Around 71 percent of Indians are of the view that the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to greater use of technology in their daily lives in the future.
The EY Connected Citizen Survey was conducted by Ipsos MORI, with 1000 respondents from India between the age of 18 to 50, and globally 12,100 respondents across 12 countries.
According to a new ‘EY Connected Citizen Survey,’ Respondents in India hold a favorable attitude towards technology and see an important role for technological innovation in public service delivery.
Changing online behaviour
The survey further pointed out that 55 percent of Indian respondents stated that they use the internet at least once a day, while 38 percent of respondents stated that they use the internet all the time for personal use (e.g. website access, email, social networking, etc.).
In terms of activities, 78 percent of respondents used social networking sites, 75 percent used the internet for shopping, while 74 percent used it for streaming TV, music or videos.
Looking ahead, 81 percent of the respondents think that technology will change the way they bank and shop, 80 percent of the respondents think that it will change the way they work/study, and 79 percent of the respondents think that it will change the way they entertain themselves.
“Digitization is the new normal and the Indian Government was quick to adopt technologies, especially during the pandemic, to deliver safe, secure and improved digital services to all citizens.
Going forward, a more inclusive digitalization approach including unique digital ids, smart portals and mobile apps, integrated digital platforms, etc. on the back of design thinking, customer experience labs and data analytics will help the government design their services to make each touchpoint better, faster and more efficient, and to move towards more proactive and even predictive service delivery to Indian citizens, said Gaurav Taneja, Partner and Leader, Government and Public Sector, EY India.
Data Privacy standards
About 80 percent of Indian citizens feel that the government and public services in India have been effective in using digital technology to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Respondents in India are more likely than average to use mobile applications to provide feedback on public services. They are comfortable with technology replacing face-to-face human interaction and are inclined to use an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot to communicate with the government.
They want the government to prioritize making certain services available online including pension planning, resources to help people set up businesses and providing more ways for citizens to have an online say in government decision making.
Over the past year, the pandemic has increased the need for governments across the world to offer more services remotely, and in some cases, they have been delivered entirely online.
This has resulted in the generation of much larger volumes of citizens’ data which is then collected by governments. Compared to other countries, there are fewer concerns about data privacy in India, the survey said.
Around 63 percent of Indians feel comfortable in sharing their personal data with the government online in order to access a service, while 34 percent don’t feel comfortable in sharing the same.
Similarly, 57 percent feel comfortable in sharing their personal data with a company in order to perform a transaction and 48 percent feel comfortable in sharing their personal data through social networking services.
Globally,53 percent of those surveyed think that privacy and security risks around how their data is shared outweigh the benefits.
At the time of the survey, eight in ten participants said they were happy with their quality of life prior to the pandemic (81 percent)while less than half were satisfied at the time of the survey (45 percent).
When it came to the use of public services, 40 percent of the respondents feel that making more use of online and digital technologies in the provision of public services would make the biggest difference to the quality of public services they receive.
39 percent of the respondents stated that providing online resources for people to learn new skills or look for a new job and making much more government and public services available online, respectively, should be the key priorities for the government of India.
