Innovation & Public Services Are Not Incompatible

Howdy,

Last week, I declared my mission moving forward.

This week, I'm debriefing you on what I've worked on for the past 2.5 years - making government more effective and efficient.

The old DMV joke.

The lowest hanging fruit in of tv sitcoms is the experience at the DMV.

It’s so painful and relatable that it provides endless comedic material. The citizens don't want to be there. The workers don't want to be there. Everyone is downright miserable, and no one seems to know how to make the experience better.

This is the symptom of a larger root issue - public services & innovation are seemingly an oxymoron. I want to flip that on its head and argue that civic-minded innovation is achievable through human-centered design.

A jackrabbit and a s cross paths at the DMV in Disney's Zootopia...You can guess how it turns out.

What is human-centered design (HCD)?

Human-centered design is when we craft intentional products that put people first. This is accomplished at the intersection of desirability, viability, and feasibility.

• Desirability - does it appeal to the community we want to serve?

• Viability - is it technically possible?

• Feasibility - is it financially possible?

Organizations often make the mistake of starting with viability and feasibility. Starting instead with desirability first is crucial to building something that people actually want.

The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design (IDEO)

Implementing human-centered design with automation.

Automation does not mean people lose their jobs. In fact, when done right, automation not only lets people keep their jobs and enables them to make more money and reach higher levels of fulfillment. Let me explain.

It starts with automating easily repeatable tasks.

Anything that is done repetitively at a high volume should be taken off of our government employees’ plates.

By freeing up government workers’ time and decreasing government administration expenses, we can spend more resources on upskilling existing administrative workers into knowledge workers.

Knowledge workers are people who focus on more complex, more meaningful work.

Upskilling existing talent leads to career advancement, increased organizational efficiency, and decreased turnover. In other words - people have a purpose, the quality of work increases, and the teams are stronger. Citizens are the direct beneficiaries of government workers' transition to knowledge workers because they receive better services.

Not to mention that knowledge workers are financially compensated at a higher level than their unskilled counterparts.

Applications of human-centered design and automation.

The classic DMV scene in a comedy is a goofy example of bureaucracy gone wrong, but I want to highlight 2 specific use cases for HCD and automation so you can envision public services + innovation done right.

1. Child Welfare

• Problem: child welfare caseworkers spend time sifting through high volumes of paperwork to uncover common themes, people, places, or time events in a case so they can best determine how to best ensure the safety of a child

• Automation Solution: text analytics can automatically highlight keywords and themes which makes consuming case documentation easier (think twitter’s trending or advanced search features but for hundreds of pages of case documentation)

• HCD Impact: caseworkers spend less time spent sifting through documents to gain an understanding of the case and more time taking action on the case to ensure positive outcomes for the child

2. Food/Nutrition Benefits

• Problem: government employees spend time processing high volumes of documents (paystubs, drivers licenses, etc.) to verify income and identity so that they can distribute government benefits

• Automation Solution: optical character recognition can automatically extract information from these documents and verify that they're valid (think mobile banking app which extracts necessary info from a picture of a check) so that workers don't have to review each of these documents manually

• HCD Impact: workers spend less time on paperwork and can spend more time distributing benefits, leading to less lag time in citizens receiving food/nutrition services

We can do better.

Imagine a world where going to change your physical address on your driver's license is a breeze; where getting clear, quick responses from state and federal tax agencies is the norm; where caseworkers have the time to fulfill their purpose of protecting the most vulnerable.

These ideas do not just need to be figments of our imagination. We can make these ideas a reality through human-centered design and automation. It benefits the citizenry. It benefits the government workers. It leads to better outcomes for all of society.

Thanks for reading

Go tell someone about the benefits of human-centered design & automation,

Josh