Tag: citizen services

Georgia’s Department of Human Services (DHS), the largest of the state’s agencies, was able to digitally transform their business and rapidly scale their AWS Cloud adoption with AWS Managed Services (AMS). The department used AMS to modernize legacy technology onto a hosted platform that meets rigorous security guidelines and adds reliability to an environment where speed and availability are critical. At re:Invent 2022, Sreeji Vijayan, chief information officer of the Georgia DHS, spoke about the Georgia DHS’s migration journey with AWS. Learn key takeaways from Georgia DHS’s migration experience with AWS, and watch the on-demand session to dive deeper.

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) recently released the 2023 report of the top 10 priorities of state chief information officers (CIOs) for strategies, management processes, and solutions. AWS works closely NASCIO and with state and local leaders across the US to develop solutions that address these top 10 needs. Explore these top 10 priorities and how state and local leaders can use AWS to support them.

Citizens want to report issues to their local governments in a fast and simple manner and not have to worry about identifying the right government agency or phone number—for instance, if a fire hydrant is broken, or a road sign has fallen over. In this blog post, learn how to set up a solution with AWS deep learning services that creates a fluid experience for reporting and addressing these issues.

A common driver of public sector transformation is the potential for efficiency. This is certainly one of the benefits of digitalization. However, I want to share a story that shows why we need to balance this focus on efficiency with an understanding of how people will use our services to achieve the best results for our efforts. I walk through how agencies can approach human-centered design to create better and more effective citizen services.

In 2020, the City of Fort St. John in British Columbia began searching for innovative solutions to make life more simple for its young population. City staff wanted to better serve residents in ways that would suit their busy, digitally connected lifestyles. So the city worked with Cocoflo, a smart cities technology company, to implement a digital solution that could make municipal information and services more accessible through their SmartLiving portal—powered by AWS.

Customer experience (CX) has emerged as a key priority in the US following the 2021 Biden Administration Executive Order (EO) to transform federal customer experience and service delivery. Application modernization enables agencies to simplify business processes and provide customers with flexible, interactive, and simple to use applications, resulting in improved CX. In this blog post, we present an AWS architecture framework that agencies can use to develop and deploy a modern application that helps improve CX.

To prevent citizens from falling behind on their mortgages, the federal government awarded states $10 billion from the Homeowner Assistance Fund (HAF), delivered under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. This funding required sign-off from the US Department of the Treasury to access and the funds needed to be distributed quickly. AWS customer ProLink Solutions supported states with rapidly designing and deploying new programs and workflows, which helped states acquire these funds and quickly deliver them to citizens in need.

When I worked in the UK government, I led the Government Digital Transformation Service (GDS) Transformation Program, where we used an Agile approach to modernize a range of services, from social care benefits to prison visit booking. Now, I work with the AWS Institute executive education program to teach public sector leaders how to accelerate and expand their impact for citizens with digital transformation. In this blog post, I share my experience using the Agile approach to transform government services, and offer some best practices for organizations who want to adopt a bias for Agile action to deliver successful modernization faster and at scale.

While several public sector organizations launched new digital services during the pandemic, many still struggle with providing a high quality and equitable customer experience. To reduce the risk of a digital service not being received, or only being used by a limited portion of the intended population, government leaders should ask three customer experience questions before deploying new services — and consider how the cloud can help shape the answers.

Cloud Innovation Centers (CICs) powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) aim to empower public sector organizations to quickly create and test new ideas using Amazon’s innovation methodology. With the CIC program, students and researchers, along with AWS teams, focus on solving real-life societal challenges facing the public sector. Learn more about some of the digital solutions on challenges the CIC team published over the last quarter such as working to prevent opioid overdose, discovering new coronaviruses, and using machine learning to monitor beehive health.