But that’s just the most visible part of what’s happening. On the leading edge of the change, and involved in pretty much every part of how governments interact with citizens, you’ll find Suzanne Pauley, director of the eMichigan program. Pauley is, to paint with broad strokes, responsible for the state’s user experience.
“I don’t know that we necessarily started that way; I think we ended up that way,” she said. “So when I started my position, I had the websites and I had the application development team, and then it kind of grew out of that.”
Her program was responsible for moving every state agency to a single content management system, and she’s currently migrating them all to a modern CMS in batches. In Michigan, all users have the same username and password regardless of which agency they’re interacting with. And her emphasis on “unified branding” means that people are presented with a consistent look and feel across sites.
A career public servant, Pauley began as a student assistant with the state in the early 2000s. Since then she’s worked as an app developer, an analyst and a project manager — and watched as the government’s mindset slowly shifted. Today she sees far more nuance in her job, with more emphasis on engaging users and understanding their needs.
