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Accelerating Illinois’ Modernization: Transforming Health & Human Services

Government should harness the power of technology, despite our organizational silos, to better understand the customer’s interactions and improve outcomes across departments.

Editor's note: This 30-day blog focused on Illinois' IT modernization was originally published on LinkedIn, and is republished here with permission.

"One of the secret ingredients to our success so far ... is the executive leadership to and business partnership for technology-infused transformation. Illinois’ Deputy Governor Trey Childress ... is responsible for overall government transformation efforts. As Budget Director and Chief Operating Officer for the State of Georgia, Trey has already lead successful transformations before. Today, he will tell us about Healthcare and Human Services Transformation and the role technology is playing in that." —Hardik Bhatt, CIO, Illinois
The state of Illinois has launched an exciting effort to better serve citizens (aka customers) of our health, human services, and education services. As is typical to governments generally, Illinois has been organized around the functions of government, not around the customer. This leads to a confusing maze of services and often, even worse, uncoordinated outcomes. It is often the same customers (and their families) that are served by as many as 11 departments included in our HHS transformation initiative (including the departments of Aging, Children & Family Services, Corrections, Early Childhood & Education, State Board of Education, Health & Family Services, Human Services, Innovation & Technology, Juvenile Justice, Public Health and Veterans Services). It should not be the burden of the citizen to figure out how to navigate government, but the burden of government to make it easy and intuitive for the customer. Government should harness the power of technology, despite our organizational silos, to better understand the customer’s interactions and improve outcomes across departments.

Accelerating Illinois’ Modernization (AIM) will ensure enhanced end-to-end customer experience with the state, including prevention, more flexible delivery of service in the community (rather than expensive and restrictive institutions) and empowering greater self-sufficiency. In a 21st century organization, we have the great opportunity to leapfrog to better outcomes and services, while being better stewards of taxpayer dollars. The technology team, in partnership with the HHS team of departments, is already making great strides to support a paradigm shift in how we deliver services to citizens. Technology is a critical partner in this effort, delivering on key pillars of support, including:

  • DATA ANALYTICS: creating a modern predictive analytics practice, so we can better understand the impact and continually improve the quality of our outcomes;
  • CUSTOMER SERVICE: creating integrated interfaces to ease the burdens of interacting with government;
  • MOBILE and INTEGRATION: creating mobile apps and integrated reporting across a myriad of systems so state employees can focus on the parts of their jobs add value to the lives of citizens; and
  • AGILE and RESULTS-ORIENTED: accelerating and ensuring successful implementation of complex IT projects on which customers and agencies are dependent.
In only a short time, the technology team has made great strides — we are excited to see what is ahead in our efforts to Accelerate Illinois’ Modernization.