service delivery. These solutions reflect the fact that we live in an era where the distinctions between physical and virtual are blurred, and that services should be based on people’s experiences and needs rather than on technology. This perspective has often been referred to as “post-digitality,” and related innovations as “personal government” (Raieste, Ojamaa and Solvak, 2023[38]). For example, in Norway, DigiUng aims to group all youth-related public information and services in one digital ecosystem across all sectors of society. In Estonia, the events-based service platform that can support users in various key moments of their lives, such as getting married, having a baby, becoming liable to national defence obligation or seeking funding for their business.

Governments are experimenting with behavioural science to design and deliver services that are more accessible and inclusive. These techniques enhance the understanding of diverse human behaviours, enabling governments to prevent unnecessary burden, and meet specific needs of persons and communities. By identifying and reducing the unnecessary frictions that impede decision-making and action, these methods can streamline services, making them more accessible and user-friendly (OECD, 2024[39]). To support the use of these techniques, the OECD has recently convened the first International Sludge Academy, offering guidance to practitioners on choosing experimental or observational methods to evaluate solutions in specific contexts. For instance, New Zealand set up a government unit that integrates behavioural science and design thinking to address complex needs more effectively, and Peru used behavioural tools to reduce red tape in higher education and to improve the submission of accurate and complete complaints to its intellectual property authority.

Developing more personalised public services can deliver value and ensure accessibility, inclusion, and equity. These innovations expand the possible options governments can take to improve user experiences and enable them to achieve their desired outcomes while using public services, as put forward by the OECD Recommendation on Human-Centred Public Administrative Services (OECD, 2024[27]). Yet this approach has several challenges. First, customisation processes are energy-intensive; the more specific target groups are, the more these processes require commitment, investment and capacity to maintain them over time. Deciding the optimal degree of personalisation can be a challenge, as this also has implications on financial sustainability. Second, the lack of a common strategy can limit the ability of public services to adapt their solutions and thus provide more accessible, inclusive and equitable services. Developing customised solutions requires the coordination of all actors in the field. Third, personalisation could also stigmatise or devalue people and services, which could lead to the perception that access to the service is not universal. Finally, personalised solutions may not be easy to compare, and measuring their success may be more difficult.

Good practices for improving accessibility and inclusion:

• Governments should embed proactiveness and personalisation efforts into broader people-focused initiatives. Both approaches should be driven by the principle of universal and equal access to public services, ensuring ithese interventions do not (re)create inequalities among users.

• Engage with people continuously. From design and testing to implementation and finally evaluations, users should be at the centre of personalised services.

• Balance personalisation with realistic cost and time considerations. Setting up successful solutions to address specific user needs is resource-intensive and requires sustained workforce commitment. Governments should thoroughly evaluate these factors to avoid partial implementation or unsustainable personalisation initiatives.

In the wake of a disaster, survivors are often traumatised and overwhelmed by their search for support to meet basic needs, rebuild their lives and reopen their businesses. In the United States, an increasing number of people are affected by natural disasters each year; the country saw some 311 disasters in 2023, up from 108 disasters registered 10 years ago. Recognising a whole-of-government need to more strategically and effectively serve the public, the Biden Administration directed agencies to co-develop solutions for Americans during critical moments, and provided the foundation for a dedicated Recovering from a Disaster team and portfolio of work.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and a cross-government team of experts are reimagining the ways disaster survivors apply for and receive assistance. They are working to simplify the assistance application process, reduce administrative burdens for survivors and make the post-disaster assistance website, DisasterAssistance.gov, more intuitive.

The cross-agency Recovering from a Disaster team set out to identify pain points, design targeted interventions and implement them in a phased approach. The initial discovery work consisted of compiling years of feedback from disaster survivors and conducting interviews. Interviews targeted 43 disaster survivors (including low-income renters and homeowners, new immigrants, veterans and people with disabilities) as well as frontline staff and government/nonprofit staff to guarantee that diverse voices were heard. From this discovery research, the team was able to map out a comprehensive service journey, uncovering difficulties for survivors when seeking out assistance.

These challenges informed the Streamlining Disaster Assistance Processes project, a coordinated effort to streamline intake on DisasterAssistance.gov and FEMA call centres. This project made the online platform easier to navigate, with visual progress tracking and information collection that better meets each survivors’ individual needs. For most disaster survivors, these changes are expected to reduce the registration time by more than 15%. The project also streamlined non-application pages on DisasterAssistance.gov, allowing survivors to find assistance faster, and built a framework for data sharing between government agencies, so survivors only have to share information once.

In addition to that project, the team also leads initiatives to help agencies more holistically support survivors. The Building a Trauma-Informed Care Approach project provides public servants with resources and training to improve interactions with survivors. The Calculating a More Holistic Burden Estimate initiative provides a tool for agencies to anticipate hurdles survivors face when seeking assistance, and pinpoint ways to reduce stress and burden. These solutions have been implemented gradually, with a clear concern for user testing on the ground and public-share outs of results ensuring continuous feedback loops. By reducing the burden of applying for disaster assistance, more eligible people can access the recovery funding they need.