Page 64 - FCW, October 2017

FCWPerspectives
The analog keys to a
smart digital strategy
Clear business cases, careful user interviews and strategic outside alliances can be far more important than the technology itself
Digital government is that rare priority from the Obama administration that has been embraced and emphasized
by President Donald Trump’s team. Yet agencies continue to confront a range of budgetary, cultural and operational obstacles.
According to the digital services experts recently convened by FCW, however, the technology is rarely the trouble, and analog considerations are always the most important.
The Sept. 13 discussion
was on the record but not
for individual attribution
(see Page 47 for a list of participants), and the quotes have been edited for length and clarity. Here are the highlights.
The first challenge: Defining digital
Digital government initiatives rarely get traction without stakeholder buy- in, and the discussion participants acknowledged that there are still dif- fering interpretations of just what is being bought into.
“In my current environment, it’s all about things online,” one longtime digital specialist said. “What’s the strategy for the ecosystem online? In other areas that I’ve been, that’s not how they define it.”
“We all have different interpreta- tions,” another agreed, adding that her agency views digital offerings primarily as a means of enabling customers to self-serve and reducing the load for call centers and in-person support.
A third participant stressed self- service of a different sort. “Digital is taking things that had not been search- able before electronically and turning that into searchable information that can be accessed using a range of digi- tal tools so that we can find our own information better,” he said, “so that we can analyze it more effectively with digital tools and aggregate it. It’s that whole range of things that can be done with information that is now in elec- tronic form.”
That analysis is critical for agen- cies and citizens, another participant said. Digital initiatives can “use data to actually drive conversations and...
have a huge impact on what we are asking the public to submit to us,” she said. “When you have paper forms, you have to fill out everything because each form is its own thing. When you have digital forms, you can start to change to the mindset that we’re collecting pieces of data.”
How to make the business case
Top digital talent and dedicated fund- ing are still tough to come by, but most participants said it was surprisingly easy to craft a compelling business case. The key is to focus on the mis- sion impact, not the specific technolo- gies behind those changes.
Several noted that digital is by far the most cost-efficient channel for engaging with customers. “Walk-ins, for us, are somewhere in the $60 range,” one executive said. “Phones are $30. Digital is less than a dollar. It doesn’t take a lot of math to see that.”
And oftentimes, the returns are more significant than per-customer savings. One participant cited a Trans- portation Department effort to digitize the data that logs safety problems with truck drivers and their vehicles. When those records were on paper, he said, “bad actors \[were\] essentially spoofing identity to stay on the road.”
Now, DOT is “quantifying lives saved, based on the data that we have on accident rates associated with the
44
October 2017 FCW.COM