How to Improve the Interaction Between Government and Its Constituents

We’re live! Today, GovLoop is hosting its Second Annual State and Local Government Innovators Virtual Summit, an all-day, virtual event with six different online trainings, networking opportunities and resources to help state and local govies do their job better. You can register here and be sure to read the other recaps here.

Terri Jones, Industry Marketing Manager, Government, at Hyland Software, led our first online training. She spoke on Transforming the Moments: How to Improve the Interaction Between Government and Its Constituents.  

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Terry spoke about how to help govies improve their interactions with their constituents while keeping up with the ever-changing technological environment we live in. In other words, govies have to carefully find the right technology and analysis to keep up with the changing needs of their constituents and their workforce. This is no easy task as technology is evolving at a fast pace.

First, Jones explained that govies need to know their landscape either as a state or local government entity. This is vital to understanding how to tailor the interactions and services provided to the right public. Jones reminded us that our new landscape involves the year of the millennial customer. Therefore, govies need to provide technology that has the ability to be mobile. Jones underlined that “mobile is the technology closest to [the millennials’] heart.”

Understanding this new movement to mobility is essential for functionality on both an internal (your workforce) and an external plateau (your constituents).

Govies need to know how to handle the internet to better reach out to their constituents and they will, in turn, expect to use it when dealing with government. This will have implications for design of state and local govies’ websites and online interaction services because, as Fortune put it,: “These digital natives grew up in the shadow of September 11th and the Great Recession, and are well adapted to change, technologically savvy, and are poised to unleash innovation — when given the right environment, support and autonomy.”

Lastly, Jones provided a quick-and-easy snapshot of how to use the ideal government workflow framework for moments of interaction with your constituents:

• Submission process- this begins the transaction process (what does it look like when a person first interacts with your company?)
• Assignment-who needs to be doing the work (prioritize what needs to be done)
• Tracking-how do we know/track where that interaction is in our process and how does the constituent know? (transparency is key here)
• Collaboration-view peers’ work (can be a “black hole for efficiency“-can produce delays) How can we set this up to make it a smooth process?
• Status-communicate internal progress (are we properly communicating the aggregate results-revisions etc.)
• Decision- notify, track, and update the constituent and your workers on the final decision

These six steps will provide the proper framework for building better technological systems that are essential for modern day interactions between state and local government and their constituents.