(Originally posted Aug, 2023)
With nine new Mayors taking office this year representing cities with the largest populations and countless others across the country representing smaller towns and mid-sized cities, it’s a good time to think about how these new administrations can approach technology.
With such large technology portfolios that span transportation, permitting, healthcare, public safety, and much more, a new Mayor and their CIO, CTO, and leadership team can create an environment whereby the Government is held accountable for designing and delivering services with a focus on the actual experience of the people whom it is meant to serve.
Within the first 100 days, new Mayors can:
- Issue an Executive Order directing agencies to prioritize Customer Experience (CX)
- Define five “Life Experiences” such as “Approaching Retirement” or “Facing Financial Shock” and direct agencies to deliver strategies and playbooks on working together to achieve related goals
- Create a new Digital Service, a small team of highly-talented technologists that serve a one to two-year “digital tour of service” to focus on the Mayor’s top three priorities
Within the first year, new Mayors can:
- Invest in user experience design and research talent and processes that will contribute to better service design
- Create agile vendor pools that will lower costs and increase competition for the technology products and services the city purchases
- Build a talent pipeline of technologists, junior and senior, specifically product managers, UX practitioners, and cybersecurity experts
- Invest in a zero-trust security model and evangelize for security best practices across all horizons of the application development lifecycle
To succeed in service delivery, new Mayors and their teams must consider the customer journey of the people they serve. For example, in Colorado, nearly 20% of residents are covered by Medicaid. Medicaid is a Federally-funded program with a diverse ecosystem of local partners that deliver services to City and County of Denver residents. The City must take an active role to ensure appropriate health data information is being shared across various levels of government as needed and foster a culture of listening, user research, and service design that can best support the work of all of our government and non-profit partners.
To understand if the delivery of a service is working for the people, instrumentation, monitoring, and observability are critical. Teams in charge of services should have a deep background in audience metrics, funnel analysis, conversions, and more. Using quantitative product metrics combined with qualitative user research is how delivery teams build empathy for their users and iterate toward the product/market fit needed to serve residents best.
Building a culture focused on impact and outcomes is incredibly important for a new Mayor, especially within their technology portfolio. Formal techniques can be helpful such as OKRs to guide teams or prompt product managers to use the phrase “as measured by” after describing the impact a feature or change will have on users. I have seen both approaches work well.
I wish this new class of Mayors the best of luck and know there is a community of technologists at all levels of government, non-profits, and tech companies that are always there to help improve the delivery of services in the communities they love. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
Keep Reading:
City of Boston’s Five-Year Strategic Plan
US Digital Response – helps local governments with service delivery
Future of Infrastructure podcast
Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka – required reading for government CIOs and delivery teams
Kelly Taylor's Blog 