GX Notes 2024-04-28
A roundup of Government Experience (GX) and digital government services links and notes from the past week or so
Here’s a roundup of links, comments, and other items we found over the past week or so that may be interesting to digital Government Experience (GX) practitioners out there. If you have any recommendations for more articles we should see, hit us up in the comments.
This week it’s a bumper crop of links and notes because we’ve missed a few weeks and we’re catching up.
[1] We launched an all-new franklincountyohio.gov
Just over week ago our GX Concourse team re-launched the “core” Franklin County, Ohio website at franklincountyohio.gov.
We wrote up the launch right here.
[2] Can government be too digital?
We have a long way to go until we’ve made even a majority of our government services for the public digital or even digital-friendly. But some governments are a bit ahead of us. Two items:
Local Chinese governments have gotten so mobile and digital, they’re swamped by their own success
Examples of time-suck included government affairs apps that worked at cross purposes, the over-involvement of different departments through the sin of convenience, repetition of online and offline procedures, the uploading of mobile photos to log attendance or task completion — and of course, work-related WeChat groups that dinged incessantly with notifications.
To me, this is a reminder that User Experience (UX) is a two-way street. It needs to be better for the public, but it also needs to be better for the government staffer serving the public. We setup the GX Foundry to deal with both types of platforms and issues — internal and public-facing.
For now, we are a loooooong way from swamping our government teams with too much digital info or processes. But we’ll have to be careful to avoid this issue.
Not everything needs a login
One of the things we’re thinking about for 2025+ is how to handle citizen identity and enable seamless (but secure) re-use of identities across digital services. However, maybe we need to re-think that a little. This Bluesky post got us thinking:
Not every government service is worthy of creating a login. Any service that is a one-time or a very rare service probably could do with a simple timed email verification loop. For example, marriage licenses — hopefully you’re not coming back for marriage licenses regularly. Or coroner reports. But if it’s filing taxes, that’s a different matter — might as well have a sign-up there.
We’re thinking about Login.gov as a possible future service provider (if the feds allow locals to get involved), but short of that, we’ll likely need our own system. But for now, we’ll be thinking carefully about what really needs a persistent login.
[3] Civilla’s project in Michigan called out on Last Week Tonight
Nonprofit digital government consultancy Civilla got national attention earlier this month when a project they worked on in Michigan was praised for keeping people on Medicaid, despite rules enacted during COVID-19 to strike people from the expanded benefits automatically. You can see the full story below (NSFW, as usual):
But if you want to be truly inspired—check out Civilla’s own professionally-produced video on this signature project, which overhauled a 47-page public benefits application for the State of Michigan and made it clearer, simpler, shorter, and more accessible to everyone. It took 2 years, but they solved a decades-old problem that could have been written up in Recoding America.
If you work in civic tech, I dare you not to tear up toward the end of this video:
Finally, you can check out Civilla’s post on LinkedIn about this appearance in national media.
[4] A deeper dive on the collapse of the Ontario Digital Service
Canadians are so nice. And politically astute. Which is too bad, because it means the discussion on this 30-minute podcast spends most of the time talking about the achievements of the Ontario Digital Service (which are numerous) rather than how the ODS was pretty clearly brought down by internal government politics. To me, it’s a classic story of a startup division that gets killed off by the bigger incumbent organization.
Kinda wish everyone was more direct here, but I appreciate how being more careful can help protect the folks left behind, living in the wake of the ODS dissolution. Not everyone can escape, or wants to, and in truth it’s much more courageous to stay and keep hope alive than to head out to the private sector.
Still shaking my head over this development and hoping it remains an outlier rather than becoming a trend.
[5] Powerful leadership podcast episode on building great teams, managers, and self-awareness
Scott Galloway spent time on one of his recent podcasts talking to author and management consultant Claire Hughes Johnson and the discussion is amazing, especiallly if you’re a leader or working to develop leadership skills.
Starting listening around 13:49 to get right to the interview.
And listen starting at 39:27 for thoughts on the hot topic of DEI. Scott is fairly down on DEI, but Johnson takes a pretty smart, balanced perspective and stands her ground. It’s a great discussion.
And Johnson’s excellent book is available as well: Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building.
[6] How to tell a story in 2 sentences
My favorite storytelling consultant David Hutchens has a brief post on LinkedIn that explains how to tell an impactful story in just 2 sentences. I keep learning (and thinking) about how stories are far more valuable than sharing data. Recommended.
[7] IDEO U storytelling class review
Speaking of telling stories, I shared a review of my recently-completed IDEO U course over on LinkedIn. I think it’s pretty good, especially for making the case for the fundamental reasons for storytelling. But if you’re already convinced, the tools David Hutchens shares are probably sufficient. That and practice. Lots of practice.
You and find info on the IDEO U class here.
[8] Digital maturity assessment and model from Think Digital
I love a maturity model. Done well, it can give you a sense of where you and your team are now in developing capabilities in a professional endeavor of some kind—usually one that doesn’t lend itself to simple metrics.
For digital teams in government, there really aren’t lots of great models out there (that I’ve seen so far). But Canadian consultancy Think Digital has one to offer, and it’s worth exploring. They introduced the model in this post, but the actual intro slide deck is available here.
[9] Service Standards and Assessments
A key presentation from Danny Mintz (Code for America) and follow-on discussions at the recent Chief Digital Service Officer (CDSO) convening in Washington, DC (hosted by the DSN at the Beeck Center) hinted toward digital maturity in a way we may all want to consider.
Put simply: What if digital services teams at all levels of governments had “Service Standards” for their projects, and then ensured their projects lived up to those standards by employing required Assessments of plans before they are given the green light for funding, staffing, and deployment?
The idea is to replicate what was first done by the UK’s Government Digital Service, which they explain in detail on their website.
Further, the question posed during the CDSO conference was… should Service Standards—and the Assessments to ensure projects meet the standards—be mandated by law at one or more levels of government? Should the federal government, for example, demand that projects they are funding meet appropriate Standards?
For now, no new laws. But the Standards + Assessments discussion is worthy of exploration. Start reading up now.
[10] Start the ADA accessibility countdown
The U.S. Justice Department finally published rules around whether state and local government websites must meet ADA accessibility guidelines under the law. The upshot: Yep, it’s required. Everyone has until early 2026 to be in compliance.
GovTech covered the news here.
Meanwhile, software tools added to websites designed to improve ADA compliance are… not always well-loved. Some report they are big trouble for visually-impaired users in particular, according to this report in the Financial Times: Blind internet users struggle with error-prone AI aids (paywall). The story was also discussed at length on Hacker News.
We added the UserWay tool to our new website, but we definitely recognize it is a bandage not a total solution. It’s best used as a temporary cover while you take time to fix the underlying accessibility problems.
[11] Can we add some humor to digital services?
While we take our work seriously, we don’t take ourselves seriously, and it looks like we’re not the only ones. This post by Tom Orbach is focused on product teams building for the public, in a for-profit context, but it feels perfectly applicable to some elements of government, too.
It’s important to remember that government serves everyone and deals with some deadly-serious topics, too. For example, our county operates a Coroner’s office. Not exactly a place for humor (at least as far as public interactions are concerned). Additionally, humor does not always translate well, so if you’re using translation services to reach all corners of your community, maybe avoid any attempts at humor if the audience is multi-lingual.
Still… government could use a dose of easing up on the serious tone, given the public can often approach us assuming we’re humorless robots. It’s a balance, to be sure.
[12] Measuring the “time tax” in government services
This deeply wonky piece by Don Moynihan gets into the nitty-gritty of efforts to measure the impact of poorly-designed services (digital or otherwise) in government. There’s a book coming out, there’s a conference on May 7, there are examples from Australia and our own Code for America is noted as well. Lots of links and resources in this post. Recommended if you’re ready to dig in on cutting waste and building better user journeys via digital services.