Will People Pay More for Better Government Service?

This post has been updated to correct the percentage of NIC online services that are run on a fee basis.

A majority of Americans would rather pay more for a government service than wait in a long line, according to a new survey commissioned by the largest provider of e-government services at the state level.

About 67 percent of survey respondents said they’d pay a $1 to $5 efficiency fee if they could renew their driver’s license, apply for a fishing license or receive some other government service online rather than by waiting in line at a government building. Another 30 percent said they’d pay $10 or more for that convenience and 14 percent said they’d pay $20 or more, according to the survey performed by Wakefield Research for NIC.

NIC provides e-government services such as building mobile applications and Web services for more than 20 states.

The survey results could have implications for the federal government, which is pressing agencies to offer a level of customer service that competes with the private sector but has shied away from charging for expedited service.

NIC manages about 7,000 online services at the state level and about 30 percent are run on a fee-for-service model, said Angela Skinner, the firm’s communications director. The only fee-for-service program the company manages at the federal level, she said, is a pre-employment screening program for the Transportation Department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which charges trucking and bus companies for information about job applicants’ driving records.

A fee-for-service model could fund big improvements to people’s interactions with government. That’s the model of Turbotax and other online tax preparers, after all. It might be a dangerous proposition, though, to append convenience fees to typically free services such as discussing Medicare claims or veterans benefits with an agency representative. Such “categorical changes” can have long-term consequences.