Page 24 - FCW, May/June 2020

Digital Experience
Maintaining
productivity
in times of crisis
Better asset management and digitized workflows are essential to a seamless customer experience
Jonathan Alboum
Principal Digital Strategist for the Federal Government, ServiceNow
Creative solutions to unusual situations
Some customers might not prefer to interact with agencies online, but when government offices are forced to close, they suddenly have no alternative. In those situations, agency employees must be prepared to
walk somebody through a process that they typically handle face to face.
For example, when state offices
were closed to limit the spread of the coronavirus, Tennessee officials faced the challenge of getting emergency benefits to children and families under the federally sponsored Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Signing up
for those benefits requires an in-person
BUYING AND DEPLOYING
new technology at a time of crisis
is far from ideal. Still, many agencies found themselves in that position as employees and government operations shifted to telework during the coronavirus pandemic.
As a former government CIO, I understand the challenges our clients had to tackle to keep things running during the crisis. The disease outbreak and subsequent lockdown exposed some severe gaps in government preparedness.
A well-managed organization understands its data, workflows, resources and networks. It knows how services are provided, who and where the employees are, and who the contractors are. And it understands the importance of proper IT operations management. When disaster strikes, those organizations are better prepared to make the adjustments that are necessary to continue providing customer service and support their employees’ needs so they can operate as though nothing has changed.
Keeping employees energized and engaged
During a crisis, people need the services that agencies at all levels of government provide. But employees cannot deliver good citizen experiences if they can’t access the network or any of the resources they need to perform their work. They won’t feel engaged, and that will affect the way they interact with citizens.
Agencies must be ready to serve customers under any circumstances.
It’s important to digitize office workflows ahead of time so that those processes
can seamlessly transition to telework environments when a crisis hits. During such disruptions, IT leaders need to know how many software licenses they have for videoconferencing, VPNs and other remote tools. They must be able to get laptops to the employees who need them and have
a plan for servicing those computers if something goes wrong. They also need to keep all the agency’s other activities functioning, such as human resources.
Software asset management can help agencies respond to crises by optimizing the purchase and maintenance of all those tools and by allowing agencies to scale resources up and down as needed.
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