Failure to get people and systems to work together can leave governments with inefficiencies and support gaps. Poor design and architecture can lead to an inability to support vulnerable individuals, as well as time-consuming, manual processes.
Effective cooperation between humans and machines is achieved through more aligned, collaborative thinking across agencies and departments. Leaders must visualize a space where everyone has access to the information they need, when they need it, and in the context they are working in. There are some essential adjustments that government leaders can prioritize to get people and systems to work together more effectively.
Connecting constituent-facing employees with the technology they need to succeed is difficult but critical. Employees faced with an environment where siloed data, resistance to change and even turf wars between departments will struggle to do their jobs well.
To minimize these problems, leaders must take a cross-departmental and even cross-agency view of where technological or bureaucratic barriers might block the flow of data in their organizations. This in turn allows employees to service the broader mission while maintaining focus on their specific tasks.
Well-contemplated strategies will identify and eliminate these issues on a rolling basis through not just effective design, but regular monitoring and adjustments. The focus must be on the mission and designing for human-in-the-loop flexibility, and leaders should focus on working within existing frameworks, while also educating officials and championing changes that will modernize/update architectures.
Different agencies, departments and employees have different data needs. But regardless of the specific need, ease of access is universally crucial. When data lives in five or even fifteen different places, the lack of coordination can lead to an inability to get a proper answer and make intelligent decisions. This is not an unsolvable issue though, and there are some integration techniques and best practices that can change the game significantly.
For example, today a request to provide leadership with known risk factors associated with a certain negative outcome may require information from so many siloed departments that the business is simply not capable of answering it in a statistically valid way. Case workers that require data from social services, education, housing and health sectors will face friction.
Leaders must balance multiple factors, ensuring appropriate security, data collection, reporting and access. The key is to work to find common ground and focus on the people impacted by the problem (and who will be impacted by the solution). Be transparent and work actively to maintain constant lines of communication to ensure employees understand the possibilities and the constraints of adjustments. Providing employees with persona-based apps that surface and expose data across multiple platforms gives a single pane-of-glass experience that leads to better outcomes. This doesn’t necessarily mean replacing core applications, but instead can be like a fresh coat of paint, giving life and function to systems that may seem cumbersome and difficult to manage today.
Serving the needs of constituents is the core mission for all public sector agencies and departments. Today, this means that mobile, digital native experiences are the new standard, and delivering them is essential to meeting expectations. This is often difficult to achieve when it requires creating outcomes from a seemingly endless amount of data and processes. As a result, it’s not uncommon to ask frontline staff or self-service forms to collect twice as much information as is required. Streamlining data and processes offers an opportunity to create self-serve platforms and portals for constituents.
Challenging the data-heavy approach is the critical first step required to give people the simple, clean experiences they want.
As an example, someone working with constituents with disabilities might need to make sure a plan of care is working as outlined. As part of the role, they will need to take notes and keep a record to support the constituent. However, without a proper understanding of what data is truly needed, the employee will likely ask repetitive questions and perform duplicative data entry, which can quickly grow to the point of frustrating complexity for both staff and the constituent. The result is a suboptimal experience for all involved.
To avoid this, we must always design with the people in mind. Users need a straightforward, flat access layer to view and update all necessary information. This means integrating data from multiple departments into a centralized, user-friendly platform, ensuring that caseworkers can quickly access data such as medical records, social services benefits, housing options, employment programs, educational resources and transportation services — without getting buried in data collection and entry responsibilities. Leverage what you already know, update data when required and use masking and role-based access control to ensure that data is protected.
To learn more about how Konica Minolta can help you focus on building exceptional experience for your constituents and employees, contact us.
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