INNOVATION IN GOVERNMENT
®
Learn more at carahsoft.com/innovation
Future-Proofing
Digital Service
Delivery
In partnership with Salesforce
The pandemic exposed the strengths and weaknesses of
government systems and demonstrated how robust digital
services can help agencies tackle the biggest challenges
facing government and the country
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Embracing the new normal
for digital services
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Digital transformation
and the power of a platform
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Reimagine service delivery with
a proactive digital strategy
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The benefits of treating
employees like customers
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Investing in a Secure
and Modern Platform
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How government agencies
can take on sustainability
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Responding quickly to a
public health emergency
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Utah’s approach to
pandemic relief for businesses
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How Labor helps veterans
find meaningful careers
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about the future of the workplace and
the economy, climate change, and digital
privacy — with actions that reverberate
throughout the world’s economy.”
Forrester’s five key predictions for
2022 include this: One-third of global
civil servants will become permanent
hybrid workers, and the agencies that
don’t accommodate them will lose
talented employees to other agencies or
the private sector.
Many employees value the benefits
of remote work, and the practice also
offers agencies the ability to hire
talented workers regardless of location.
Agencies should modernize their
approach to recruitment and retention
so they can create a workplace that
values diversity and keeps employees
engaged and productive. Agencies also
need to foster real-time collaboration
between on-site and remote employees.
Open communications and
transparency foster employee
productivity and engagement.
Those improvements are necessary
because the employee and customer
experiences are intertwined. A positive
employee experience leads to a better
customer experience. A recent survey of
FCW readers included a question about
which aspects of digital transformation
were of particular interest. The top two
responses were providing a positive
digital experience for customers
(65%) and improving the employee
experience (46%).
Similarly, digital government/digital
services holds the No. 2 spot on the
National Association of State CIOs’
Top 10 Priorities for 2022. The
workforce is another category on the
list and includes “reimagining the
government workforce.”
Talented employees, particularly
those with technology skills, are the
key to addressing current and future
challenges. In a November 2021 report,
the Government Accountability Office
explored the benefits of creating “a
digital service academy — similar to
military academies — to train future civil
servants in the digital skills needed to
modernize government” while noting
that the government “faces a severe
shortage of digital expertise in fields
such as artificial intelligence, data
science, application development,
cybersecurity, computational biology,
and robotics process automation.”
The role of cloud and other
emerging technologies
Digital transformation, by its very
nature, can’t happen without the
adoption of emerging technologies.
For example, AI and automation can
streamline back-office functions to
improve both the employee and
customer experiences. Chatbots that
answer straightforward customer
questions and robotic process
automation for routine tasks give
employees more time and energy to
focus on complex activities, which
leads to higher satisfaction and further
improvements to customer service. In
fact, Forrester predicts that 10% of the
government’s administrative workload
will be automated in 2022.
Digital services are not static. Instead,
agencies must continuously introduce
innovations and improvements based
on customer needs. Cloud technology
was tailor-made for enabling those
activities. The best cloud systems are
configurable, scalable, flexible and
authorized by government security
programs such as FedRAMP and
StateRAMP.
Cloud technology also supports
agencies’ ability to access and analyze
a wide range of data, which is
foundational for implementing
automation, targeting customer and
employee needs, and addressing
complex, data-driven issues such as
economic recovery and climate change.
In addition to cloud technology,
agile and iterative development is
essential for the delivery of digital
services. In a 2020 NASCIO survey,
39% of respondents characterized their
agencies’ use of agile or incremental
software development as widespread
and not subject to centralized oversight
or guidelines, up from 21% in 2015. A
recent report by the IBM Center for the
Business of Government cites programs
in New York City and Austin, Texas, as
models for using agile development
and human-centered design to tackle
challenges as varied as poverty,
equity, recycling, homelessness and
public safety.
Sustainability is another complex
government challenge that is powered
by digital transformation. Data analytics,
for example, can uncover insights
that will allow agencies to act more
effectively in reaching net-zero carbon
emission goals and developing climate
action plans. It is an area where
government agencies can lead the way
for industry, individuals and the rest of
the world.
In FCW’s survey, a total of 60% of
respondents said they are making
decisions, developing strategies and
moving forward with plans to incorporate
government mandates for sustainability
into their processes for buying IT
products and services, with 10% saying
the mandates are already reflected in
their procurement processes.
The complex government and societal
challenges of the past two years have
heightened agencies’ interest in digital
transformation. In FCW’s survey, 83%
of respondents said that based on their
experience during the pandemic, their
agencies were committed to building
flexible IT systems that would allow them
to innovate quickly.
Delivering cutting-edge digital
services requires an ongoing
commitment to new technologies and a
modern government workforce. All those
activities improve agencies’ ability to
respond quickly and effectively to the
next emergency while building the
capacity to solve the country’s most
complex challenges.
hen the COVID-19 pandemic
started, the government
rushed to offer more digital
services, and as the public health crisis
stretches into a third year, agencies
are relying on those services more
than ever. Like their private-sector
counterparts, they have come to
recognize that digital service delivery is
the key to solving a range of challenges.
Technology played a key role
throughout the pandemic thanks in part
to industry and government working
together to support remote work for
agency employees and create new
systems on the fly to manage the
distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and
minimize the spread of the disease
through contact tracing, among others.
Although the pandemic exposed the
weaknesses of some government IT
systems, it also showed that agencies
can move fast when they need to. In the
past two years, all levels of government
have made progress in adopting
new customer-centric services and
strategies, and now they must maintain
that momentum and treat digital
service delivery as the new normal.
Beyond the immediate improvements
in efficiency and customer satisfaction,
embracing digital ways of operating will
enable agencies to tackle the biggest
challenges facing the government and
society as a whole.
That realization is clear at the highest
levels of government. In December
2021, President Joe Biden issued the
“Executive Order on Transforming
Federal Customer Experience and
Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in
Government,” which states that “as the
United States faces critical challenges,
including recovering from a global
pandemic, promoting prosperity and
economic growth, advancing equity,
and tackling the climate crisis, the
needs of the people of the United
States, informed by, in particular, an
understanding of how they experience
government, should drive priorities for
service delivery improvements.”
Modernizing the employee
and customer experiences
Rick Parrish, a vice president at
research firm Forrester, wrote in a recent
blog post that “in 2022, the global public
sector will respond to major economic
and social trends — such as concerns
Embracing the new normal
for digital services
The progress agencies made during the pandemic is just a glimpse of
what’s possible with digital service delivery
Digital Service Delivery by the Numbers
Sources: FCW, National Association of State CIOs, U.S. Digital Service, White House
$3.5
BILLION
Amount of cost
savings or avoidance
the U.S. Digital Service
has helped agencies
achieve in 5 years
BILLION HOURS
Annual paperwork
burden imposed
on the public by
executive departments
and agencies
83%
FCW survey
respondents who said
their agencies were
committed to building
flexible IT systems based
on their experience
during the pandemic
10%
FCW survey respondents
who said government
sustainability mandates
are reflected in their IT
procurement processes
92%
State CIOs who said
they expanded the use of
collaboration platforms
during the pandemic
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scale and secure new technologies,
often accumulating decades of
technical debt.
We’re aware that legacy systems and
the data stored in those systems are
going to be around for years to come,
but that shouldn’t hold governments
back from improving services or
providing easier access. One clear
lesson from the pandemic is that we
need to find a new way to operate, and
time and speed are of the essence.
New technology helps introduce
the speed, agility and digital services
needed to operate in today’s world.
The technology that was delivered
during the pandemic saved lives
and could not have been built on
legacy technology. That’s why digital
transformation and a powerful platform
are paramount.
Here at Salesforce we continue to
collaborate with the public sector
because the work we do together is
extremely impactful and rewarding.
We’re very grateful for our
partnerships with government agencies
and look forward to continuously
innovating together.
Dave Rey is president of
the Global Public Sector at
Salesforce.
One clear lesson from the pandemic is that we
need to find a new way to operate, and time
and speed are of the essence.”
overnments at all levels —
federal, state and local — have
continuously demonstrated their
unwavering commitment to delivering
mission-critical services in the face of
extremely difficult circumstances.
As the crisis began and evolved,
the scale and unpredictability of the
pandemic put a strain on government
IT systems, and many of them were not
designed to handle what was required.
Traditional IT techniques, technology and
legacy systems could not be adapted
quickly enough and were not capable of
scaling to meet this new reality.
Governments needed to build and
deploy new applications for contact
tracing, vaccine distribution, and
quarantine management and screenings
in weeks, not years. And people needed
to be able to access those applications
in a self-service, multichannel way
that provided a better experience for
customers and employees.
To meet these needs, government
organizations opted for using a flexible,
scalable and secure cloud-based
platform and leaned into private-sector
partnerships to deliver innovative and
impactful solutions to customers.
A single source of truth
At Salesforce, we work with
government organizations to serve
the needs of their customers and
stakeholders by providing a single
source of truth on our Salesforce
Government Cloud Plus platform, which
is FedRAMP High authorized. We bring
together relationship management,
case management, collaboration, and
integrated data and powerful analytics
in one single, secure platform. These
building blocks are the basis for almost
every government program and system.
MuleSoft brings API-first integration
to legacy data, which allows our
customers to simplify integration efforts
in opening up that data. Once the data
is available, Tableau’s easy-to-use
interface brings analytics to everyone
in the organization so the results
can be used to build amazing digital
experiences, application workflows and
to make data-driven decisions.
To tie it all together, Slack adds
real-time collaboration so government
employees can continue to work from
anywhere using the same tools and
capabilities they’ve had in the office.
Internally at Salesforce, we use Slack as
our digital headquarters for engaging
with external partners and extending
trust, transparency, flexibility and open
communications to every member of
the organization.
Finding a new way to operate
In using traditional and legacy
IT systems, governments dedicate
significant amounts of time, money and
expertise to select, build, integrate, test,
Digital transformation and
the power of a platform
Using scalable technology to drive impact
Dave
Rey
iStock
Salesforce
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Nasi
Jazayeri
innovation
When applied to repetitive tasks,
automation is a game changer for
agencies. It enables organizations to
become much more agile and flexible
as needs arise or government policy
changes. A significant benefit of
automation is increased customer and
employee satisfaction. When agencies
automate workflows and processes,
customers can get their needs met
quickly and efficiently, and employees
can benefit from increased capacity to
focus on mission-critical activities.
At Salesforce, we are intentional
about bringing optimized solutions to
our government customers, such as the
Wyoming Business Council, which
optimizes work processes with the
cloud; the New Mexico Department of
Finance and Administration, managing
rental assistance in the cloud; and New
Hanover County, providing the ultimate
customer experience from the cloud.
This commitment to continuous
innovation allows us to provide
solutions that make it easier for
agencies to deploy digital services to
achieve mission success.
Nasi Jazayeri is executive
vice president and general
manager of the public sector
and Mia Jordan is a digital
transformation executive at
Salesforce.
By leveraging cloud-based technologies and
making a commitment to continuous innovation,
agencies can provide the digital services
needed in today’s evolving world.”
overnments responded rapidly
to the COVID-19 pandemic
by adapting their traditional
processes and delivery models to
digitize service delivery to those in
need. Agencies that were successful
in delivering digital services were
intentional about doing so. What do they
do? They develop a roadmap of what
they want to accomplish, deploy new
services fast when the demands arise
and build on initial launches to add
more functionality.
These agencies also have a
customer-centric focus, providing
simple and intuitive user interfaces with
as much automation behind them as
possible. They offer self-service models,
empowering customers to resolve
their own requests and making it easy
for people to find and fill out forms in
a self-sufficient manner. Using these
processes, customers can also get
immediate responses to online service
or application requests. For example,
when applying for unemployment
benefits online, people could know
immediately whether they qualify for
benefits, at what level and why. To
provide exceptional customer service,
these agencies leverage chatbots to
address straightforward questions and
share automated status updates, rather
than sending users to a call center with
potentially long queues.
Shifting service delivery models to
new digital channels during a pandemic
is challenging. But by leveraging
cloud-based technologies and making
a commitment to continuous innovation,
agencies can provide the digital services
needed in today’s evolving world.
An agile and digital-first
strategy
Customers expect timely services
in flexible and convenient mediums.
As a result, government IT systems
need to be modified to meet customer
expectations, where new features and
capabilities are rolled out in days, not
years. Creating an “agile first” policy
can help the government update its
policies and foundation to focus on
modern IT. Governments can invest in
cloud-based and low-code and
no-code platforms that are secure and
agile, which also provide access to an
ecosystem that is regularly updated
and constantly evolving to meet
changing demands.
In addition to an “agile first” strategy,
agencies can develop a digital strategy
that identifies both their pain points
and where they require investment
in people and tools. When evaluating
technologies to solve a problem, they
should keep in mind that not every
solution requires a separate tool.
Rather, they can invest in technologies
that meet multiple requirements and
use cases and solve holistic problems.
To further understand and close
gaps where challenges exist in mission
delivery, agencies can stand up focus
groups consisting of customers,
employees and partners.
Automation and continuous
Reimagine service delivery with
a proactive digital strategy
Agencies can be intentional about providing
extraordinary customer and employee experiences
iStock
Mia
Jordan
Salesforce
Salesforce
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Tahera
Zamanzada
and mathematics (STEM) field, and
it’s essential to address those biases
wherever they occur. Implicit bias
occurs during the educational
process and then again during the
job interview process and in
workplace environments.
According to the U.S. Census
Bureau, in 2019 women made up 48%
of all U.S. workers and only 27% of
STEM workers, whereas men made
up 52% of all U.S. workers but 73% of
all STEM workers. To keep women in
STEM positions, agencies can provide
mentoring opportunities for women
to connect with other successful
women in government and in partner
industries. Male support in tackling this
inequality is also key. I’ve been pushing
the HeForShe hashtag to continuously
encourage male colleagues to play a
vital role in supporting and
guiding women.
In the end, it all comes down to
people, process and technology. Once
we streamline our processes and use
the best technology to put the right
talent in the right place quickly, the
magic will begin.
Tahera Zamanzada is a
principal for digital strategy at
Salesforce.
High-touch and modern experiences enhance
the recruiting and interview process, ensuring that
agencies can hire the talent they need.”
We bring the public
sector and the future
of work together.
What happens when you treat employees
like your customers? Modernizing the
employee experience can unleash
innovation and empower them to
achieve mission success from anywhere.
Learn more at:
https://sfdc.co/FCW-Employeeexperience
s the government faces
unprecedented challenges
that continue to grow more
complex, technology is a major tool
that can be used to tackle these
problems. As a result, agencies can
improve the way they recruit and retain
tech-savvy workers, in order to remove
the bottlenecks in the traditional
recruiting process.
To achieve high-touch and modern
experiences, agencies can assess
their current recruiting process and
technological tools and reconcile
both. They can streamline workflows
and process.
By providing a speedy and responsive
hiring process for job candidates,
agencies can remain competitive with
the private-sector recruiting process.
To provide more flexibility, agencies
can replace in-person with video
interviews and allow candidates
to apply for multiple jobs at once.
However, the work doesn’t stop there.
Once candidates become employees,
agencies can provide continuous
opportunities for them to gain technical
skills and implement policies to
create a welcoming environment for
diverse representation.
Lastly, agencies can leverage
artificial intelligence to understand
employees’ wants and needs, for smarter
policymaking, reimagined service
delivery and more efficient processes.
Creating pathways for learning
Governments can foster an
eagerness for learning by encouraging
employees to gain new skills and
expertise that enable them to expand
their career horizons, further the
agency mission and benefit the end
user. Employees can be empowered
with resources that enable them to
understand different technologies
and how they can be used to address
business needs. Agencies can also
provide time during the work week for
employees to learn new software or get
certified on new technologies and with
the flexibility to attend conferences.
Fellowship programs are another
great way for employees to gain
practical experience. Programs can
be created where they don’t exist, to
enable staff to become familiar with
technical solutions they could use in
the future. As employees advance in
their careers, leadership development
programs are also vital. However, it is
best that they have a technical focus
because bridging the gap between IT
and human resources is paramount.
A leader who can create an
understanding between both
departments and break down technical
language to a stakeholder in HR (or any
business function) has a cherished skill.
Agencies can also provide a similar
offering to our free online learning
platform Trailhead, by introducing
online lecture series or gamifying the
education process.
Keeping women in government
STEM positions
There are obstacles that slow or
prevent women from entering the
science, technology, engineering
The benefits of treating
employees like customers
By modernizing their HR systems, agencies can hire
and retain tech-savvy employees
iStock
Salesforce
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Paul
Tatum
approvals, case assignments, expertise
requests, escalations and research.
All these activities need to move out
of disconnected email and into an
integrated and seamless part of the
business process. Slack is where
that happens.
FedRAMP Moderate-authorized,
Slack is the enterprise-grade
collaboration tool, providing
government organizations with a
more intuitive, engaging, secure and
productive way to communicate and
work from anywhere. Internally, when
we begin working on a new project,
we create a Slack channel to bring
together everybody to accomplish the
task. That channel enables us to have
visibility, transparency, cooperation
and consensus around our goals.
That’s why we’re excited about how
Slack enables that same collaboration
for government agencies; when work
flows, mission success grows.
Prioritizing IT modernization, secure
systems and a holistic ecosystem is
paramount to enable agencies to move
quickly to meet customer needs. At
Salesforce, our secure platform,
modern tools and robust partner
ecosystem enable agencies to
continuously innovate and achieve
mission success from anywhere.
Paul Tatum is executive vice
president of solution engineering
at Salesforce.
Every government IT modernization project can
build in easy, secure employee and partner
collaboration as part of every business process.”
nsuring that governments have
access to technology that can
deliver modern, agile and secure
services is a team sport and a shared
responsibility between governments and
their industry partners. At Salesforce,
trust is our number one value. We build
security into our Customer 360 platform
from the ground up so that governments
can spend more time focused on
their missions.
In addition to the security built into
the platform, we provide our customers
with a rich set of security tools, including
authentication, access controls,
encryption and event monitoring.
Agencies can fine-tune these features
to address their specific security needs.
They can also leverage Government
Cloud Plus, which is FedRAMP High
authorized to meet the security
and compliance requirements for
government agencies.
By leveraging modern technologies,
agencies can quickly deploy secure,
customer-centric applications in weeks,
instead of months or years. But to
achieve this, they’ll need to prioritize IT
modernization efforts that focus on their
platform, integration and security.
Selecting the right IT platform
When government leaders select
an IT platform, they are typically
making a five- to 10-year commitment
to that technology and the vendor
behind it. Before making such a long
commitment, government leaders
should evaluate and understand the
platform’s ecosystem.
For example, how many independent
software vendors are building
innovative applications on the platform?
How many developers are trained
on it? Is a robust set of consulting
partners delivering great services on
the platform? How frequently are new
capabilities added? What are customers
saying about the platform, its ease
of use and the value they’re getting
from it? When evaluating IT platforms,
it is vital for government leaders to
understand the holistic platform, its
capabilities and how it will meet an
agency’s needs.
At Salesforce, we’ve spent the past
22 years investing in our platform
ecosystem. It’s been one of our top
priorities from the day we started
this company. Customers now have
access to over 5,000 applications in
our AppExchange. There are 140,000-
plus credentialed experts who can help
customers configure and implement
Salesforce and hundreds of partners
that have built robust and deep
practices around our platform.
Requirements for a
modern platform
As governments evaluate IT
platforms, it’s important that the
platform meets the needs of an
all-digital, work-from-anywhere world.
To achieve this, every government
IT modernization project can build
in easy, secure employee and
partner collaboration as part of every
business process. These processes
should incorporate decision support,
consensus building, case swarming,
Investing in a secure and
modern platform
IT modernization demands an optimal blend of security,
infrastructure and continuous innovation
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Salesforce
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Hugh
Gamble
We are also intentional about
supporting and forging partnerships
around sustainability. To that end,
Salesforce sent a delegation to
the United Nations’ COP26 climate
change conference last fall to gain
insights, develop partnerships and lend
expertise. At COP26, it was gratifying
that a spectrum of stakeholders —
including the U.S. government —
came together to address these
urgent issues.
An exciting step forward at COP26
was that more than 100 countries
committed to ending deforestation
by 2030, and scores of world leaders
pledged to fund clean technology
around the globe. One major initiative
Salesforce is excited to participate
in is the State Department’s Climate
Entrepreneurship for Economic
Development Initiative, which
contributes to economic
development by nurturing
entrepreneurial climate solutions.
At Salesforce, we are always looking
for ways to engage with government
agencies to help them achieve their
missions and incorporate sustainability
into their digital services and
modernization goals.
Hugh Gamble is vice president
of federal government affairs and
public policy at Salesforce.
Government agencies can work toward creating
a sustainable future and accelerating their
net-zero journeys by developing their own
climate action plans.”
■
•
Go carbon neutral faster, with Net Zero-as-a-service.
Salesforce is on a mission to drive meaningful
climate action at scale, with Customer 360
solutions that embed Net Zero goals into
strategies and operating models.
Learn more at:
https: / /sf de.co/ FCW-Sustainability
•••••
•
•
•••••
e are facing a major climate
crisis. Rising temperatures
are causing environmental
damages and harming our planet. The
time to take bold action to urgently
tackle this crisis and create a more
sustainable future is now.
Effectively solving this challenge
will require government and
private-sector collaboration. At
Salesforce, we are leveraging the full
power of our technology, platform and
expertise to partner with government
agencies to drive meaningful climate
action at scale.
As significant energy users, it is vital
that government agencies incorporate
sustainability into their operations and IT
modernization efforts.
Developing an effective climate
action plan
Sustainability is a key point of
emphasis at Salesforce and part of
our commitment to taking care of
our stakeholders, which includes the
planet. In 2021, we became a Net Zero
company across our full value chain
and achieved 100% renewable energy
for our global operations.
Our Climate Action Plan aligns
to a 1.5°C future by focusing on six
sustainability priorities: Emissions
Reduction; Carbon Removal; Trillion
Trees and Ecosystem Restoration;
Education and Mobilization; Innovation;
and Regulation and Policy.
Government agencies can work
toward creating a sustainable future
and accelerating their net-zero journeys
by developing their own climate
action plans.
To start, leaders should bring
together and listen to their stakeholders
in an effort to gain a holistic
understanding of the situation, its
impacts and how to make changes that
can have positive results.
The next step should be to focus on
reducing and tracking their emissions.
Agencies and their energy suppliers
can achieve this by using renewable
and cleaner energy sources. When
that’s not possible, they should seek
alternatives, such as purchasing
high-quality carbon credits, financing
renewable energy supplies or
investing in nature-based solutions.
For example, Salesforce is part of the
World Economic Forum’s 1t.org, a global
movement to mobilize the conservation,
restoration and growth of 1 trillion trees
by the end of the decade. As part of
this commitment, we set our own goal
of 100 million trees by the end of 2030.
Finally, agencies should be
outspoken about their commitment to
addressing climate change. When the
government leads by example, others
are more likely to follow and adopt the
same priorities and practices.
Using technology to drive
climate solutions
Agencies can leverage
Salesforce’s Net Zero Cloud to track
and reduce their emissions. Net
Zero Cloud presents data in an
easily digestible, quickly accessible
way to help decision-makers
understand their carbon emissions
and energy usage and where they
can make improvements.
How government agencies
can take on sustainability
Innovative efforts to address climate change can be easily
incorporated into modernization initiatives
iStock
Salesforce
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Future-Proofing Digital Service Delivery
Kori Ann
Edwards
Courtney
Hawkins
How did Utah minimize the impact of the
pandemic on the state’s businesses?
At the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (also
known as Go Utah), one of our primary roles was to disburse
state and federal financial relief to Utah businesses. Since the
pandemic began, Go Utah has distributed over $200 million
in grants.
Our first pandemic relief program was the Utah Leads
Together Small Business Bridge Loan program, and it
was the first of its kind in the intermountain region (Utah,
Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana). Go Utah distributed
approximately $12 million to 1,150 small businesses under that
program in March and April 2020.
We focused on the health of Utahns and the economy as
one challenge that we needed to solve, which is a primary
reason why Utah has been named the number one state for
economic outlook and recovery.
How was a cloud strategy critical to helping you
meet your goals?
Leveraging a cloud-based platform that created a single
source of truth provided Go Utah with the tools needed to
manage the disbursement of relief funds in a step-by-step
process. In addition, dashboards gave us a snapshot of fund
deployment for each grant, evaluation tools helped ensure we
were providing responsible awards, and funding and contract
tools put everything in one place, which has been critical for
meeting all the reporting requirements.
What lessons did you learn that can be applied
to other challenges?
We found that the better we focused the aid, the more
impactful the funding. For example, we were able to specify
and evaluate what percentage of funds needed to get to rural
Utah, what industries were hit the hardest and what levels of
funding made the difference.
Additionally, Go Utah has a business intelligence team
that is well trained in using the Salesforce Customer 360 for
government, a compliance team that reviews and validates
applications, and a finance team that understands the
importance of deploying the funds quickly.
What advice do you have for other agencies?
Here are our 4 best practices:
1. Recognize customers as customers.
Government agencies often don’t think they have customers,
but we do. Go Utah’s customers are the business owners who
rely on our services.
2. Plan for a remote work environment.
A cloud platform enabled us to transition to remote work.
We could not have done our jobs from home if our grants
management process still ran on a paper-based system.
3. Put your data to work.
Go Utah is tracking, reporting and unlocking all kinds of
data-driven insights that can help our team and the state
improve future services.
4. Embrace a can-do attitude.
Go Utah’s strategy allows new programs to go live faster
because the team can reuse existing tools instead of building
each new workflow from scratch.
Our team became even more passionate about our work
because we see how much it helps businesses, individuals
and the community when we quickly deploy the services
they need.
Learn more about how Go Utah delivers
support for local businesses at sfdc.co/
customersuccess-GoUtah.
A Conversation with
Kori Ann Edwards
Managing Director of Operations, Utah Governor’s
Office of Economic Opportunity
rior to joining Salesforce in 2021, I was the director for
Rhode Island’s Department of Human Services and was
part of the leadership team that managed the COVID-19
response. During the pandemic, the state’s leaders knew that if
we could leverage technology, we could keep people healthy
and hopefully save lives.
We understood we had to move quickly to mitigate the health
risks. In doing so, we constantly asked ourselves if technology
could help us improve the quality of our service delivery and
help us be more efficient and effective. More often than not, the
answer was yes.
Pivoting quickly to deliver services in a crisis
To deliver services quickly in a pandemic, agencies should
keep these key considerations top of mind. They can begin
by assessing and understanding the governance and delivery
structure around the type of implementation they’re trying to
make and understand that rapid deployment cannot happen
without having the right technical infrastructure in place.
Agencies could leverage cloud-based, low- or no-code
platforms rather than building something new. Cloud-based
technology is scalable and can be configured for multiple
use cases, making it easier to deliver services quickly while
meeting the needs of a rapidly changing environment. It’s
also important that agencies understand that customers want
to be engaged in different ways and leverage technologies
that provide omni-channel engagement. Our Customer 360
for Government enables agencies to transform their service
delivery and scale to meet customer needs.
Lastly, agencies should value incremental progress. They
should not deploy inefficient and bug-filled products that
won’t meet the needs of customers, but they can find the right
balance of deploying a minimum viable product that will be
built upon and improved over time.
A foundation for public health responses
going forward
The lessons we learned about responding to the pandemic
are applicable to many other disease surveillance and public
health challenges. Instead of breaking apart the technological
structures and tools many states spent two years building,
we should ask ourselves: How might we work differently in
the future, and how can we build on these new technological
advancements? How can we break down silos across public
health institutions and leverage data to gain insights, predict
and understand future crises, and prepare differently?
We have the opportunity to transform public health moving
forward and cannot return to pre-pandemic methods of doing
things. With cloud-based technologies in place, public health
agencies can deploy services faster and more efficiently to
meet the needs of the public.
Courtney Hawkins is health and human services
industry executive in Salesforce’s Global Public
Sector. Learn more about Rhode Island’s contact
tracing system at sfdc.co/customersuccess-
RhodeIsland.
Responding quickly to a
public health emergency
The need for speed in providing government services
Move fast and
scale even faster
through any crisis.
Learn from Trailblazers in government agencies
across the world, who upended traditional processes
and systems in record time to adopt new technology
platforms to meet their constituents’ needs.
Learn more at: https://sfdc.co/FCW-Speed
governor.utah.gov
Salesforce
Go Utah
S-26 SPONSORED CONTENT
Future-Proofing Digital Service Delivery
What are the mission and priorities
of the Veterans’ Employment and
Training Service?
Our mission at VETS is to prepare
America’s veterans, transitioning service
members (TSMs) and military spouses for
meaningful careers; provide them with
employment resources and expertise; protect
their employment rights; and promote their
employment opportunities. Our vision is to
enable all veterans, TSMs and military spouses
to reach their full potential in the workplace.
In 2022, our priorities are:
1. Getting the military-to-civilian transition
right. Given that about 200,000 service
members transition to civilian life every year,
this is a large and really important task. During
the pandemic, VETS implemented virtual
offerings using a web-based registration portal
and delivered training using multiple platforms
based on our customers’ requirements.
2. Leveraging the right strategic
partnerships to maximize employment
outcomes. These include our federal partners
at the Department of Defense, Department
of Veterans Affairs and Small Business
Administration. Our state partners are
also critical, and we have a number of key
nonprofit partners, including Veterans Service
Organizations, labor unions and nonprofits
focused on veteran employment. Industry
associations allow us to help companies better
understand why hiring veterans is a good
business decision.
3. Advancing equity and inclusion in our
underserved veteran communities. VETS
is intentionally placing focus on advancing
equity and inclusion in communities that have
not traditionally interacted with DOL and other
segments of the federal government at the
same rate as other veteran communities. We
will identify gaps and barriers to equitable
access to services and identify how our
programs can better support all veterans,
including women, minorities, LGBTQ+, rural,
justice-involved and those with disabilities.
How did VETS pivot to continue
providing services to veterans during
the pandemic?
For the Transition Assistance Program, the
department was able to quickly migrate into
a virtual environment utilizing various online
delivery platforms, such as Microsoft Teams,
Zoom, Adobe Connect and Cisco Webex.
From March 1, 2020, to Nov. 30, 2021, VETS
provided 5,912 virtual instructor-led and 9,102
in-person workshops.
VETS’ Apprenticeship Pilot also shifted
to virtual delivery. The pilot was designed
to provide TSMs and military spouses with
opportunities to be hired into apprenticeship
positions prior to separation. VETS also
launched the Transition Employment
Assistance for Military Spouses and
Caregivers workshops to help military spouses
and caregivers plan and prepare for their job
search in pursuit of their employment goals.
Four workshops were piloted in September
2020 and offered virtually beginning in
February 2021; an additional five workshops
were piloted in May 2021.
How can VETS serve as a model for
other agencies?
By investing in research and data analytics
to better understand customers’ journeys,
we hope VETS can serve as a model agency
that meets the diverse needs of our evolving
veteran community. We are launching an effort
to make sure that improvements are informed
by the experiences of our customers. This is
an area in which the IT community has been
leading the way for years.
As a small federal agency with an important
and quite diverse mission, VETS must
leverage all the capabilities of IT and integrate
them with the very human and personal
aspects of serving America’s veterans of all
ages and eras. This interdependence is not
only one of our challenges, it is arguably one
of our greatest strengths.
Deputy Assistant
Secretary for
Operations
and Management,
Veterans’ Employment
and Training Service,
Labor Department
This interview
continues at
carah.io/FCW-Jan-
2022-Digital-Services.
Margarita Devlin
Executive Viewpoint
A conversation with