“Use the things that are challenges right now to propel you forward,” Stacia Jankowski, director of the Office of Integrity and Accountability of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, said during a Government Technology webinar sponsored by Amazon Web Services (AWS). “It’s a really tough thing to do when you’re dealing with all the chaos…. [but] sometimes you don’t have the opportunity later.”
LESSONS LEARNED
The well-publicized issues with unemployment insurance in many states early in the pandemic illustrate some key challenges of modernization. First, systems did collapse in the face of unprecedented demand, but this wasn’t solely a technology problem — business processes involving people also buckled.
“People-based systems don’t scale quickly,” said Stuart Venzke, AWS state and local health and human services leader.
The resulting backlogs and poor user experience found in many existing online services contributed to call centers becoming overwhelmed by constituents seeking information, and states were unable to train people quickly enough to meet the demand. Finally, attempts at fraud became widespread.
An important takeaway is the value of designing systems with the constituent in mind. “Even modern systems had a poor user experience,” Venzke said. “UI systems are designed more for compliance with policies and rules and less about how to help people. ... We could get away with that with low claim volumes, but when claims volume skyrocketed, the poor user experience added to the frustration and anxiety of people trying to feed their families and pay rent.”
BOLD STEPS
Some state governments and their partners worked quickly to address these challenges. Rhode Island became the first state to launch a new pandemic assistance website, completed in just 10 days. The cloud-based system ingested data from existing mainframe systems, setting the stage for further modernization efforts.
“That started a journey,” said Scott Jensen, CEO of Research Improving People’s Lives (RIPL) and former director of the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. “Once we did that, we kept going.”
This included plans for trackers to provide insights into the status of claim approvals and AI-powered career and training recommendations.
In similar fashion, the New Jersey Office of Innovation realized the information constituents needed to navigate the pandemic and human services was “spread all over,” said Xavier Hughes, senior innovation fellow for the office. Leaders there quickly stood up a consolidated COVID-19 portal, which has since become the most visited website in New Jersey history, with more than 170 million unique views.
In Wisconsin, “we knew our system wasn’t scalable,” said Jankowski, whose department focused on immediate needs, including scaling call center operations and using AI to help reduce adjudication cases. Importantly, these interim steps provided the impetus to modernize the entire unemployment system, which dates to the 1970s, culminating in an RFP for a modern, cloud-based solution.
“All those early wins led us to this place … and guided us to finding the solution we’re looking at today,” she said.
THE WAY FORWARD
Cloud-based systems like the ones these three states deployed represent a solution to governments’ biggest challenges — scaling quickly, improving the customer experience, and powering rapid innovation — and the scope of the demand provides the best argument for further modernization, speakers said.
“You can do things at a scale appropriate to the pandemic because half the workforce was on assistance of some kind,” said Jensen. “Just surviving that made going to the cloud a necessity.”
Cloud-based technology can address challenges going forward in four key ways:
- Elasticity allows governments to scale services based on demand and usage.
- Pricing models align cost with usage — “which is absolutely critical to thinking about how to modernize UI systems moving forward,” Venzke said.
- Speed to delivery enables rapid deployment of new services, as was done in Rhode Island and elsewhere.
- Cloud as a platform for innovation allows states to leverage existing methodologies to rapidly respond to policy shifts and emerging needs.
Webinar participants offered strategies to help government technology leaders leverage the cloud to modernize their systems. Among them:
Ensure leadership buy-in. Leadership with a strong vision of the end solution is critical to communicate the need at all levels and ensure projects are supported “so we’re not getting trapped in a position where we’re constantly competing for those resources,” said Jankowski. “That’s helped to make sure we’ve protected the time and effort to get the results we want.”
Address business processes as well as technology. “The technology in the public sector is outdated, but it isn’t just a matter of old technology,” said Jensen. “The key to modernization is to attack some of those programmatic routines that are repeating themselves over and over and lead to the inability to scale.”
That’s also true of modern systems that aren’t flexible enough to adapt to policy changes or new programs such as those stemming from federal stimulus during the pandemic. “We should think of technology as an enabler of policy, not a constraint on policy,” Venzke said. “To the extent it has been a constraint on innovation and effective practice, that’s a problem.”
Focus on iteration. Traditional government projects have followed a static list of requirements that can quickly become outdated and slow progress. “You can’t have it all from the beginning,” Hughes said. “You should identify needs quickly, research quickly, and start building and delivering quickly.” Among the key areas webinar participants noted: identity verification and efforts to address fraud without locking out legitimate users.
“We knew coming out of the pandemic … we needed to see successes as we went along,” Jankowski said. “We teased out the pieces that are the biggest pain points and saw the results of that sooner than we would have with a bigger bang approach.”
Leverage proven technologies and methodologies. Along with cloud-based solutions, governments can take advantage of agile development methodologies and resources provided by organizations such as the federal United States Digital Service (usds.gov) and the nonprofit U.S. Digital Response (www.usdigitalresponse.org/). “In the federal, state, or local government, we’re in the business of managing risk,” Hughes said. “These things have been designed, vetted, and iterated upon by world-class experts.”
Maintain in-house expertise. Projects must be overseen by owners as well as technology talent focused on both the constituent experience and back-end processes. “We wanted something in the cloud, modern, and scalable, but at the same time wanted to keep resources in house so the experience and knowledge resides in the state so we can continue to improve,” Jankowski said.
Emphasize the user experience. “The reason it’s so important to get the user experience right is if someone is anxious about their claim, they’re going to call, and call, and call,” Jensen said. “You couldn’t hire enough people to pick up the phone.”
Shift the culture. Innovation communities of practice or other internal groups are critical to evaluate and iterate projects by examining business processes and technology, said Hughes. “The most important thing is establishing that culture,” he said. “The second most important thing is delivering value quickly.”
To learn more, view the webinar here.
