3 Interesting Learnings from Bill Kehoe, CIO, State of Washington
I was excited to listen in as Washington State CIO William Kehoe took his “Coffee with Bill” to the main stage today at the #NASTDAnnual conference in Seattle.
Below are this week’s 3 Interesting Learnings:
1. What is “Connected Government?”
2. Why is Connected Government Important?
3. It’s About the Horizontal, Not the Vertical
1. What is “Connected Government?”
The theme of Connected Government arose out of a desire to better serve the residents in the state of Washington: “Why can’t we bring all of our lines of business together?
Bill says…
”By removing organizational boundaries, agencies can be better connected and integrated, resulting in an end-user experience similar to what they are used to when navigating Amazon, for example.”
Bill Kehoe
2. Why is Connected Government Important?
Under the legacy system, residents would be required to navigate through multiple sites and agencies simply to determine eligibility, then have to start over with separate portals to apply for a service and finally have to go to yet another site or agency in order to provide supporting documentation, etc.
In his “Coffee with Bill” vlog, Bill sums it up this way:
“We require our residents to understand our agency structure, our agency names and our acronyms as if they are a part of our employee community. And they just don’t understand that.”
Bill Kehoe
3. It’s About the Horizontal, Not the Vertical
Integrating data goes beyond state-level agencies; Bill’s vision extends to offering residents a seamless experience at the local level.
Working more closely between state and local agencies will create what Bill calls “horizontal synergy” to simultaneously increase efficiency while decreasing frustration levels currently experienced by residents in Washington.
Bill admits the data strategy piece is still missing from their puzzle. By taking the time to determine the best systems out on the market to integrate data in the Cloud,
Bill hopes Washington’s Legacy System Modernization Strategy will create a secure, more personalized end-user experience that feels more familiar with services and sites residents already interact with in their everyday lives.
So much in Bill’s keynote talk resonated with my conversations with CIOs in other states.