[Music] hi everyone welcome to glide fast and fair code on air i'm lauren jankowski the marketing manager at fair code and glide fast and i'll be moderating today's webinar fastgov how governments can deliver secure and efficient service to citizens before we get started i'd like to give you some background information on glidefast and fair code as sister companies glidefast consulting and fair code both both offer cutting edge technology services glidecast is a consulting firm dedicated exclusively to servicenow and was recently honored to be named number 341 on the inc 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies in america barricode provides technology services managed services and staff augmentation to federal state and local government organizations barricode is proud to have partnerships with a variety of different technologies and recently achieved servicenow elite partner status as a perk of attending today's webinar we'll be giving away a 50 visa gift card we'll announce the winner at the very end of today's session so be sure stay on for the entire webinar i'm excited to introduce today's presenter sarah tolson a service portal developer on the glidefast and fair code team i'll be monitoring the q a throughout today's session so please send in any questions as they arise and we'll do our best to answer them now i'd like to hand things over to sarah tolson hello everyone i'm sarah tolson today we're going to dive into a few things that can help our friends in state and local government take the leap into providing digital citizen services so why citizen services well government administration is my home base i've changed careers a few times like you do but one of my first and ongoing passions has been for local government i am actually trained to be a city manager during my time working in municipal government i took note of the many ways in which my job and those of my colleagues were often slowed down by the need for paper forms signatures manual processes that led to lost paperwork or delayed service even using some of the technologies geared for use by government agencies i found many of the solutions to be outdated and difficult to use i became a servicenow developer because i saw an immense opportunity to bring the power of this platform to my friends in state and local government i saw the opportunity to serve our communities in a way that was more efficient and effective while our society has already been expanding the use of internet to carry out our daily lives from grocery shopping to appointment scheduling the pandemic has given us a big push in the direction of providing low or no contact services in an in an efficient way for many governments successful continuity of services has been the difference in whether some families have their basic needs met so i have geared this conversation for two primary groups first i want to advise my brethren in government administration i'm looking at you city and county managers department directors mayors councilmen and commissioners my passion for this subject comes from my time serving in local government my hope is that with this information you can take steps towards successfully providing digital services by making wise decisions about the technology you use and the path you take to implementation ultimately i want to make your job serving your communities easier second i'm looking to provide some insight for my fellow servicenow developers i want you to use this information to help guide your state and local government clients as they make this important leap serving the general public is a special rewarding endeavor together we can ensure that solutions we provide are truly assisting the communities we come in contact with so just a quick note on the points we're going to cover today first we'll talk about the importance of going digital and what can be gained for your community by providing services online where in the past we've typically seen a more manual in-person approach then we're going to get into some general advice i and our teams here at glide fast and fair code have seen as helpful for ensuring that your implementation of digital services is a success during the course of this presentation i'm going to also be introducing you to fasco our solution and strategy for providing citizen services online fast gov is built on the servicenow platform and utilizes the customer service management or csm application you'll hear me reference these as well all right first so why go digital this is an ever-changing world and increasingly we're dependent on digital services like i said banks shopping even connecting are now commonplace over the internet at the touch of a button it's time for us from the smallest town hall to the largest state department to get on board many of the benefits of going digital can be summed up into three main advantages that digital services provide first is citizen access i can't tell you the number of times i've had a member of the public in my office for a permit or some other service tell me how inconvenient it was to have to come down to city hall in the middle of the work week going digital provides the opportunity to open up access to your services to a wider swath of the population and can even assist in boosting citizen involvement having access to request services from home whether it be applying for medicare or requesting a pet license can ease the burden on your citizens for getting what they need the second benefit and one that hits us regardless of the size of our organization is that of budgetary constraints manual processes are expensive longer man hours more physical resources a higher chance of error all add to the cost of doing business as a government entity self-service tools can reduce these costs tremendously for example the irs reported that they spend an average of 41 every time a citizen calls them compare that to the cost of 22 cents per use of automation tools setting up these self-service tools and allowing your citizens to make requests and report concerns digitally can drastically reduce the time and materials needed to respond in addition a digital system allows you to keep track of service request levels giving you another tool at your disposal to plan budgetary needs based on concrete information you'll know ahead of time what's needed to provide a service and you can see what resources are needed to keep that service running at an optimal level as your community grows now last i'd like to touch on the immense benefit digital services can provide to managing your processes one thing i've come to love about the servicenow platform is it's great flexibility in handling your workflows every city county and state has different processes for providing a service with different forms requirements and hands that those forms have to go through for signature the way you obtain a building permit in raleigh north carolina may be vastly different from the way it's handled in seattle washington with servicenow you can easily set up your processes in a way that's custom tailored to your existing way of doing things no more waiting for interoffice mail or telling that citizen you're not quite sure where their application is by going digital you can easily see where in the process an application is and when that citizen calls you can tell them what may be holding up their application and work with them to more quickly resolve any concerns they have and because you're managing the process digitally the application is always where you left it online no sorting through files or email chains to find what you need all right now we're going to dive into some tips to ensure your digital services are set up for success first let's talk about security with many government services your citizens are handing handing over sensitive and personal information including working salary history social security numbers birthdays etc so my first piece of advice is to ensure that the solution you use to provide digital services has reliable security in place servicenow for example is currently used by some of the biggest brands in the world and is also used at all levels of government protecting industry secrets user information and government programs one feature i highly recommend is user self registration the servicenow platform offers this through their csm application that fafsgov is built upon with this feature your users will be able to set up their own account put in their information and submit the request on their own which then reach your staff's inbox for consideration we can take this up a notch with integrations that allow you to verify the identity of the people that are submitting applications so you know exactly who is submitting that application and you've verified who they are and where those benefits are going this is going to let you allow your citizens to have a more personalized experience where they can check on the status of the request and ask questions which can ultimately reduce your call volume now this third point ties into the second reason i mentioned for advocating for digital services budgetary constraints requiring user authentication to request services is going to give you more data about the types of requests you're receiving allowing you to see where those service levels fall and helping you plan for future needs now i'd like to pause here and note that of special consideration for citizen services is the need to ensure there are as few barriers to obtaining services possible why is this so important like i mentioned earlier for some families these services are the difference in whether or not there's a roof over their heads and food on the table the services we provide as government entities are vital for the most vulnerable members of our community so we're looking to do everything we can to help them successfully navigate through the process with factup we've had a number of government clients come to us with concerns that user authentication will be a burdensome barrier for citizens seeking essential assistance we've worked with these clients to ensure that all citizens even the ones who are uncomfortable or unable to request services online still have equal access let me show you example of how we've handled this here you can see our page where users can create an account to apply for benefits in addition to allowing them to create an account we include instructions that assist them in obtaining an email account for registration if they don't have one and clearly show that contact information where they can get in touch with the government staff if they need assistance in registering or applying built into this implementation is the ability for staff to help users register and apply for services or makeover requests whether over the phone or what have you with these measures in place we're going to be able to lower that barrier to entry for our citizens allowing those again who are not comfortable or rather allowing those who are comfortable to and able to register online and those who aren't have that help available to them so they can get what they need uh last word on security i'd like to give a word of warning about the use of public or unauthenticated forms initially foregoing user registration in favor of publicly accessible or anonymous forms where just anyone can submit anything seems to be an easier approach to ensure all citizens have access however there have been many incidences of these forms being maliciously used to either flood the system with junk data which is a mess for your staff to clean up or attack the system to bring it offline which makes your service provision grind to a halt by utilizing user registration you're going to know who's putting information in your system and where that information is coming from lessening the chance of downtime due to malicious attacks for organizations that absolutely need those publicly available forms we can work with you to mitigate the security concerns as much as possible though we do recommend authentication as a best practice next your organization will want to do some soul searching as to what your community's needs are and which of your processes are good candidates for going digital this is that prep work before you really get into choosing the technology and implementing it when working with our fafsa clients we go through the process of helping them lay out their needs and priorities so all parties involved have a good sense of what's going to be developed what's included and how long it's going to take the more time you take the layout and understand your processes the more smoothly that jump to digital can go through this phase of scoping out project and gathering requirements we're looking to help you take those existing processes for dealing with your reported potholes your burn permits or your unemployment applications and build them into a digital experience without leaving out any of those details that are vital to those processes such as the signatures and documentation needed who has to look at that application waiting periods etc now when considering which services you want to take digital there's a couple of places that you can look to help determine your priorities the first one is your pain points what processes are slowing you down is it taking too long to get recycle cans out to the new residents are city vehicles not being serviced in a timely manner due to scheduling issues are building permits backing up because they need a final sign off from that staff member that's only in on thursday some of the instances i've mentioned okay they're a bit hyperbolic especially for your larger organizations but every organization has its bottlenecks and its services that seem to be overwhelming for the number of requests these would be good places to start another place to look for good candidates is your finite processes that could reasonably be handled without in-person contact a burn permit for example may require the resident to fill out a form and get signed off from the fire marshal before the approved permit is issued this is a process in which you could possibly use digital signature to send an impr send the approved application via email during the request in your online system and our system would take care of a lot of that for you these smaller services and reporting mechanisms can be great candidates for transition to digital services i especially love this for reporting issues around town such as downed trees in the road potholes broken playground equipment that sort of thing you're going to rack and stack those items for the ones you want delivered first if you want to stage it maybe a few departments go digital to get you started and then phase two brings in some lower priority services ultimately you're looking to prioritize what's going to help your community adopt the use of digital services and use those services successfully when analyzing your needs and transitioning to digital services we sometimes have this urge to like fix and clean it up beforehand here's where i advise you to hold steady that old principle of if it's not broke don't fix it applies here the transition to digital is not the time to rework your process if you can avoid it your staff will need the time to transition to that new digital platform and it's going to be much easier for them to do so if they're only learning the platform and not a new process on top of that as time goes on and your staff become comfortable with the use of the new technology you're going to begin to see what areas of your process can be improved which leads me to my next point and that is to use a system that is flexible enough to bend to all the unique twists and turns of your organization's processes in government there are certainly some one-size-fits-all processes but more often than not applying for a service in one state or county isn't the same as in another like i mentioned this is one thing i love about servicenow platform i love how flexible the system is for working with how you already conduct business you want this kind of flexibility when providing government digital services as state and federal requirements change from year to year or even month to month and you have to be ready to adopt ultimately you know how your organization works best be it a county health department or municipal planning and zoning expect your technology to work the way you need instead of being forced to change your way of doing things to fit the technology and last to keep in mind don't forget to consider those specialty software programs you're currently using and determine how you want your digital service offering to work with those systems if at all do you want the purchase order requested in your digital system to send information to munisoft do you want to incorporate the use of that great gis software that your your planning department loves if you're using systems that you want to keep you're going to want to look for a solution that allows you to seamlessly integrate into your existing technology with clients both private and public we've integrated this platform with a vast array of technologies using servicenow as the central hub for all of their organizations processes you're looking for a system that can enhance the way you do business and make the transition from your legacy platforms to the new solution easy on the staff members that are using those systems on a daily basis all right next um the jump the digital services is a big decision and oftentimes this is made at your higher level than a governing organization to ensure the success of your implementation i encourage you to empower your staff at all levels of your community they're the ones that are planning the logistics of the christmas parade or driving the recycle trucks that make them the absolute heroes of every little boy in town they're the ones protecting your citizens and helping them get through the emergencies that life throws their way or helping the businesses in your community grow and thrive the workforce of your government absolutely must be on board with this transition in order for it to succeed going digital should make their jobs easier not more difficult so how do we do this there are three ways you can encourage employee buy-in and the first one is to gather your requirements from the ground up when you're fleshing out how that technology needs to behave ensure you're including those staff members that work those processes into those conversations into those initial conversations this way you're going to ensure that how management views how for example a billing permit is handled and how a building permit is actually handled are one and the same your staff are going to have insights into the day-to-day service that upper management may not have which is going to prove vital to ensure your services are implemented well and as i mentioned earlier you want to avoid changing the way your process is currently run if at all possible including the employees that run those processes and ensuring those processes that go digital are the same as those your staff are currently used to is going to help ensure that move to digital is a smooth one second start early to get the support of your staff speak with them about the pain points in their day-to-day jobs and have those conversations about how digital services could help them serve your community more efficiently like i said including them in those required in that regard requirements gathering process be sure to update them as you grow closer to your implementation date and make sure they they're ready for that coming change which leads me to my last point to help ensure they're ready involve them in testing as your solution is prepared and ensure they are properly trained during our process we encourage our clients to take active part in thoroughly testing their system as it's built as you choose your testing team make sure you're including the employees that are going to be using that system day-to-day this is going to help you in a few ways first if they find that process was built in a way they're not familiar with testing is a good place to iron out any issues before they're expected to use the system let them know their questions and concerns are heard this also provides them an opportunity to get familiar with that new system employees talk and if they like what they're seeing they're going to be your best advocates to get your workforce on board with the coming changes now as the project comes to a close i highly encourage you to spend the time and the resources to ensure your staff are properly trained on the new system well before that system goes live we can provide training for the servicenow system as a whole and also for the custom solution we build for your community we also do our best to provide thorough documentation they can reference moving forward jobs change hands and we want your new employees to be just as prepared to provide digital services as your veterans we want to empower your staff to learn to use the system and mold it to your changing needs i adore the folks that support our communities they are some of the best people i've ever met they're amazing at their jobs and i love taking the time and the opportunity to help them learn this new tool that's going to make their lives easier ultimately if you take the time to ensure your staff members are invested and excited to go digital you're going to empower them to work smarter and more efficiently as a former government worker i can't say this enough so save them stress and keep your citizens served and happy all right we've talked about some ways you can internally set yourself up for success but the success of your digital services also rides on the willingness of the public to use your digital offerings taking action ahead of time to get to help get the public invested and ready for your new digital services is gonna really help protect that return on investment for the technology you employ if no one uses it money is wasted so how can we get the public on board simply stated by following some tried and true user experience principles first we want to ensure mobile compatibility while this is par for the course on most sites nowadays i still run across systems on government sites that aren't friendly to view or to use on mobile devices even some custom service sites i've seen don't offer an optimal experience on mobile phones many of them are geared for use on a stationary computer it is essential that your digital service offering gets this right why because for some citizens a mobile phone may be the only reliable access they have to the internet at home again we want to ensure access for for all as much as possible i've watched acquaintances of mine attempt to apply for unemployment on mobile devices it was a panicky and a stress inducing process for them job loss is hard enough there's no reason why applying for unemployment should add to that problem offering an easy pleasant experience on all your devices is going to help grow public confidence in that system second you want to implement a digital services solution that allows you to design for your community with our clients we take as much time as necessary to go through what they need and create a custom interface that really reflects their community or even mirrors the existing government site for a more seamless experience we use web design principles to create an experience that's easy on the eyes and easy to understand built to highlight the services that you need to show studies on user experience have shown that your site visitors will often perceive an aesthetically pleasing design as more usable and trustworthy and that is our aim now last very similar to the points i made with government staff you want to get the public input early in the process open up the opportunity for the public to comment on what services they'd most like to see go digital what their hopes and fears and concerns will be if you already have some services available online give them the opportunity to say what's working and not working in your current system certainly take those comments into account as you're determining your priorities then during testing invite a committee of active citizens of different age ranges and this is important different computer literacies to sit down at your site and test different functions both on the computer and on the mobile device if your citizens find your digital process difficult to navigate you can make changes to the site before it goes live i always like to see testing go through regular users that are unfamiliar with the inner workings of the project it's often eye-opening to see what we as project managers and developers take for granted as i mentioned with your staff getting your citizens involved and giving them a chance to be heard is going to help build excitement and confidence in the system they're going to spread the word and look forward to the change all right we've talked about four things you can put into practice to help set your community up for digital service success ways to empower the staff prepare the public choose a dependable platform and analyze your needs now i'd like to pivot a bit and talk about how we use these principles and other best practices to bring digital services to communities across the u.s so why fast gov well not all digital services are equal i peruse a number of government sites to check out what they have to offer digitally i found a number of solutions that while digital utilize clunky outdated technology that's difficult to navigate for the citizens we wanted to provide an experience that inspires confidence and truly provides government at the speed of their lives for the workforces that uphold our communities we wanted to provide an easier more efficient way to help them serve the public so what is fasco put simply it's our service offering built on the servicenow platform precision tailored to your government's processes however it's not just one thing but it's a package of features that adds up to a phenomenal experience specifically geared for state and local government first like i've mentioned we utilize a platform trusted by public and private organizations around the world platform is secure and reliable on top of this platform we build a service portal that allows your citizens to easily apply for services and report issues let's take a look at a few examples of how this can go this is an example of a public portal we are currently building for one of our clients we look to incorporate the clients existing web styles with a warm inviting layout that instills confidence in our citizen users and encourages them to dive in and use the site to obtain the services they need we look to build experiences that mirror other sites our users are accustomed to browsing as studies have shown that most users prefer a familiar feeling site layout moving down the home page whether or not our citizen is logged in our site provides them with a database of articles and information they can browse and search to find answers they need this database can easily be administered by your staff who can update and add articles as needed this knowledge base gives our citizens another opportunity for self-service empowering them to find the information they need for themselves and providing information in a way that can help you reduce those call volumes taking a look at another portal we've built you can see here an example of how your services can be displayed and organized by category of course the layout and design of these pages can be changed to fit your community needs we have also with other clients worked on home pages for this catalog that categorize items by the most viewed by your resident business visitor different personas so that they can more easily find what applies to them one piece of technology we've built for our clients that i'm really excited about is ui flow one thing i've noticed is particularly treacherous about digital government services is the tendency for forms to be long and even intimidating i've seen some digital platforms where information can easily be lost on browser refresh or if your laptop goes to sleep and when you've spent an hour meticulously filling out all of those fields it can be really devastating to lose your progress again we want to lower barriers to obtaining service and make the process as simple and straightforward as possible with ui flow our users can fill out forms for services that are broken up into small digestible sections with the ability to save along the way and come back later to complete the average person can keep about seven items in their working memory by reducing the number of items they have to consider at one time we're reducing the chance of error in the application and we help the user feel confident and calm as they make their way through the application process third i'd like to mention that with fasco we work with you to ensure your digital offerings comply with all the applicable state and federal regulations for example one requirement we've run into is that of providing translation services again pointing back to ensuring access for all of our citizens we integrate with google translate and configure your site so residents can easily select the language they want to use another way we've had to work within federal guidelines is just by the nature of the fact that in submitting applications for certain services you can't require someone to fill out a a part of an application or make a field mandatory for submission you can't permit you cannot prevent them from submitting an application through the use of mandatory fields so to work with this requirement we've developed what we call what we call an eligibility engine to help validate those applications after they're submitted which goes a long way to assist your staff in processing those requests without keeping our citizens from actually submitting last i will briefly mention that this solution includes reports and metrics that can be tailored for all of your processes this can assist you with department reports and provide easy access to the metrics that elected officials and managers need to make high-level decisions i've spoken to mayors in the past about the possibility of a digital system and they found the idea of a dashboard showing metrics they needed particularly compelling and that is all for me at this time i really enjoyed sharing this with you i'm very passionate about bringing this service to state and local government so i'll take any questions that you have all right everyone um you can use the q a to send in any questions um and sarah it does look like we have some um so the first one how can we take this for a test drive um i am happy to work with you to set up a demo and we can at that point show you all of the different pieces and parts of the system and how it would work not only from the citizen side but also from the fulfillment side how your staff are going to use it day to day so feel free to reach out if you want to see it love to show it to you perfect um here's another question what are your future plans to expand this there are so many ways i could see this doing so much good for our state and local governments i have thought about the idea of building out a medical record system and scheduling for your county health departments i have friends and family in the medical industry and i've heard not so good things about the records programs they use i would love to make this more user friendly for our county health staff a few other things that i've thought of inventory management i did a brief stint as a secretary for wake county public school system back in the day while i was there i went with a manager to acquire some office furniture where i discovered that there are these huge warehouses full of furniture and supplies uh you know so you can more easily reuse things this system is already built to handle both requests and inventory of things like this and i'd like to more formally build this out to cater to our larger governments who have these massive inventory pools that they have to keep up with additionally planned maintenance in a similar vein i would love the opportunity to work with a maintenance division a department of transportation public works department um to develop a planned maintenance system for handling their fleet uh those recycle trucks the knuckle booms the patrol cars the fire engines they all need maintenance on a planned schedule as do your buildings your facilities and what have you um imagine a system that's set up so that you're not suddenly hit one year with a three million dollar bill because the civic center needs a new roof uh with a planned maintenance schedule i see room for better budgetary preparation preparation so you are ready when those big dollar expenses come and again by monitoring your service levels all in one place you can see ahead of time that chief is going to need some more patrol cars and officers in the next couple years and you can start prepping your budgetary um your your budget for that now to uh yeah i've got like a list um citizen information um i found on some municipal sites documents such as meeting minutes ordinances resolutions can be difficult to locate on government websites and with your users creating accounts for themselves they can sign up to receive alerts and information about upcoming meetings and you can also put those items in this system where they can easily access it and last the idea of incorporating geolocation is something i would like to see this explore um i've been talking about this with our senior architects for a while this functionality could be used to help pinpoint reported items like potholes help users find out their voting information and polling places and even track the garbage trucks if a citizen like me forgets to put their trash out the night before and they can look and see if the trash trucks already pass them by or not so you can run out and take their card out which means that fewer people are going to be left in the dust when that happens because they forgot because i definitely forget so some of these items you already see piecemail software that will handle them when i was working in municipal government we were constantly being asked to look at like the next best piece of software or what have you um what fasco gives you is one platform where you can have everything at your disposal one platform where you can handle your public and your internal requests i see this as an opportunity for our government administrators to enjoy software that works for them and using the way that they already serve their communities instead of expecting them to change their ways of doing things to fit one piece of technology that may or may not have everything they need so there's my list awesome yeah i know that sounds great it sounds like you've got some big big plans for fast gov so that's super exciting um but that does look like all the questions that we had for today so i would like to announce the winner of our 50 visa gift card and the winner is keaton stafford congratulations keaton we'll um email you that gift card to you directly i'd like to thank everyone for attending today's webinar um sarah thanks so much for that it was awesome and if anyone has any more questions feel free to reach out to us at info glidefast.com or info fairfood.com and to see more sessions just like today's um just check out our website and we have plenty more coming up thank you everyone and enjoy the rest of your day [Music] you