The digital government mantra has been with us for many years. However, COVID-19 has forced governments to begin rethinking their approach to IT. Traditionally, the public sector has been known for a deliberate approach to technology, which often manifested in long-running projects, delivering multiple related functions in a monolithic roll-out. Early in the pandemic, there were clear challenges to government operations, including huge spikes in the number of people requiring emergency assistance, and business processes which relied on in-person contact in offices when government employees were required to work from home. Faced with a need to refer each constituent to the services which would most benefit them, accept applications, verify key application data (e.g. residence location and income information) and deliver payments, a number of governments across the United States and around the world implemented emergency solutions. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that some emergency solutions were addressing an immediate pain point, such as creating an online application process for assistance, without integrating into the end-to-end social services lifecycle. For example, those online application forms might not load data cleanly to a state eligibility system, leading to further backlogs and delays — or to fraud, waste and abuse if applications are not processed and checked rigorously, as has been the case with unemployment claims in the United States during the pandemic.
Faced with governments’ need to pivot quickly, and to adapt social services programs in as little as a matter of days or weeks, Oracle and Mastercard have partnered to launch a disruptive approach to not only deliver urgent assistance, but also to modernize and transform the social services ecosystem. The two companies have jointly developed their Civic Assist solution for very rapid deployment across a wide range of assistance programs, with the ability to support multiple important initiatives from a single platform.
The Civic Assist solution has already been proven in multiple deployments. For example, early in the pandemic, the City of Los Angeles was able to implement Civic Assist in just two weeks, and paid out more than $36 million in assistance to over 100,000 residents from around 37,000 families — using Oracle’s and Mastercard’s best practices for digital self-service, case management, and funds distribution. The United Way of St Louis has implemented Civic Assist as a strategic platform to process and deliver benefits across a range of programs that are available to a population of 3 million residents.
Civic Assist has been successful because it allows government organizations to deliver end-to-end assistance very rapidly, using a platform which scales easily for the most sophisticated and longest-running government services programs. With Civic Assist, governments can start with a small project, and the parts of the end-to-end lifecycle which are most critical, knowing that the platform is able to support them as their transformation plans develop over time. Civic Assist is quick to deploy because it is based on seven standard steps for social services program delivery.
Oracle and Mastercard are excited to present this new solution to governments in North America and around the world. Our vision is to empower governments to deliver their most-needed services quickly, using an agile model that allows programs to pivot when conditions change, as has been the case throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The solution is built on a robust, enterprise-grade platform, which makes it both fast to deploy, but also a strategic part of ongoing platform and business modernization programs for leading governments. For more information about Civic Assist, please visit www.oracle.com/oracle-mastercard.
