When you think of “digital government services,” you might think of public-facing websites. But another very impactful way to improve public service delivery is to create tools to help operational staff do their jobs better or more efficiently.
Digital tools have the potential to revolutionize the way government agencies operate and deliver services to the public. It’s not just about building sleek websites; it’s about empowering government staff with the right tools to excel in their roles and deliver services more effectively.
Case Study: Helping People Get to Work, School, and More
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) — Boston’s transit agency — has an in-house digital team that “applies design thinking and agile methodologies to develop products that streamline processes.”
One of the tools that they have developed, called Skate, helps field staff better manage bus operations by providing them access to real-time information about the locations of as many as 1,000 buses. These staffers “play a crucial role, coordinating vehicles, operator’s shifts, and everything that can (and does!) happen on the road,” notes the project website. “Previously, they managed service in the field using radio communication and paper records. While the public could use their smartphones to track buses in real time, MBTA inspectors continued to use outdated and inefficient tools.”
Thanks to Skate, most of the information that these staffers need is on a tablet, giving them both more information and more accurate information. Reduced reliance on radio communication is both more efficient and allows radio channels to be clear for other needs.
“With better real-time tools, inspectors now have a bird’s eye view of service and can be even more actively engaged,” the project site notes. These tools then help these employees better manage the complexities of field operations—improving the delivery of bus services for the estimated 273,000 daily bus riders (as of 2022).
Another tool, Glides, offers similar functionality, but for light-rail trains.
Ultimately, more reliable transit means that people can access jobs, education, health services, and more—so something that seems far removed from the public can provide real human benefits at scale. (By the way, they’re hiring!)
Case Study: Helping People Experiencing Homelessness Avoid Freezing Temperatures
A similar example comes from Code for America’s community fellowship project in Adams County, Colorado, where the county government has a program called SWAP that partners with a community group to give vouchers for hotel rooms to people experiencing homelessness in times of severe weather.
“In our meetings with caseworkers, we learned that, across the board, they felt frustrated by their daily tools,” writes one of the community fellows. “We began to wonder: could we create something for case workers that made their jobs easier, freeing up more of their time for connecting with clients?”
After extensive research and discussion with partners, the team focused on creating a decentralized digital intake system, which offered many advantages:
Instead of asking people to come to city hall to receive a voucher, we wanted to enable field outreach workers to meet people where they already were, therefore “de-risking” the process. By converting the paper intake form to a digital one, we could create a system that stores people’s information and speeds up intake, meaning vouchers could make it faster into people’s hands. Digital intake also expedites data entry for outreach workers and county staff, because client data could be downloaded as a .csv rather than manually entered into a spreadsheet. Finally, by providing participating hotels with information about their incoming guests, the paper voucher could serve as “backup” documentation rather than the sole proof of an approved hotel stay.
This approach delivered real results. The team built a web app that reduced the average turnaround time for serving a client from 11 minutes to under 2.5 minutes.
The real human impact? “During the 2020-2021 cold weather season, SWAP prevented over 8,300 nights of unsheltered homelessness for more than 560 clients, a fifteen-fold increase from last cold weather season. With the help of the app, SWAP was able to distribute 422 vouchers to 178 people in February 2021—an all-time high.”
Opportunities Abound
To be sure, tools like these will not solve all operational problems, and definitely are not a substitute for broader structural reforms and policy changes. “If this project taught us anything, it’s that tech is only one tool in the toolbox — it can help, but it isn’t the solution to homelessness,” notes the Adams County fellow.
Still, these kinds of tools can be a huge help. Any government service that involves staff providing direct service delivery may have opportunities for new or improved digital tools to enhance efficiency, speed, reliability, and more.
To find opportunities to get started, try this:
- Pick one specific process or operational component that you think may have opportunities for improvement.
- Do research with both internal staff and the public to learn about how things are working, what experiences people are having, and how all the parts fit together.
- Create journey maps and/or service blueprints to visualize the current process steps, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.
- Select one of the improvement opportunities to pursue — and don’t be afraid to pick a new path if further research or testing shows that your initial ideas won’t work as well as you thought. Note that the solution here doesn’t necessarily need to be creating a new tool of your own from scratch; there may be off-the-shelf technology that you can leverage to quickly and affordably make improvements.
By looking closely at how your staff go about doing their jobs, you may find that there are real avenues for delivering better and more human-centered services to the public by improving the tools that employees use internally.
Greg is the Associate Director for Human-Centered Government at Code for America, where he is leading efforts to support public servants with resources and training on the organization’s principles and practices for how government can and should serve the public in the digital age.
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