One of the major reasons why digital transformation is so important is because it helps bring an organization from the present into the future, positioning it to better serve its audience as they evolve and potentially even anticipating their needs. This is true for not only the private sector but also in federal agencies as well as we increasingly move towards a digital-driven world.
All told, there are several key priority areas that the United States federal government can focus on to accelerate digital transformation across its agencies.
Service Delivery Transformation
By far, one of the biggest areas that federal agencies and government organizations need to focus on is service delivery. Those include the specific elements of a process that affect the service experience that a federal agency provides to its constituents.
Chief among these is a more organic level of personalization than ever before. Services can't exist simply for the sake of it; they need to be built with an eye towards a user's specific needs, pain points, and use cases. Federal agencies and their service providers must make an effort to truly understand what’s required along the user’s journey, rather than adopting a "one size fits all" approach.
Agency leaders should take a proactive, purpose-driven approach around the types of services that are being offered in the first place considering not only the challenges of today but the ones that people might face tomorrow. Because of this, departments need to transition away from the department-based method they're used to relying on and move towards a more human-centric approach that is centered on design and ecosystem partnerships.
When digital services are developed in a vacuum and consider only processes and technical requirements, the results will likely generate poor adoption and not meet users’ needs or expectations. If the goal of digital government is to create a frictionless experience, an enhanced level of trust, and better citizen outcomes, government CIOs must look at how to address interoperability while bringing together the right skills, data, and technologies to transform their service delivery operations and make services as simple to use as possible.
People shouldn't have to complete ten steps when five will do. They also shouldn't encounter unnecessary barriers that prevent them from getting the outcome they deserve. Whatever it is that a person wants, they want it as quickly as possible, and the right digital transformation strategy can enable just that.
Transforming your service delivery process also means not adopting new technology just for technology's sake. “Technology is built for humans, and not the other way around,” explains Mike Deittrick, DMI’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Transformation is about making things function for people.”
So, any newly added tools should be evaluated from a human-first perspective. As government agencies move through their own digital transformation, leveraging the ecosystem to deliver and co-create new services can prove more efficient, effective, and offer a higher quality experience. Governments that do so will find themselves accelerating their digital program.
The Power of Automation
Another core area of digital transformation that governments need to focus on involves taking an internal approach to automation. All organizations are filled with manual processes that, while important, are also incredibly time-consuming. Therefore, by transitioning away from these manual processes and towards automated ones, you free up the invaluable time of human employees so that they can get back to dealing with the things that matter most to them.
This brings with it benefits in other areas, too. Automation can help make it easier for government agencies to respond to service requests from citizens faster than ever, thus creating a better experience than what was possible in the past.
It also creates consistency in certain processes — particularly those with an administrative slant. You don't have to worry about two different people completing a job in two different ways; the system generates consistent results every single time. This also goes a long way towards eliminating human error, which has long been a pain point for many government organizations.
Embracing the Mobile Era
Finally, governments need to design the services they're offering to their citizens with a mobile-first approach — something that will only become increasingly important as time goes on.
Smartphone ownership is at an all-time high in the United States, and devices like tablets also remain prevalent. One study indicates that roughly half of all government website visits are conducted on mobile devices. Depending on your constituents’ access to high-speed cable or fiber optic internet, that smartphone may be the only web-enabled device a person owns.
Therefore, services need to be mobile responsive in that they work just as well on a small, touch screen device as they do on a large computer monitor. Only then will you be able to efficiently connect the residents of an area with the information and services that they need, which in and of itself is always a top priority.
Here at DMI, we believe that the path to digital government is achieved through creating a more secure, centralized, seamless, and cost-effective IT architecture and ecosystem that leverages data to inform decisions and transform operations, mobility to support mission needs anytime, anywhere, and platforms to provide the flexibility and collaboration needed to ensure reliable mission execution. DMI brings years of experience in digital transformation to the table, with hundreds of federal contracts awarded since 2012.
Contact us now to learn more.
