Our columnist talks with Keith Werner, North Carolina’s chief information officer, about modernizing digital governments to increase citizen engagement.
I recently examined the role technology can play in enabling government agencies to improve operations. Governments want in on innovative solutions to reduce costs, automate and streamline processes, gather and share data, increase citizen engagement and establish open government.
While implementing technology has its benefits, there are inevitable challenges your government will need to address and overcome whenever you are adopting a new technology.
Keith Werner, North Carolina chief information officer recently shared with me his team’s challenges and their strategies implementing new technologies under Governor Pat McCrory. North Carolina’s Digital Commons initiative sought to align 10 department websites and bring them into the 21st century.
EG: What technology-related initiative was specifically challenging?
KW: “North Carolina’s web and digital presence historically had not delivered an intuitive, user-friendly experience to its citizens. Instead, experiences were disjointed and inefficient. The State did not have a common, unified platform, and was spending a lot of money and resources on supporting multiple systems.
When Governor Pat McCrory took office, he had a vision that ’interacting with state government should be as consumer-friendly and cost-effective as checking the latest scores or shopping on a smartphone.’
To make that vision a reality, the Department of Information Technology, in coordination with North Carolina’s Innovation Center [iCenter], launched the Digital Commons project to bring state agency websites into the 21st century. The redesigned websites are mobile-friendly, provide a better customer service at a reduced cost, and allow citizens to more effectively and efficiently interact with state government.”
EG: What factors made the Digital Commons initiative challenging?
KW: “We experienced the typical challenges of people being comfortable with what they knew and uncomfortable with relinquishing control. In addition, we experienced the difficulty, particularly from a resource capacity standpoint, of maintaining the existing systems while simultaneously moving toward a new system.
Also, change management with a project like this, particularly in a government setting, proved most difficult. We had to design a process to transition from a mix of technologies to one, common Drupal platform. In parallel, we needed to build trust and rapport with employees who were comfortable operating in those dated technologies.
Change is difficult, but we needed to get these subject matter experts on board in order to change the way all North Carolinians experienced and interacted with state government.”
EG: How did you and your team turn a challenging initiative into a success?
KW: “From the beginning, we recognized this wasn’t just an IT project – we were going to help bring Governor McCrory’s vision of doing business with state government more easily a reality for the citizens of North Carolina. We had strong, open lines of communication with the right stakeholders. We brought several state agencies to the table to work on a solution collaboratively.
From the very beginning of the process, collaboration was key to our success. We leveraged assistance from North Carolina’s Innovation Center, which is our proving ground for technology and the perfect environment for collaboration and problem-solving.
Holding our working meetings [at iCenter], a place that had already demonstrated success, provided those involved with the feeling that Digital Commons would also be a great success. That in and of itself proved to be very helpful.”
EG: Are there any best practices that your team incorporated as result of your experiences from this initiative?
KW: “Throughout this process, we learned quite a few best practices, all of which have made ongoing agency transitions to the Drupal platform relatively smooth and seamless.
- Conducting thorough content audits ensured that all pertinent information was transferred over, and gave agencies the opportunity to update any outdated items.
- IT security is always top-of-mind for us, and we went through an extensive vetting process to ensure the Drupal platform provided a secure atmosphere for citizens to conduct business with the State.
- Bringing the right people into our planning and production process, and fostering an exciting environment to overcome this challenge, were critical to our success.
- By reaching out to other states through our affiliation with the National Association of State CIOs we learned, and continue to learn, from their experiences. This relationship enables us to gain valuable insight into technologies that we may want to explore in the future