CT’s government is going digital
State is moving to a cloud-based system
The digital future of government in Connecticut may soon become a cloud-based, one-stop shop.
Slowly but surely, one state department at a time, Connecticut is creating a digital landing page for anything and everything related to government.
It could be, according to Mark Raymond, something like the governmental version of Amazon.
“If you look at buying a product off of something like Amazon, you don’t know all the underlying sellers, you actually don’t know where it’s produced, how it gets there, but you know what you’re looking for,” he said. “It’s that simplicity of the experience, whether you like Amazon or not — that’s what we’re shooting for in government.”
Raymond is not only Connecticut’s chief information officer, he’s also the longest-serving state chief information officer in the country.
Along with Josh Geballe, the state chief operating officer, and at the direction of Gov Ned Lamont, Raymond is moving the state toward a single public-facing interface. It includes plans for a multilingual chatbot that will communicate with residents who each have a unique digital identity.
Right now, Geballe said, “across the government, you could have dozens, literally, of different usernames and passwords.”
But the idea, according to Geballe is “giving people the opportunity now to create a unique identity for the state of Connecticut.”
“A username and password that eventually will be the one username and password you need to access all of our services across all of our agencies,” he said.
If a resident wanted to apply for SNAP or WIC benefits, if they wanted to renew a driver’s license, or wanted to apply for a small business loan, they might go to one website, interact with a chatbot in whatever language they’re most comfortable with, and fill out whatever forms necessary right then and there.
And they would, Geballe said, “connect all those dots together using artificial intelligence.”
“’Looks like you’re getting unemployment benefits, you must have lost your job,’” he imagined the chatbot saying. “’Perhaps you could also benefit from some workforce retraining over here, or some social service programs to help you make ends meet until you get your next job.’”
Timeframe
There may be a singular vision, but Raymond said there is not an overarching template being followed.
“I’m sorry to say that there isn’t a grand plan,” he said. “The plan is to be flexible. Things change and emerge in government all the time.”
Raymond said setting a 10-year plan would be “a recipe for failure.”
“Government is difficult to navigate, because we have all of these different services. So the plan is to put them all online, become a digital government, and allow people to personalize their experience,” Raymond said.
A personalized experience is key, Geballe said. He envisions a state government, connected across agencies, that can be accessed 24/7.
“Historically, the way
Connecticut’s agencies have presented their services is, here’s my website for the department of fillin-the-blank, and here’s pages of legalese about the programs we have and the rules around those programs,” he said. “If you lost your job, let’s say, and you’re in need of services, you kind of have to go figure it out for yourself and search across all these websites and try to figure out, you know, what might be there to help you.”
As for when this could all happen, the answer is right away. The state has already revamped business.ct.gov, which Geballe called “essentially a one-stop shop for businesses, where you can get, all in one place, information about what it takes to start a business, what resources are there to help you.”
That is “all served up to you without the lens of which agency’s doing what or expecting you to go navigate our bureaucracy,” he said.
If a user wanted to start a business, the process begins with a checklist, Geballe said. “Then it progressively will ask you more questions based on what you’ve told us previously, and avoids telling you information about stuff that’s irrelevant, based on questions you’ve already answered.”
And business is just the beginning. “We’re down the path of doing that for a number of different what we call ‘service categories,’ things like jobs, or health or driving,” Geballe said.
A lot of the initial work is updating existing systems, according to Raymond, which does make the process move slower than he would prefer.
“We want to show results on this every three months, and Josh wants them every week, you know, which is, it’s a challenge given the environment that we’re in, because we are integrating with lots of older systems in the back,” he said.
Concerns from labor unions
According to Geballe, modernizing government could create opportunities for state workers.
“We’re going to need more IT professionals,” he said. “Mark’s team is going to get bigger, not smaller.”
But it also does mean “efficiencies.”
“We owe it to the taxpayers of the state to evolve to take advantage of opportunities, to provide the best possible services at the lowest possible cost,” Geballe said.
“It will enable efficiencies in other parts of the state that enable us to provide better services at lower cost. And that will be something that we do work on with our partners in labor.”
Labor leaders are not opposed to the plan, but they are concerned about how it might be carried out.
“I think that the governor’s vision about creating a 21st century information technology system that citizens can use to more easily access state services, is really, really good,” said Dave Glidden, executive director of the Civil Service Employees Association, SEIU Local 2001, the union that represents state information technology workers.
Glidden and other labor leaders are pushing for the use of state-employed workers, as opposed to outsourced consultants.
Business.ct.gov, for example, was built with help from consultant Deloitte Digital.
“The major issue we see is not the vision, it’s just the way it’s being rolled out,” said Travis Woodward, the new president of CSEA, SEIU Local 2001. “Our members aren’t opposed to the governor’s and the state’s vision. But we want to be involved with the process and the optimization.”
Jan Lawrence is one of those members. He works for the state Department of Developmental Services as an IT developer.
Lawrence said the state has created a series of committees, including one for communications, a diversity and inclusion committee, and a workforce development committee.
“These are all positive developments,” he said.
Improving the way residents can interact with government, is a good thing, according to Lawrence.
“I think we all want better government,” he said. “We want better process, more automated process.”
But Lawrence sees a difference between development and operations.
“It’s not that you know, we don’t want AI involved with the actual running of these applications themselves, but you have to have someone to develop them,” he said.
Lawrence learned some skills from a consultant a
few years back. But he believes the goal should be to hire a consultant once, not rely on them to run governmental services for years on end.
“There needs to be a partnership with the consultants,” he said. “When you work with a consultant, you may need their expertise to help build out the initial solution, train those staff on how to support it and maintain it, and add features and functionality on top of that application as it’s needed, so we’re not going back and having to hire that consultant again.”
Access and human experiences
Jeremy Mohler, communications director for an organization called In The Public Interest, said he also has concerns about access.
“From our perspective, that’s a great idea. It’s an exciting proposal. It has a lot of potential benefits,” he said.
But Mohler is concerned about “residents that maybe don’t have digital access, or it’s not affordable for them.”
Mohler said “having that human connection,” someone to “call and work directly with on an issue” can be very important for residents, particularly with a representative with institutional knowledge of an issue.
“I’ve talked to a chatbot before and, sometimes, it works fine,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m kind of falling through the cracks and my issues aren’t aren’t being dealt with.”
Raymond said if they don’t solve for those problems, they haven’t done their job. He said the goal is “starting from that user experience, and really creating something that’s delightful.”
“Any form of digital government, digital commerce done poorly, doesn’t help,” he said. “If we go through a digital channel, they don’t get their needs, and they finally talk to someone and they’re really frustrated when they get there, we’ve created the wrong experience for them.”