Invisible Digital Barriers In Gov

The shift to digital has transformed every industry. While governments often follow private sector innovation, they too are embracing digital transformation as a cost-effective and efficient way to meet growing customer demands and benefits all improving efficient use of tax payer dollars. Around the world, many governments are leading the way in digital service delivery.

However, good government service delivery is inherently complex, far more so than the private sector. The stereotype of the ‘tired public servant’ ignores the reality: within government agencies, there are highly capable, well-regarded professionals deeply committed to public service. But they face enormous structural barriers, including fragmented silos with competing interests, budget cycles that incentivise short-term gains over long-term citizen outcomes, and procurement systems that channel vast public funds into processes and purchasing administration rather than prioritising value-for-money solutions. Additionally, governments often rely on expensive vendors whose incentives are tied to launching services based on rigid requirements and a specific date for a one off launch rather than ensuring a usable, inclusive, secure essential service that’s going to be relied upon by the entire population for years to come. The result? Costly, unreliable, and disjointed services that are difficult to maintain, secure, and improve.

The government ecosystem is a beast of competing agency priorities and entrenched bureaucracy, resistant to the fast-moving, iterative approaches needed for modern digital services. But often, when there’s talk of ‘agile’ or contemporary digital innovation’ there’s also an inherent tension between technologists obsession with the ‘ship it fast’ mentality and the need to create universally accessible experiences. This tension is particularly significant in digital governments, where essential services must be accessible to all citizens, but is certainly seen the private sectors shift to digital also.

Unlike the private sector, government delivers essential services, to everyone. They are not provided any grace or decision-making remit regarding their target market, or primary user personas. And then wash that against the complexity of government’s service offering and the ‘machine’ of decision-making. The breadth and complexity of government services is difficult to compare to any private sector. From identity verification, ordering a bin, registering a birth, to tax, grants, tree lopping, payments, fines, healthcare, telco networks, parking permits, school enrollments, licenses, disability support, or whether you’re registering your pet or the death of a loved one it’s in scope. A 22-year-old professional in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, a DeafBlind pensioner in remote Queensland, a recently arrived non-English-speaking refugee, someone learning incarceration or a small business barista in Fitzroy—all are customers of government services.

Yet, with the shift to digital, many of these customers are now invisible.

To understand the impact of digital exclusion, lets go back in history and consider the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Twenty years ago, as it is today, this iconic piece of infrastructure was essential for accessing Sydney’s central business district. But then, the Sydney CBD was a buzzing hub of essential services —where banking, government offices, legal services, medical specialist, travel agents and commerce thrived. However, it was inaccessible to many. With 60 steps on either side, people with physical disabilities, older Australians, and parents with prams were effectively denied access.

It’s easy to argue that alternative transport options existed, but, they were often equally inaccessible—train stations without lifts, buses without wheelchair-friendly doors. This bridge is pretty iconic as a destination in its own right but it was also an exclusive connector where some Australians were cut off from essential services only available in person, creating social and economic disadvantage.

In 2016, after a decade of advocacy from the Physical Disability Council Network (PDCN), the government committed to installing lifts on either side of the bridge. However, just a year later, citing budget constraints, this commitment was revoked. The PDCN responded with a public campaign, capturing media attention by showing people with severe disabilities crawling up the bridge’s steps. The public outcry led to action, and in 2016, two lifts were finally installed.

Today, you’d be hardpressed to find an accountant in the CBD who will run through a paper-based ledger with a business owner, a travel agent, a government office, meet with an insurance broker and with the announcements of the big four banks' intentions to close banking branches, it won't be long until banking services are solely available via digital channels.

Today, digital infrastructure like authentication can be compared to a modern Harbour Bridge. Services that once required a physical presence—banking, accounting, government transactions, insurance—are now primarily digital. So take a moment to think about those annoying recapture experiences, you know the ones where you have to select the bikes or traffic light pictures. Now imagine you’re blind. Unbeknown to most, Recapture has come along way. Often recapture is actually unseen or an audio alternative is available but there are plenty of examples where legacy recapture products are still live. And while there have been major advancements in alternative bot detection recapture solutions with audio options, take a moment to think about the impact experienced every single day for the 100,000+ DeafBlind Australians.

The shift to digital is beneficial in many ways: lower service costs for businesses (that arguably should be passed on to consumers), greater flexibility for customers to do their life admin at 3am in their PJs should they wish to do so, and empowering people with disabilities to access information and services independently like never before. The digital future is bright, in so many ways. However, creating universally accessible digital services is far more complex than many realise, and customer touch points via digital channels are now invisible. And if designers and developers creating these services and products have never met someone blind, deaf or neurodivergent it’s natural that they assume everyone navigates the online world the same way they do.

If a person who depends on a mobility wheelchair had to crawl down a flight of stairs to access a bank branch to withdraw money, or crawl upstairs into a courtroom to access legal aid it would generate public outrage.

Yet, when someone is unable to access digital banking services, a government service or a train timetable, in todays world it merely registers as ‘traffic analytics’ or an ‘abandonment drop off point’—data on an observability dashboard’ with no visibility into which customers are impacted or why. Organisations relying on these impersonal metrics struggle to truly understand what’s happening on the other end of the screen and to whom. And if you can’t see the problem, you can’t solve it.

Most businesses and governments want to do the right thing, but they lack specific, actionable insights. Dashboards presenting digital engagement data rarely reflect real-world experiences. Without meaningful feedback, service providers are left searching for solutions in the dark.

The impact of digital inclusion is not mutually exclusive to the private or public sectors, in fact they’re intertwined. Consider digital banking. Many financial services are accessible if only strictly consider certain products rather than foundational dependencies across the user journey critical to accessing the services. Opening a bank generally requires a 100-point ID check, where the attributes of at least two government-issued identification documents must be verified through the Commonwealth’s Document Verification System (DVS). However, while the system accepts driver’s licenses as a valid form of identification across every state and territory, it does not recognise photo ID cards—despite both being issued by the same state government agencies under the same policy conditions.

For many Australians—including people who are blind, older citizens, migrants, and individuals with physical impairments—obtaining a driver’s license is not an option (for good reason). While restricting drivers' licenses makes sense for road safety, denying individuals access to online services or, indeed identification seems pretty outrageous. But in modern digital ways of working, these people are termed ‘edge-cases’.

There’s lots of talk in Canberra about the promise that a new identity system can bring, but for now, and the foreseeable short term, Australia and Australians depend on the DVS identity verification system. It’s relied upon to access real estate, open a bank account, apply for a government grant and for so many other services. But for about 20% of the population, those that have the most to gain from shifting to digital, are at the greatest risk of being left behind.

We live in a society that tends to seek scapegoats, shifting criticism away from specific services—like opening a bank account—and onto government identity systems. Here, the focus is on the national document verification system. While it’s tempting to dismiss this system as hopeless and blame the Minister or Senior Beaurocrat accountable, such criticism oversimplifies the issue. It’s an enormous challenge for the nation’s most experienced and capable leaders to integrate diverse records from various states and territories into one unified gateway. Moreover, given that the document verification system is one of the nation’s most critical identification assets, protecting the most sensitive personal information of all Austrians, its administrators understandably adopt a cautious approach to change. This highlights the inherent tension between security and usability and underscores the deep systemic barriers faced by many Australians.

Digital inclusion is a shared responsibility between the government and private sector, with a clear obligation for political and corporate leaders to unite in driving change. There's a need for collaboration across state, federal, and private sectors to ensure no Australian is left behind. A good starting point would be removing the term "edge-case" from Australian boardrooms and brightly post-it-covered corridors. When government and private sector leaders can clearly see the people impact, they can then begin to solve the problem successfully. Urgent action is needed, or millions will continue to face barriers to essential services, perpetuating inequality and preventing full societal participation. All citizens must be able to access education, services and employment opportunities with dignity and ease. And if you don't have a bleeding heart - remember the compelling commercial business case where a digital transaction is probably less than 2% the cost to serve someone over the counter.