An Enterprise Approach to Connected Government

Governments have long sought to meet constituents where they are with digital information, services and processes. Despite significant progress, agencies are still addressing technology and integration gaps to meet rapidly growing constituent expectations.

Agencies grapple with disparate systems and solutions that prevent streamlined workflows and data aggregation. Constituents want seamless, integrated payment options for digital services. And digital equity remains a work in progress for many governments and their constituents.

“Everybody wants an Amazon-like experience,” says Tamara Dukes, vice president of strategy and growth for Tyler Technologies’ NIC Division. “About seven years ago, we took a hard look in the mirror and realized that alongside our government partners we’ve done a great job of digitizing these silos — but that’s not enough.”

As CIOs assess modernization priorities, their goal is to move from limitations to results. Overcoming technical debt, burdensome outdated systems and digital services gaps requires foundational technology tools that provide seamless delivery of services and a common constituent experience across the enterprise.

SHIFTS IN DIGITAL GOVERNMENT

While agencies have come a long way, ongoing barriers threaten the continued growth of new solutions to meet constituent needs.

In many states, a shift to federated IT models has led to agencies and departments developing and deploying their own digital services.

“While most states started out with centralized solutions, departments often have their own budgets and IT staff, which has resulted in disparate solutions,” Dukes says. “For example, many states have told us they have no idea how many payment processors they have.” The multiplicity of standalone payment solutions requires CIOs to ensure each method is compliant with PCI and other regulations. “We’re seeing that pendulum swing back to enterprise payment processing because they’ve got to minimize the risk,” Dukes says.

Beyond the payment situation, siloed applications, solution providers and application development environments contribute to a more complex environment. This impacts agencies’ ability to effectively safeguard systems and data against rapidly evolving cybersecurity threats.

For constituents, the most visible result of these trends is the lack of a unified digital experience. Constituents often have inconsistent experiences when interacting with different services or departments. “There’s a true divide between agencies: the haves and the have-nots,” Dukes says. “DMVs have fantastic solutions, but then you have other departments rocking a 1999 website.”

A UNIFIED EXPERIENCE

The road map for overcoming these ongoing challenges has been understood for years. “One of the things we’ve been emphasizing is there should be a single constituent experience,” says Teri Takai, senior vice president of the Center for Digital Government* (CDG). “CIOs are finding a much greater need to integrate across government.”

To do so, technology leaders need to address specific gaps in their enterprise infrastructure, including the following components:

Central identity and authentication. Systems that allow constituents to log in once to access multiple services improve the user experience. Behind the scenes, they also allow governments to collect the information they need to get a holistic view of each constituent — from drivers' licenses and personal property taxes to professional licenses and other fees. “It’s still a challenging thing to do, but we’re getting there,” Dukes says.

Digital equity. Making digital services accessible to all constituents involves ensuring that government sites and services can be accessed on mobile devices and in multiple languages. But true digital equity also requires governments to simplify the processes and the language involved in doing business with them. “We’ve got to get rid of acronyms and complicated instructions,” Dukes says. “Our research consistently shows that people believe government is too confusing and needs to be simplified.

Customer service. Many governments stood up chatbots during the pandemic to meet unprecedented demand for services. But to meet constituent expectations shaped by their experiences with the private sector, chatbots and other support tools need to leverage artificial intelligence to mature and improve. This will allow individuals to more quickly get the answers and information they need, Dukes says.

Resiliency. While some governments used cloud services to rapidly implement individual services during the pandemic, others struggled to meet demand for services like unemployment benefits. Going forward, governments need an agile enterprise strategy so that any service they offer can respond to unexpected changes in demand or policy without overwhelming systems. CIOs should consider an enterprise approach to modernization, matching unique agency needs with a portfolio of capabilities. “Having a common toolset for everybody is the most efficient and scalable solution,” Dukes says. “That’s where the enterprise approach comes in.”

THE ENTERPRISE APPROACH TO GOVERNMENT EXPERIENCE

An enterprise approach allows CIOs and other leaders to clear technological hurdles in an agile and scalable way. Moreover, adopting an enterprise approach doesn’t involve replacing every existing system and starting from scratch.

“This is not about building out unique bespoke applications, but bringing the pieces together,” Takai says.

A scalable enterprise strategy can integrate existing solutions and add the building blocks required to create the foundation for new services. This strategy can simplify system management, eliminate security risks, and connect siloed departments and agencies. By taking an enterprise approach, “you’re not trying to deal with multiple technologies,” Takai says. “APIs bring the technologies together in a way that allows you to build a public-facing digital experience, provide consistent security across digital services and share data among disparate applications because they’ve been integrated.”

This article is excerpted from the new Government Technology thought leadership paper, “An Enterprise Approach to Connected Government.” Click here to download the full paper.

*The Center for Digital Government is part of e.Republic, Government Technology's parent company.