Transforming Service Delivery: Time to Focus on People, not Programs

For many governments, improving citizen services remains a top priority. Balancing the fiscal challenges that still face these jurisdictions impairs their ability to accomplish this goal. As new technology finally catches up to the vision of improved government service delivery, new opportunities to improve service, meet social responsibility and deliver on cost savings objectives may be closer than imagined.

Today's silo-based labor, health, human services, social security, and veterans benefits IT systems -- and associated business processes -- are rooted in strategies, legislation, funding models and IT developments that are universally program-centric. These systems and associated processes are the product of legacy computing myopia, inflexibility and parochial federal grant funding. Federal guidelines have prohibited states from utilizing program-specific earmarks across the entire social enterprise.

"Until recently, social enterprises were really building solutions that fit the need of the individual program for that particular time," said Amy Santenello, senior research analyst with the Gartner Group. "However, as the requirements of the citizens evolved and government mandates grew increasingly complex, existing social enterprises needed to adapt to the changing environment in order to become more citizen-centric." This program-driven delivery model resulted in poor service for citizens and high delivery cost for taxpayers.

"The cost of delivering human services is a major problem for many states," said Cathilea Robinett, executive director of the Center for Digital Government. "Because most human service programs have been established, funded and managed separately, up to this point, states have not been able to combine program processes and systems to reduce costs in order to deliver better services to citizens. An integrated approach to eligibility determination could reduce the cost of operating human services programs, simplify business processes and improve the quality of service delivery."

Service delivery models typically contain many redundant processes. This duplication is very costly and results in inconsistent decisions. Silo-based systems require that each applicant register through separate systems to qualify for benefits such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), food stamps and child care, even within a single agency. This redundancy is compounded by the fact that citizens may apply for a range of benefits and services not only within an agency, but also across organizational boundaries. The 2004 California Performance Review finds that eligibility determination of benefits for the state's three major assistance programs costs counties between $308 and $439 per individual applicant. These costs are incurred each time circumstances change for the citizen or the household, resulting in regular, expensive case reassessments.

The Cost of Disparity?
The secret to success is to think globally, but act locally. Too many IT infrastructure investments are massive, impersonal initiatives whose value is not immediately apparent to individual citizens and employers. As states have rolled out programs to automate their systems, the programs have become the center -- and the citizen has been depersonalized, existing only as a series of disconnected case numbers in disparate, complex IT systems. Additionally program-centric systems have failed to consider the requirements of the caseworker, who is forced to navigate a maze of IT systems to obtain a complete picture of his or her customer.

Drilling down on the challenges of disparate IT social enterprise management approaches reveals complexity, redundancy and functionality shortfalls both among and within labor, health, human services and veterans benefit systems. We have already talked about the human costs in terms of poor citizen service and caseworker productivity. These challenges impact government directly. However, if you peel back the onion, a host of "mechanical" shortcomings conspire to subvert the quality of customer service, multiply IT overhead costs and limit the state's flexibility to meet changing local and federal requirements.

The structure of program-specific IT systems, as well as rigid program and organizational boundaries, requires governments to re-engineer their installed, legacy, siloed social services systems to increase efficiency and flexibility to