Policy & Practice | Summer 2023

Creating More User-Friendly Experiences for Citizens Tools like chatbots can’t be effective in just a vacuum though. To leverage tech in a way that streamlines benefits access for citizens—and more quickly gets assistance into the hands of those who need it most—public agencies need to cultivate responsive, mobile native, user-friendly experiences around these tools. In Clark County’s case, that meant creating a new citizen engagement portal, built on the Merative Citizen Engagement platform, which had been previously deployed to support millions of citizens in North Carolina and New York City. These engagement portals should be easy to configure, so that modifications can be made over time as eligibility requirements change. And they should be fast to deploy, so that they are responsive to the needs of citizens, especially those facing significant, potentially life threatening challenges, like losing housing or income. Beyond that, these portals should encompass a few essential capabilities: n Robust security safeguards around the application process to protect personally identifying information. resource to connect both language speakers. This multilanguage learning cohort exposed parent leaders to cross-cultural communication. This intercultural experience also raised their awareness of diversity, equity, and inclusion in communities. One English-speaking parent acknowl edged that Spanish-speaking parents were unseen in the cohort until their voice was heard. This two-way inter pretation also created a respectful and inclusive environment for Spanish speaking parents to engage in the training. They also felt more confident in future civic engagement as they improved their leadership skills with other parent leaders. When designing or operating a program, staff often focuses on

In Clark County’s case, this rule helped ensure that its new chatbot and citizen portal were deployed within 11 weeks—an extremely fast turnaround process for new local government technologies! In Conclusion AI chatbots and responsive engage ment portals are just the tip of the iceberg in applying new technologies to directly reach citizens in need. Solutions like these provide public agencies with the security, customiza tion, and user-friendly experiences needed to connect citizens to the direct assistance they require, without losing speed or adding more com plexity in the process. While the worst days of the pandemic and its economic impacts may have eased, the story of Clark County and countless other cities and municipali ties are reminders of how governments can and must utilize new technolo gies to advance social and economic mobility for their communities. Read more about Clark County’s success at https://www.merative.com/ curam/case-studies

n Real-time application tracking, accessible from any user device— phone, tablet, or desktop. n An easy-to-navigate user inter face where applicants can review messages or alerts sent from the agency, payment history, and other account management tasks. Times of crisis can spur innovation, but those innovations shouldn’t just be responsive to the crisis at hand; they should serve as building blocks for future applications, long after the immediate emergency has passed. One rule of thumb in this approach is to design for 80 percent of the population, not 100 percent. It may sound counter-intuitive, but creating a solution that is initially geared at most, rather than all, potential citizens helps ensure an agile devel opment process so the solution is up and running faster than usual to help people, rather than stretching out the timeline and helping no one in the meantime. An 80 percent solution can then be built on and improved over time to eventually widen its aperture to reach 100 percent of the targeted population. relationships between parents and the program and how the program can help parents, but not on connec tions among the parents. This missing piece of building social relationships among parents is critical. As a result of the intercultural experience from the multilanguage learning cohort, parent leaders started to include varied strate gies to proactively reach families they did not have connections to when they developed a community project. They also provided families with access to equitable resources and informa tion. Parents have much to offer one another, programs, and communities once they feel they belong and realize they can contribute to change. Social capital is like a net built by connections and relationships. When Building New Solutions in aTime of Crisis

Paula Hildebrand is the Director of Global Capture at Merative.

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parents fall, this net catches them. This net is not like a spider web that catches and sticks, but rather a trampoline. When parents jump, they bounce. The stronger the net is, the higher our parents can reach. And that is the power of social capital. Reference Notes 1. Chetty, R., Jackson, M. O., Kuchler, T., Stroebel, J., Hiller, A., Oppenheimer, S., & The Opportunity Insights Team (2022, August). Social Capital and Economic Mobility. Opportunity Insights. 2. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (2023). Coordinated Family and Community Engagement (CFCE) network .

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/ coordinated-family-and-community engagement-cfce-network

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