Policy & Practice | Fall 2025

Lessons Learned: You Can Start Where You Are We didn’t wait for perfect funding, perfect tools, or perfect alignment. We started where we were. And you can too. 1. Start with the user. If you don’t know what families are actually experiencing, you’re building blind. Talk to them. Invite them into your process. Make it easy for them to give feedback. 2.Think outcomes, not outputs. Launching a new website is not success. Helping more families access care with less stress is. 3.Build cross-functional teams. Pair program expertise with digital expertise. Neither can solve problems alone, but together, they can do remarkable things. 4.Procure with learning in mind. Write contracts that reward iterations, experimentation, and responsiveness. 5. Normalize iteration. Nothing is ever truly done. Make space for learning, reflection, and continuous improvements. Your systems should grow with your users.

We’ve also made it a point to bridge the gap between policy and delivery. Our product teams are not off in a corner. They are embedded with program staff, sitting in eligibility meetings, joining family outreach sessions, and working together with program and policy. This type of integration is what allows us to move quickly and respon sibly at the same time. Recognition Is Great. But Impact Is Better. Winning the Project of the Year award from the Colorado Technology Association was a proud moment for us. It recognized our work, but it also proved something bigger: even large bureaucratic government can lead in innovation. But the awards are just the surface. The deeper impact is in the stories we hear from families who found the help they needed faster, the usage behavior in our product analytics, the returning users we see in our traffic, and the people who feel seen and supported. These are the real wins.

We’re not waiting for a brighter future. We’re building it. At CDEC, we believe government can be a force for good—in theory and in practice. We believe that dignity, equity, and efficiency are not mutually exclusive. And we believe that public servants have the power to lead, to create, and to make a big difference. We’re not here to tinker at the edges. We’re here to transform. And we know we’re not alone. Across the country, human services agencies are grappling with com plexity, legacy systems, and changing political environments. But we also see a growing movement. We see a movement where product thinking, modern procurement, and human centered design aren’t buzzwords, but the building blocks of better government. To the peers who finished reading this article: Start small. Start messy. Just make sure you start. The future of public service isn’t for us to wait for. It’s being shaped by the people doing this work today.

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Fall 2025 Policy & Practice 29