The GX Foundry is a government experience team providing digital design, engineering, and product ownership for public service teams in Franklin County, Ohio. We were formed in 2022.
The GX Foundry is part of Franklin County Data Center (FCDC), the county’s one-stop technology services and consulting shop. FCDC was founded in 1967.
Our Mission
We forge digital experiences to build trust in Franklin County
Our Work
We design, build, buy, and manage digital platforms that enhance services for County colleagues and residents, one human-centered experience at a time.
Our People
We’re scrappy, inventive digital makers. We don’t tinker in an ivory tower or mass produce parts in a faceless factory—we craft code and compassionate processes in collaboration with real users.
What We’ll Share Here
We intend to “work out loud” by posting what we’re learning as we embrace digital agility, product ownership, new tools, user experience (UX) methods, and more. We want other government digital service teams to see what we’re doing just in case it’s useful them. After all, we’ve found our way by learning from trailblazers in our field, like the GDS, USDS, 18F, the Colorado Digital Service, and many others.
But we also know it’s different in local government, with smaller teams and budgets. We may learn—and share—some unexpected lessons along the way.
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As our audience grows here, we’ll consider adding chat, audio, and video, so definitely stick around. We know there’s a vibrant community of digital government folks all over the world talking about CX, UX, and now GX. We want to hear from you!
So please jump in the comments, connect with us on LinkedIn, subscribe, and tell us about your digital government experiences, too.
GX Foundry Leadership Team
John Proffitt, Chief Digital Officer
Eric Nutt, GX Development Manager
Denise Roberts, GX Platforms Manager
Sarah Gray, GX Concourse Manager
GX Foundry Org Details
We’re in local government, so there are some… layers involved in our organization. Parts of our history go back nearly 60 years, to the era of punch cards! But the GX Foundry itself will only turn 2 years old in late 2024.
History and Legal Underpinnings
Ohio enacted a law in 1967 (ORC 307.84) establishing “automatic data processing” functions inside counties, to be run by a board of county elected officials, chaired by the county Auditor. That board still operates today and has a key governance role.
The “Data Board” in turn hires a Chief Information Officer (Adam Frumkin since 2019) to lead this function day-to-day. The resulting organization is called the Franklin County Data Center (FCDC). FCDC provides a variety of technology services to agencies, programs, and teams across Franklin County. That includes digital services like software development, web and application platforms development and related support, maintenance, and consulting.
This digital services team rebooted its mission in late 2022 and launched the Government Experience Foundry—or GX Foundry—to head in some new directions, most notably focusing on UX/CX specifically in a government context.
Formal GX Foundry branding and public sharing of our ideas started in late 2023.
Products
We’re using a product ownership model to organize our thinking and actions around the digital services we forge and sustain. At last count our small team supports more than 200 products. Some of these are small digital forms apps, but some are large, custom, and complex applications used in critical parts of the County. We have a varied tech stack and multiple generations of tech gathered together under one roof.
Staffing
At the opening of 2024, we have a total of 16 positions on the team, including all leadership roles. FCDC has about 95 staff (including our 16). Franklin County has about 6,000 employees in total.
A high-level org chart for just the GX Foundry area is provided below.
