Imagine a bouncer counting how many people enter a club, but never how many leave again. That’s exactly what’s happening in administrations worldwide right now. We measure how many people visit a portal. But not how many leave again, frustrated.

That’s exactly one of the most exciting findings from the new OECD Digital Government Outlook 2026. Administrations measure the number of applications, but not the number of drop-offs. The number of users, but not the administrative processes that actually get completed successfully.

To take digital government to the next level, we need more numbers — a lot more numbers. And we need to ask even more questions than we do today:

· When and where do citizens fail?
· Which question can’t they answer?
· Which technical terms don’t they understand?
· Do they abandon the application after three minutes, or after thirty?
· Are documents missing?
· Is the process too complicated?
· Or have they simply lost patience?

As long as we can’t answer these questions, we’re mainly measuring activity — not quality. Yet successful digital companies have long known this metric.
They analyse every step of a customer journey and know exactly where users drop off. So why do administrations know less about their users than online shops do?

Image: This image was created with AI.
Source: OECD, Digital Government Outlook 2026.

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