Creating life-saving workarounds for the public • Cutting through bureaucratic red tape to streamline benefits • Rethinking how to serve constituents in need • Launching digital tools and services to empower employees and the public in new ways • And more
3 Executive Summary 4 How to Use This Guide 5 Snapshot: Lessons Learned Nationwide 6 Human-Centered Response to COVID-19 Exposures 8 Streamline the Messy Middle of Benefits Determinations 10 Advance Innovation by Going Paperless 12 Clarify Unemployment Renewals for Claimants 14 Create Digital Front Doors for Government 16 The Tech Acumen Corner: IT Management Skills to Spur Innovation 17 3 Things You Can Do Now to Rethink Innovation 19 Is Your Relationship With Data Helping or Hurting Innovation? 21 Why Innovation Must Account for the Identity Factor 23 3 Ways to Embed Innovation in Your IT Roadmap 25 How to Support Lasting and Agile Transformation 27 How to Make State and Local Innovation Last 29 Conclusion: Write Your Innovation Mission Statement
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Think about the past 18 to 20 months. Many facets of our lives were (and still are) in flux. The same is true for municipalities, school districts, counties and states. Pandemic-related responses stretched public servants beyond their job descriptions, and they showed up:
☑ Creating life-saving workarounds for the public ☑ Cutting through bureaucratic red tape to streamline benefits ☑ Rethinking how to serve constituents in need ☑ Launching digital tools and services to empower employees and the public in new ways ▶ And more Countless hours, sweat, tears and grit went into this critical work. We wanted to know if the transformational changes we all saw and experienced across state and local governments will drive a lasting culture shift. How are leaders and innovators building these advancements into their operations going forward? We wrote this guide to provide our community with use cases and practical tips for ensuring that the progress they’ve made during the pandemic sticks. Our goal is to outline what worked and how it worked. You’ll hear from colleagues and leaders across state and local governments. The hope is that their stories empower you to advocate for and create conditions where innovation is normalized and prioritized long after any crises. We end the guide by inviting you to create a personal innovation mission statement.
In conversation, innovation and technology intertwine, but technology alone isn’t innovation. True innovation gets to the heart of how governments use tech to improve outcomes, save lives and empower employees to serve at their best.
“Innovation in government is about finding new ways to impact the lives of citizens, and new approaches to activating them as partners to shape the future together. It involves overcoming old structures and modes of thinking and embracing new technologies and ideas.” – Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
“Our mission is to improve the lives of New Jerseyans by solving public problems differently.” – New Jersey State Office of Innovation
“... acknowledge the need for government to change its practices: the way it delivers services; the way it communicates, both internally and externally; and perhaps most importantly, the way it addresses and solves challenges in response to public needs.” – Philadelphia Office of Innovation and Technology
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Let’s review the guiding questions we used to create this resource. We interviewed public servants at various levels to understand how they define innovation, what innovation in action looked like in the past 18 months (March 2020-September 2021), and how they plan to sustain and iterate on those gains. As you read the interview questions below, consider how you and your colleagues might answer them. How do you define innovation? Keep your responses in mind as you read the diverse stories and case studies throughout this guide. In the past 18 months, what innovative approach have you seen in response to COVID-19 that shows signs of longevity? Is there an example that’s either internal to your agency or impacts external customers/constituents?
What is/will be key to making this innovation stick?
What are the common barriers to making this innovation stick? We often hear about successes once they are in place, but sharing barriers takes the stigma out of failing forward.
What practical steps can you and your colleagues take to give innovative ideas longevity? Consider steps that can withstand budget cycles, administration changes, short attention spans and other variables.
What can you and your team do to build on knowledge and lessons gained in the past 18 to 20 months? Are there other use cases for the progress you’ve made?
How can innovators like yourself stay engaged and overcome feelings of being stuck or stifled while working in government? There are recent examples of passionate and well-intentioned employees getting burned out because they don’t see a path forward to progress in government.
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We put a call out to the state and local government community in August 2021. GovLoop Managing Editor Nicole Blake Johnson made this request We fielded tweets, direct messages and follow-up emails from California and Alaska, to Maryland, Louisville, Kentucky and states and cities in between — a fraction of which are featured in this guide.
Here are three common themes from those conversations: Center solutions around people.
Co-create with a community.
Knowing whom you’re serving and understanding their pain points, expectations and needs must be central to your problemsolving efforts. Without their perspective, you’ll lack the right focus and miss an opportunity to build trust.
Think beyond traditional boundaries. Are there employees outside your immediate team, partner cities or states, nonprofits, and industry experts who can support your vision? But remember, you’re in the driver’s seat.
Ask the questions that haven’t been asked. Sometimes it’s not solely the tech or policies that limit us, but rather our inability to consider what’s possible beyond current boundaries. Don’t be afraid or too hurried to stop and ask “what if.”
With these themes in mind, let’s review the innovations you’ll see in this guide. Pennsylvania (U.S. Digital Response): Created a no-code solution to help people understand their unemployment benefits year-end process. Michigan (Civilla): Reduced the public benefits enrollment process in Michigan from a standard of 30 to 45 days down to as fast as one day. Louisville: Smoothly supported transition to distributed teams and the city’s strategic priorities by accelerating its paper-free by 2023 initiative. Colorado: Launched app-based COVID-19 exposure notifications for residents using Bluetooth technology. General Services Administration’s 18F (state and local practice): Helped prototype and procure digital services for state and local governments to serve the public.
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Janell Schafer, Digital Service Expert, Colorado Digital Service (CDS) Focus: Collaborates with a diverse team to tackle Colorado’s most pressing technical challenges through human-centered solutions Innovation: First state, after Washington, D.C., to launch COVID-19 exposure notifications using Bluetooth technology “It really matters how you define failure, and what you’re tying it to. When you define failure, sometimes you don’t know what that looks like.”
Depending on the nature of your work, your job description may not tell the full story of your reach. That’s both the challenge and beauty of what makes problem-solving impactful and rewarding for the cross-functional group at CDS. The team joined forces with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to launch CO Exposure Notifications. The free and voluntary service, developed in partnership with Google and Apple, notifies users of possible exposure to COVID-19. Users opt in with an Android or iPhone device, and the phones share anonymous tokens with other CO Exposure Notifications users via Bluetooth. We extrapolated key details from Schafer about that project, including what was vital to success and how an unconventional yet healthy perspective on failure worked in CDS’s favor. Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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r 25, Embrace the power & Android users of embedding eive“That a concept push of embedding was really crucial to our success because that allowed us to champion and put the forward technology in ationservice about of public health,” she said. Embedding is commonplace for government digital services teams and involves them being hands-on and working alongside partner agencies.
Whether CDS was designing or building, the users will be work was centered on the mission of that agencythrough and the diverse community it serves. opt-in ettings Partner with and become a
mentor state
In addition to working closely with Apple and Google, CDS also partnered with Washington, D.C., Canada, Germany, Virginia and Ireland to glean lessons learned from implementing other types of exposure notifications technology. But they didn’t stop there. Armed with added knowledge from their own experience, Colorado became a mentor state, sharing insights with California, Maryland and Massachusetts to get their programs running. “They’ll share their experiences openly and candidly, so you can learn and feel like you have the support as you’re making these tough decisions,” Schafer said of fellow mentor states.
Redefine failure through iterative improvements The team improved and modified app features to adapt to users’ needs and respond to the changing public health crisis in real time. Initially, the state saw a a 98.2% increase in user engagement. A year later, the second improvement showed a 34% increase. “When we think about failing, it’s something that doesn’t serve the community, or those that need it,” Schafer said. “By tying that definition of failure to our actual community, I think it makes us able to process with our partners more holistically.” With the exposure notifications, the team realized early on that people who tested positive had trouble using the system to manually report their positivity status. Once the team put an automated script in place, it became easier for people to confirm a positive test and overall usage increased. “We did get some things wrong, but they weren’t a failure,” Schafer said. “It was an opportunity to improve.”
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Lena Selzer, Cofounder and Senior Director, nonprofit Civilla, and Sam Brennan, Design Lead, Civilla ocus: Partner with public-serving institutions to research, design, F pilot, iterate and scale solutions to pressing problems Innovation: Reduced the public benefits enrollment process in Michigan from a standard of 30 to 45 days to as fast as one day “We often ask the question: What antibodies need to be put in place to ensure this change doesn’t revert back?” – Sam Brennan
It has long been standard for Michigan residents to wait up to a month for their benefits applications to be approved or denied. As in many states, different programs, whether Medicaid or food assistance, have different allowable processing times. Now imagine you’re the person or family in crisis, waiting for an answer on your case. Michigan’s Genesee County not only imagined this scenario before the pandemic hit, they mapped out the journey, Selzer said. During that process, county leaders within the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reframed the problem and asked a radical question: Why can’t we get people a same-day response when they apply for benefits? “It was out of those conversations and contacts that the concept of One Day started to emerge, based on resident and staff needs,” Brennan said. Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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ONE DAY PROCESS
Registration Two-hour standard
Work Number
Check work # when front-end processing
Two-call Approach
Interview Using guide
Call, leave voicemail, call again
Verifications
Self attestation, paperwork, work #, collateral contact, send a VCL
Certify & Document
Reimagine and restructure policies
Reframe objectives
A key business process change that made the concept of One Day benefits delivery a reality was shifting the burden of collecting verification documents — such as pay stubs and lease agreements — from applicants to frontline staff, who are adept at gathering that information, Brennan said.
The One Day model was intuitive for staff, however there was a belief among some that having residents collect verification documents helped build self-sufficiency.
The process also uses self-attestation, or empowering applicants to verify or attest to certain things such as personal assets without providing additional documentation unless the information is questionable. Rather than pause the One Day pilot, COVID-19 accelerated it from dozens of counties to launching statewide. As of September 2021 all health and human services offices statewide have been trained on the One Day process and are starting to implement the new model. Although every determination won’t happen in a day, that’s now the North Star guiding the process. Some programs have policy and program limitations that won’t allow for single-day determinations. The goal is to build on best practices and expand One Day to Medicaid, child care, utility and cash assistance.
“It was a real mindset shift that [we] needed to have time and conversation around to say, ‘That’s actually not the vision,’” Brennan said. To help people reach success, they need basic support. Having them collect verifications doesn’t help them build selfsufficiency. Providing them with support quickly and efficiently does.
Codify best practices and expand During the One Day pilot, frontline staff documented best practices for speeding up the verification process, including how-tos for framing requests for applicants and local office lists of common employers. “In the pilot, we would hear about these efforts through interviews with staff. Together, we documented them and then shared them with others through trainings and communications,” Brennan said. “This sharing has continued through statewide rollout.” He added: “Create space to conduct a pilot prior to implementation and have a team focused on learning best practices as well as collecting and analyzing data. Next, during implementation, ensure that staff continue [to] have space to share what is working and not, so improvements can be documented and scaled.” Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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Grace Simrall, Chief of Civic Innovation and Technology at Louisville Metro Government and Chris Seidt, Director of IT Focus: Own incremental, continuous improvements and breakthrough innovations through technology, and encourage others to do the same Innovation: Smoothly supported a transition to distributed teams and the city’s strategic priorities by accelerating the paper-free by 2023 initiative “We were already thinking about how we’d shift the work out of the office and into people’s homes.” – Grace Simrall
The pandemic exposed many things. In Louisville, it illuminated the impacts of just-in-time innovation and continuous improvements in new ways. “Prior to the pandemic, we had set some pretty ambitious goals for IT... to push initiatives that we felt would benefit the entire metro government and, ultimately, our citizens,” Seidt said. “One of our big goals was our paper-free by 2023 initiative.” By next July, the city aims to reduce 40% of its paper consumption, an effort the pandemic accelerated. Having already invested in electronic document signing and other tools to facilitate paperless operations, Seidt and Simrall had strategically aligned this goal with priorities that mattered most to the city. As important was preparing for future unknowns. Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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Plan for worst-case scenarios “The reason why we weren’t caught off guard or flatfooted by this humongous overnight shift of a remote workforce was, in fact, because we had done so much planning for a ransomware attack,” Simrall said. “All of that preparation meant that we were already purchasing devices. We were already thinking of it through multifactor authentication. We were already thinking about how we’d shift the work out of the office and into people’s homes.” Before the pandemic, the team ran a small pilot to test the concept. That led to shifting its inventory from an 80:20 desktop to laptop ratio to 80% laptops and 20% desktops. “We feel like that’s going to help us long-term, having that telework flexibility,” Seidt said. Benefits realized from Louisville Metro Government’s paper-free initiative:
40%
345
Reduction in paper usage
Trees saved in one year
6x Faster grant application processing
Align strategic efforts with larger priorities Louisville has already converted hundreds of thousands of documents into electronic formats, inevitably creating benefits citywide and supporting the mayor’s sustainability goals. For example, going paperless has improved interoffice communications and document tracking, and streamlined the hiring processes, Seidt said. “We spend a lot of time at the IT department looking at everybody else’s strategic plans and trying to figure out how we fit in. So, they may be thinking about something bold and ambitious in the public safety space, or they may be thinking about something bold and ambitious in the community services space.”
Develop the future workforce Going digital wasn’t limited to city employees. In April 2020, the mayor announced the expansion of an ongoing initiative to prepare the city for a tech economy. The goal: “[To] expand the number of qualified tech workers in Louisville while helping those impacted by the COVID-19 economic disruptions.” The program gives residents access to free online data skills training that prepares them to test for industry certifications. “We’re particularly proud that … through very intentional marketing that we had an overrepresentation of women and people of color participate through the program,” Simrall said.
Use your energy wisely Simrall’s advice: Don’t spend valuable energy trying to fight a resistant culture on a stronghold issue. Instead, pick areas that can be positioned as a natural extension of how your department operates.
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Jessica Cole, Interim CEO, nonprofit U.S. Digital Response (USDR) and Jessie Posilkin, Economic Stability Program Lead, USDR USDR Team: Alyssa Levitz, Robin Carnahan, Sam Zeitlin, Caroline Jordan, Michael Stanford Focus: Support governments and organizations in extraordinary times Innovation: Created a no-code solution to help people understand their unemployment benefits year end process “When you’re focused on the needs of users, you’re building trust with the claimants.” – Jessie Posilkin
In most states, there’s nothing modern about administering unemployment insurance. The pandemic proved that painful truth. In Pennsylvania, uncertainty around whether residents needed to refile their claim at the end of their benefit year added to the chaos. Those receiving standard unemployment needed to renew their benefits after a year. But residents receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance didn’t. The difference in these “benefit year end” processes caused increased confusion and stress for many claimants. Within a week, the USDR team created a no-code, interactive tool that guides individuals. The team also simplified the language and content to help people understand which type of benefits they receive and whether the benefit year end was applicable to them. So how’d the team do it? Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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Select and scope projects wisely Selecting the clearest and easiest problem to solve is hard. “We often talk about the right kind of malleability in the right moment,” Posilkin said. The problems that USDR and governments need to pursue when innovating are those with the right amount of fire. Even for a seemingly low-risk and low-cost project like updating web content, if it’s too high-priority, leaders might not be ready to take a risk. But if it’s too low on the list, there’s no urgency. “We’re looking for things that are in that middle spot,” Posilkin said. From there, scope the project to focus on the smallest doable thing, which can be a grueling process.
Focus on current needs and capabilities Staying focused on immediate claimant needs and the state’s technological abilities were key to gaining traction, Posilkin said. “We’re not trying to solve all the problems.” Many government technology efforts get stuck when people try to guess the problems tomorrow will bring. That’s a point of failure for many multiyear procurements, Posilkin said. Cole has found that the ideal government partner isn’t always the most technical. Having flexible and creative policy leaders who are willing to take risks is vital.
Ask for help Build trust, breed longevity “When you’re focused on the needs of users, you’re building trust with the claimants who are trying to apply for benefits,” Posilkin said. This demonstrates expertise and develops trust. Although the employees working on the project were risk-takers, they had an established track record. They had successfully executed other small, free, nonpartisan projects with USDR, which paved the way for support on the benefits initiative. Plus, the effort didn’t require complex legal approvals, and existing programmatic expertise was on hand.
Being vulnerable and admitting that you aren’t sure how to solve a difficult problem isn’t easy, and asking for help can feel scary, Posilkin said. But bringing in skilled volunteers can energize a team. Check out USDR’s Unemployment Insurance Modernization Gitbook for more tips.
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Ayushi Roy, Director of State and Local Technology, 18F, General Services Administration Focus: Relationship therapist and silo breaker for state and local governments buying digital solutions to serve the public “Never burden a constituent for the same information twice.”
Being in the trenches with agencies during the pandemic, as both a constituent and lifelong public servant, gave Roy a new language to explain her work: “I do the thing that allows you to access government off-hours, and off-site” she said. “If you need the government before 9 a.m., after 5 p.m., or while sheltering in place, you can’t reach them unless they have a digital presence. That’s unacceptable.” Roy shared her lessons and optimism about the government creating digital front doors and reclaiming ownership of its innovation.
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Digitize vs. modernize — there’s a difference Making government digitally accessible outside standard business hours is not the final step. For example, governments must realize the value of modernizing beyond digitizing paperwork. That could mean reducing a clunky 20-page benefits form to an accessible and multilingual threepage one.
Create ship reports What’s an artifact that you’re creating every two weeks? Software developers answer this question to share their progress. You can use ship reports to share what you did, what you couldn’t do and what you plan on doing next week. Anyone can use this method to share updates across teams.
Own acquisitions and products Partnering with a vendor to solve an issue shouldn’t mean outsourcing ownership of the vision and mission, Roy said. Many times, government employees aren’t used to serving as the product owner. But states such as Rhode Island are changing that paradigm. It partnered with a large cloud vendor and led the charge for deciding what pieces of its system to modernize. Within 30 days, Rhode Island introduced a feature enabling constituents to track the status of their unemployment claims.
Redefine risks Roy recalled asking a fellow public servant recently about their work and and how they made unorthodox and risky workplace decisions to serve others during the pandemic. “They looked at me and they said, ‘This isn’t risky. My constituents not getting food is risky.’”
Be a silo breaker The first step is realizing that what you’re doing is valuable to share, no matter how mundane it might seem, and then actually sharing it, says Roy. That could mean documenting what you’ve done or what you’ve noticed has worked for your team. You can create informal gatherings internally within your organization, too. “I think there’s actually a really big gap around administrators of programs, secretaries of different departments or agencies gathering their own folks internally and having some sort of all-hands [meetings], where people cross-pollinate on the job knowledge, whether it’s every month or every quarter,” she said.
Don’t be a burden “Never burden a constituent for the same information twice,” Roy said. “That is such a simple and yet powerful goal to address so many of the struggles that end up getting people kicked off things like their unemployment insurance checks. They get kicked off when we already have the information that we need to verify that they deserve the money.”
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IT touches nearly every aspect of agency operations and services. IT has also become a critical career competency. Non-IT professionals may have heard it referred to as business acumen, or the ability to manage human, financial and information resources strategically. It’s about being business-savvy when making important decisions. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be in a leadership role to demonstrate business acumen. Whether you’re looking to solve a tough problem using tech, navigate surging ransomware or understand the increasingly hybrid work environment, business acumen can help. We spoke to subject-matter experts from industry to learn about managing technologies, people and processes effectively and sustaining innovation. Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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3 Things You Can Do Now to Rethink Innovation An interview with Kevin Tunks, National Technology Adviser for State and Local Government, Red Hat Innovation came in waves in the past 18 months. It started with agencies having to reinforce technology’s critical role in their daily operations.
said. “You’re not just hiring someone to do something for you, but you’re actually intentionally doing something together.”
“I think the second wave of innovation is realizing the opportunity to work differently,” said Kevin Tunks, National Technology Adviser for State and Local Government at Red Hat, a leader in enterprise open source software innovation.
Take Medicaid modernization. Red Hat is partnering with governments to make the critical — yet monolithic systems — that support this effort more modular and responsive to changing needs.
Red Hat is a proponent of using human-centered design to shape positive employee interactions with technologies and impactful customer experiences with government services. “I think this pandemic forced everybody to step off the treadmill collectively and rethink how we want to go forward,” Tunks said.
1
But what does that look like in practice?
Be intentional about whom and how you serve.
The pandemic shifted the population of who’s consuming government services. If new customers cannot easily and readily access services, it’s time to rethink the experience, Tunks said.
3
That involves designing social support programs and services in a way that’s intentional, transparent, responsive to urgent needs and a logical extension of how people expect to interact with their government. There’s also a greater recognition of historically underserved and underrepresented populations. “How do we consciously think about our services and make sure we are respecting everyone’s individual rights and place as a human in society?” Tunks said.
2
Be intentional about curating what you want.
By breaking systems into smaller chunks, agencies can spur more competition and greater innovation across industry rather than relying on a single contractor, he said. “We’ve seen that across the Medicaid modernization piece and SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], child welfare and the whole spectrum of health and human services.”
Be intentional about desirability, feasibility and viability.
Red Hat partnered with a large agency to develop a cloud-based system within 30 days to support vaccinations, routine testing and exemption management. “We were able to build a modern solution for them leveraging their existing capabilities, including their AWS [Amazon Web Services] cloud environment, identity management and email systems. This is what we mean when we say hybrid cloud,” Tunks said. Design thinking strategy is key to charting an innovative path forward. Tunks recommends balancing desirability (how much something is wanted), feasibility (how reasonable it is to do) and viability.
“If you can balance those three components, you end up with a principle-based way that becomes repeatable,” he said. “Keep scope narrow, specific and achievable. With a great foundation, you can incrementally add or modify to improve over time.”
Agencies have an opportunity to co-create the future with trusted partners and vendors, Tunks Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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Red Hat Ansible Case Study:
City and County of Denver Adapts to Remote Work by Automating with Red Hat Ensuring agency continuity during the global pandemic Learn More
Is Your Relationship With Data Helping or Hurting Innovation? An interview with Matt Walk, Director of State/Local Government for the Eastern U.S., Snowflake Your data has a time value, whether you’ve explicitly acknowledged it or not. “What we’ve seen at the forefront is this concept of needing to have readily available, reliable data for critical decision-making,” said Matt Walk, Director of State/Local Government for the Eastern U.S. at Snowflake, a data platform provider. Although states have focused on modernizing their systems for years, the pandemic created a sense of urgency. It reinforced that the stakes are much higher in terms of the ability to quickly access data to make critical decisions, Walk said. This is especially true as states transition from responding to the pandemic to recovering from it. The success of these efforts depends on the extent to which states eliminate silos and embrace a more data-driven, enterprise-focused approach to governing.
Cloud alone doesn’t remove data silos, Walk said. For some states, it exacerbated existing data governance challenges. They had data residing in multiple locations. “The problem didn’t go away by moving to the cloud,” he said. That’s why Snowflake partners with states to eliminate barriers, securely govern data and ensure the data is readily available when needed. California’s Department of Technology is one example. Working with Snowflake, the agency developed a virtual data warehouse, or a centralized and authoritative location from which to share COVID-19 data. The department then expanded data sharing to other stakeholders, including state agencies, health partners and vaccine providers, using Snowflake’s cloud-based data marketplace.
Success Takes an Ecosystem
Accessible Data Drives Holistic Problem-Solving
Innovation doesn’t mean you have to invest in all new tools, Walk said.
“As you turn from response to recovery, you’re considering all aspects of health and human services,” Walk said.
“We’re a huge proponent of leveraging an ecosystem,” he said. “States have suffered enough from ripping and replacing systems. Our value proposition is that we work within the ecosystem, which gives states some investment protection.”
States and cities are exploring how to get people back to work and how to ensure equity and diversity drive spending decisions and policymaking. “All of those things are dependent on having really good data that’s accessible,” Walk said. “Data has to be centralized in a way that gives states complete transparency and trust in the data.”
New Tech, Same Problems? Cloud computing has been a game changer in supporting data accessibility and transparency. But rushing to embrace the cloud with old habits only perpetuates past problems.
In California, the state easily integrated its Snowflake solution with existing geographic information system software and other dashboard and analytics solutions. “At the end of the day, states want people to be healthy, employed and educated — leading successful lives,” Walk said. “There are a lot of systems and technologies that strive to do that.” His advice to states: Stay on course, implement lessons learned, and prioritize data-driven policies and outcomes.
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THE DATA CLOUD Leverage the Data Cloud to power IT modernization, improve citizen services and drive innovation and efficiency. www.snowflake.com/public-sector
Why Innovation Must Account for the Identity Factor An interview with Morey Haber, Chief Security Officer, BeyondTrust The reach of government services hinges on recipients’ ability to prove that they are who they claim to be. However, with the adoption of social distancing practices, the once routine transaction of identification became a logistical and security headache for many agencies. This adjustment particularly impacted departments of motor vehicles and heavily paper-based agencies that had not embraced digital transformation.
digitize workflows, people, processes, policy and automation must work in tandem. For verification processes that are going digital, consider cases that might require human intervention because of complexity or other factors.
2
“You have all of the initiatives around secure ID being used for travel, but there are still some states that are very far behind,” said Morey Haber, Chief Security Officer at BeyondTrust, which specializes in privileged access management (PAM) software solutions. Then the pandemic hit. Not only were many agencies scrambling to prove identities for large swaths of employees needing remote access to administer government services and benefits, but they also had to provide the same electronic services to the public in need of those services. “Employees still had to operate, but could no longer rely on the same security controls as when everyone was located in government facilities,” Haber said.
Embracing the changes was an example of breakthrough innovation for agencies that were forced to adapt. But what can leaders do to sustain and build on this progress?
1
Consider how human intervention can enhance, rather than hinder, workflows.
“The best thing that agencies can do to make security improvements last, and not just that one-off for this year, is to not ignore the checks and balances that they do today,” Haber said. His advice: As agencies embrace cloud and
“I think the biggest trends for agencies moving into 2022 include making the process more convenient for end users to securely consume services and verify their identity when applying and receiving those services,” Haber said.
Identify and develop current capabilities
From a technology standpoint, BeyondTrust partners with governments to address needs around PAM, such as enabling secure remote access for employees and vendors, providing attended and unattended remote support, managing privileged passwords, and enforcing least privilege across the workforce and IT environment.
There’s increased buzz around these PAM security measures and other practices that are facilitating government’s move to a zero-trust security model. PAM is a foundational technology for enabling zerotrust architectures, which aim to enforce continuous authentication and monitoring, implement segmentation and micro segmentation, and limit access to only the amount and duration that employees, applications and systems require. “Consider zero trust as an architecture, not an initiative, and see if the solutions you have can actually make that happen, Haber recommends. “Start with the basics of asset management. You first must know what you have and what you’re managing — computers, applications, resources, and identities. Then, map out your priorities and plan.”
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3 Ways to Embed Innovation in Your IT Roadmap An interview with Brandon Shopp, Group Vice President of Product, SolarWinds Although some of the waters state and local governments have had to navigate due to the pandemic have been filled with turmoil and uncertainty, they’ve also offered profound opportunities to rethink and reset their approaches to IT innovation. “This wasn’t just about adopting the latest tech. It was more strategic than that,” said Brandon Shopp, Group Vice President of Product at SolarWinds, an IT operations management software provider. State, local and education organizations had to rethink how technology enabled accessibility, productivity and secure access to resources across disparate workforces.
Eliminating complexity across network operations, legacy product migration, continuous monitoring, and compliance have been core to SolarWinds operations and its government partnerships. One state and local IT/systems administrator echoed those sentiments, touting the software’s ease of use and configuration management.
2
Address evolving risks
“They also had to rethink their IT roadmaps over the next 12 to 24 months,” Shopp said. “Items that were a priority at the start of the pandemic may not be as high-priority now.” Central to this effort is both short- and long-term IT innovation planning. Shopp highlighted several considerations to keep in mind:
1
Prioritize flexibility and visibility Any IT investments agencies make should be flexible in terms of how they are deployed and used, Shopp said. “You should never buy any technology that paints you into a corner. You want to have technology that’s flexible to deploy, based upon where your organization is at today and where it’s going tomorrow.” Regardless of where employees will be working going forward, be prepared for a future where IT might not be able to troubleshoot tech problems while standing at an employees’ desk or where everyone won’t be logging on to the agency network from a government facility.
Remote employees may be sharing Wi-Fi with non-government employees on their home networks. Are agencies prepared to address ongoing challenges with security risks and network performance issues as employees compete for bandwidth when working remotely?
Shopp sees innovation in this space as organizations move from security solutions running scans and analysis at the perimeter (think firewalls), to options moving detection and security scans down to the endpoint or device level. Among the drivers is the president’s cybersecurity executive order that calls for adopting a zero-trust security model, where implicit trust of any device, node or user is replaced with continuous verification. The mandate is for federal agencies, but the trickle-down impact will affect state and local governments, too.
3
Embrace your community
Innovation happens in the open. Shopp said in the wake of the 2020 SUNBURST cyberattack, SolarWinds is proactively communicating and sharing lessons learned beyond its customers — to include independent software vendors.
“We want ultimately what we learned, what we did differently, and what we’re changing to help others learn,” he said. “We can continue to move the ball forward faster if we work together as a community.”
Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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NETWORK MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT
SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE
IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT
DATABASE MANAGEMENT
APPLICATION MANAGEMENT
How to Support Lasting and Agile Transformation
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An interview with Dick Stark, President, RightStar Innovation isn’t typically associated with citizenfacing government services, such as state toll roads, some transit authorities or even public school systems. That’s changing, though, as more governments embrace transformation as a continuous and holistic evolution — backed by formal strategy, dedicated funding, clear roles and expertise. Dick Stark, President of RightStar, an Atlassianverified Government Partner and IT service management provider, has seen these truths unfold across agencies as they embrace Agile and DevOps methods.
Unleash the power of every team Stark is a firm believer in this Atlassian motto because he has experienced its value. Digital tools such as Confluence and Jira, for example, help agencies run meetings, track action items and manage long-term projects in an Agile way. Empowering teams through cloud-based tools, regardless of location, is vital in today’s environment. “And I think that’s been accelerated by the pandemic,” Stark said.
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Improve user adoption
Take the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which operates two of the busiest toll roads in the country, for instance. By partnering with RightStar, the agency modernized and consolidated its IT operations, including service incidents and asset management, and tracking functions outside IT, such as intelligent device signage and cameras. “The whole idea here is to save money on the asset management side and make sure that toll roads are up and running so there’s no loss of revenue,” Stark said. Orange County, Florida, is another example. Collaborating with RightStar, the county implemented a 311 system to field nonemergency calls.
How do you get people to really appreciate the value of a new system and processes? According to Stark, simulation training is a great way to help expedite adoption and avoid the use of dry user manuals and idle training classes.
There must also be a commitment to learning and transforming within the organization. “Transformation is a long-term effort,” Stark said. “It doesn’t happen overnight.”
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“It’s important to have software that works well,” Stark said. “In this case, what better tool to use than something like your service management [system] that allows you to provide 311 services and has the mobile capability that customers, who are citizens, really expect these days.” These and other innovation success stories have several traits in common, and Stark highlighted a few:
Evolve legacy mindsets
Everybody complains about old, legacy software products, but too often organizations spend exorbitant amounts of money acquiring new tools that do the same thing as the old ones. “Then they come back and say, ‘Things aren’t that much better. We spent all this money, and we don’t have too much to show for it,’” Stark said. It doesn’t have to be this way. Developing and sustaining innovation is about continuous process improvement and being proactive rather than reactive, he said.
“It’s not about working in a silo anymore,” Stark said. “It’s about keeping things simple, practical and automating what you can. And that makes a difference moving forward.”
Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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Adapt to change efficiently by identifying challenges early
How to Make State and Local Innovation Last An interview with Murtaza Masood, Managing Director, State and Local Government, Box The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a hard truth – state and local governments cannot always meet the public’s needs in person. To adapt, many agencies had to deliver their products and services digitally for the first time.
“Agencies should start thinking about what processes and content are siloed and are not shareable and accessible fast enough,” Masood said.
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Apply automation
Automation can free government employees from monotonous tasks such as data entry, letting them focus on more complex and fulfilling responsibilities instead.
How can agencies sustain this innovation permanently? With more public-sector workforces mixing on-site and remote employees while addressing public preferences, this question’s relevance grows daily. Cloud content management can become a strong component of lasting innovation. Using cloud computing’s decentralized IT, agencies can access computing resources such as data storage on demand. Ultimately, this power can help agencies create innovative digital workflows that serve constituents wherever they are.
“Citizens have to be able to engage with government processes in an end-to-end digital ecosystem,” said Murtaza Masood, Managing Director of State and Local Government at Box, a cloud content management provider. Masood explained three ways that cloud content management can make innovation a permanent feature at state and local agencies.
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Take stock
Too often, agencies do not improve processes before digitally transforming them. Take digitizing paper fishing license applications. When digitizing them, edit out repetitive questions to reduce applicants’ frustration.
“Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, technology projects that are well-thought out, deliberate and focus on the user experience are more permanent with bringing about change than other projects,” Masood said. Before any digital transformation, agencies should look for potential obstacles, such as unnecessary manual or paper-based steps, to remove.
It can also save people energy and time while requesting and accessing agencies’ services. The resulting customer experience is faster and more satisfying.
“This improves citizens’ quality of life,” Masood said of automation. “It is an opportunity that a technology transformation offers.” How does the cloud fit into automation? After digitizing their content, agencies can easily store, manage and apply automation to it in the cloud.
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Settle security
Agencies cannot innovate if they are constantly worrying about potential security threats. To innovate long-term, agencies need strong security capabilities that reduce risks. Consider sensitive data like health care details. Using cloud content management, agencies can quickly apply restrictions on who can share this information – and how – agencywide.
“It is about securing your crown jewels, which is your content,” Masood said. “Content and document exchange can be timely, orderly and secure.” No matter the challenge, innovative agencies are agile agencies. With cloud content management solutions like Box, agencies can construct flexible, secure and automated digital ecosystems that facilitate lasting innovation for state and local governments.
Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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Box for government Modernize your mission-critical processes State and local governments are feeling the pressure to meet citizen requests and improve stakeholder experiences. From the field to IT, Box enables your teams to work from anywhere with seamless, cross-agency collaboration, faster citizen and case intake, and secure mission-critical processes. Visit box.com/government
CONCLUSION
No levels of government reach our doorsteps quite like state and local do. We can touch, smell and experience what is or is not happening within the walls of city hall or state legislatures — whether that’s through access to social services, affordable housing and public health resources, or the quality of waste management services. As a public servant, consider how you might tap into the wisdom throughout this guide to not only spark but sustain innovation. If you need a starting point, try using this personalized innovation mission statement to guide your future endeavors: (your role or area of expertise) As a in government, one small action I can take to drive fresh, impactful and lasting change in my community is .
About Carahsoft
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Author
Thank You Thank you to Atlassian, BeyondTrust, Box, Carahsoft, Red Hat, RightStar, Snowflake, and SolarWinds for their support of this valuable resource for public sector professionals.
Nicole Blake Johnson, Managing Editor
Designer Kaitlyn Baker, Creative Manager
Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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