If you were to ask someone to define government in just a few words, the chances are that they wouldn’t choose “efficient,” “collaborative,” or “responsive.” Instead, you might hear “bureaucratic,” “outdated,” and “monolithic.” Policy and political constraints pose unique challenges to civil servants and policymakers, making government less responsive than citizens desire.

The reasons for this mismatch between expectations and results are complex. But, there is hope. Pennsylvania, Maryland, and other governments nationwide are striving to transform their state-level customer service experience and move towards a citizen-centric model. Citizen-centric government refers to an approach to government that is focused on high-quality, accessible, and efficient services for individual citizens. Momentum has worked with several government agencies to strategize and implement key features of a citizen-centric government.

Citizen-Centric Government Benefits Agencies and Civilians

Historically, government services have been slow to adapt to the needs of a changing citizenship. Many agencies were established under twentieth-century standards in which a large system was designed to tackle one specific problem at a time, where information silos were considered a benefit. While this approach may have worked in a pre-open data era, we’ve all seen how inefficient and ineffective these outdated methods are at adapting to modern challenges.

The growing role of technology in our lives has increased our expectations of access to public services. Rather than wait for hours at the DMV to renew our tags, we want to do it online. Private companies have developed online payment systems where we can pay bills, see usage, and contact customer service from a single portal. We expect the local, state, and federal governments to respond quickly to crisis situations and communicate effectively. In many cases, however, government systems have not kept up with the digital age.

A citizen-centric government provides opportunities for higher quality service for citizens and businesses that interact with government agencies, more efficient processes for government agencies, and successful public/private partnerships. Let’s look at some examples of the benefits of a citizen-centric government approach.

1. Increased responsiveness to citizens

In March of this year, COVID-19 paralyzed the country as states scrambled to protect their citizens. There were many unknowns and new problems to solve, like contact tracing, testing development, and case data to make available to the public. The state of Maryland capitalized on their recent awards for their website design and development to quickly establish a coronavirus hub on their website for citizens to get daily updates on case numbers and other information relevant to hospitals, nursing homes, businesses, and schools. They also established CovidLINK to automate their contact tracing efforts.

2. Improved service quality

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed Executive Order 2019-04 to establish a “citizen-first” government and promote customer service transformation. The order directed state governments to invest in horizontal communication across agencies and develop self-service and online resources to improve citizens’ access to public services. In addition to making services more accessible to users, agencies have the opportunity to streamline and improve the processes that serve their citizens.

3. Enhanced public/private partnerships (PPPs)

Pennsylvania has over 25,000 state-owned bridges. With an area of over 46,000 square miles, maintaining a database of their bridges was no small task. Momentum worked in a public/private partnership with PennDOT and other private entities to help the state of Pennsylvania merge a privately-owned bridge database with a state database. This enabled PennDOT to target bridges for repairs and improvements based on data from multiple sources across different government agencies.

Citizen-Centric Government Project Management

Momentum works with industry-proven standards and best practices to add value to our local and state government clients. Our experience over the past two decades, with both public and commercial entities, makes us uniquely suited to partner with you to transform your customer service experience and improve public service quality. Contact us today to find out why Momentum is right for you.