Manufacturers must apply for permits from as many as a dozen different agencies, adding significant cost and time for everyone; all those forms could be consolidated into one streamlined process
by Intelliworx
The most impactful government modernization projects streamline business processes and deliver a better customer experience (CX). This has practical benefits, including:
- reducing the time it takes to complete a business process;
- bringing transparency and accountability to each step in the process; and
- automating tasks like reminders and reporting.
Martha Dorris, the “godmother of customer experience,” illustrated the benefits it provides for government efficiency in an interview last year. She used the IRS as an example.
Tax law is complicated but redesigning the process with CX in mind simplifies the burden on filers. It also cuts the number of help desk calls for the government. Yet such efforts don’t just reduce administrative costs – there’s an immediate benefit on cash flow too: the government gets its taxes paid faster.
Consolidating federal permitting applications
Such an approach poses great potential for many other areas of important government work. One that stands out, as the U.S. strives to reshore manufacturing, is permitting.
Depending on the industry, a manufacturer may need to apply for a permit from a dozen different agencies. Further, there are many different types of permitting applications, so just choosing the right form is time-intensive.
What if the government were to consolidate all of those permits into one application supporting a single business process? The outcome could be dramatic on many different levels.
To be sure, we are under no illusion as to the complexity of such a project, and despite our more than 20 years of experience in this area. On the other hand, we’ve found breakthroughs tend to happen when we stretch our thinking.
“Intelligent interviews” split long instructions into simple steps
A proven way to tackle complexity is with “intelligent interviews.” We build the business logic governing a form into the software in the same way commercial tax products do. It’s the software, not the filer, that chooses the next step based on the answers a filer provides during the “interview.”
Take the Standard Form 2809 (SF-2809), which federal employees use to apply for healthcare insurance, for example. The form itself is a mere two pages, but the instructions are spread out over 18. Yet the logic from those instructions can be infused into software and broken out into a step-by-step process.
Each answer is conditional and determines the next logical progression. Therefore, the person filling out the form doesn’t need to absorb 18 pages of instructions, as the software guides them through completion. The intelligent interview saves that person from having to read through all those instructions. Better still, it prevents data entry errors stemming from misunderstanding them.
There’s no fundamental difference even if there are multiple forms or parties involved in contributing to the same permit application. It’s simply a matter of collecting the right data and making it available wherever it’s needed throughout the business process.
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The data collected is reusable
Another key principle to modernization is understanding that we aren’t just talking about merely converting paper forms into digital PDFs. Such data is static and largely unusable beyond the PDF.
We look at a form as a means to collect data. In turn, that data is just a means to initiate a process. So, a better approach is to store the data collected in an intelligent interview in a FedRAMP authorized cloud. As a result, and in contrast to PDF forms, the data is composable and can be reused to support any other process that needs it.
For example, once you enter your name on one form, it can pre-populate every other form in the process without retyping it. Tax filers see it in action when commercial tax software uses data from prior-year tax returns to prepopulate the same fields in the current filing.
This is also true for updating previously entered data if something changes. The principle stands no matter the scale, whether it’s a single data field or 10,000 unique fields.
It’s also important to note that this approach also supports data privacy requirements on a “need to know” basis. We can shield or limit access to certain data fields based on privacy laws or the needs of the agency involved.
Low-code designer and SMEs the key to scale
Dissecting the conditional logic of a form into software code is a tedious process. Because we’ve done it many times over the years, we’ve developed the know-how to build tools that accelerate this stage.
More specifically, we’ve built an internal low-code tool that allows us to collaborate with subject matter experts (SMEs) to distill the requirements in plain language. We can work with SMEs to develop a dictionary of the data for each step and map the process in which that data is used.
This enables us to quickly validate the inputs and determine the page flow for intelligent interviews. Similarly, with the whole process in mind, we orchestrate the workflow, that is, all the activities needed to keep the process moving toward resolution.
This no-code tool is the key to scale and quick turnaround. It’s much faster to spin up 20 existing SMEs on any given process than it is to hire 20 developers, train them in a process that’s entirely new, and translate the logic to code.
Consequently, we’ve automated moderately challenging forms and business processes in as little as 45 days. Some of the more complicated forms and government workflows, which have numerous stakeholders and even different federal agencies involved, naturally require several months.
Tackle permits with a phased approach
Consolidating forms from different federal agencies into a single form is an ambitious endeavor. The way to tackle this is with a phased approach. Pick the most challenging form, or the one that requires the most effort, or the one that holds the most promise, and start there.
This is how Intelliworx helped the Department of Veterans Affairs modernize financial disclosure for 13,000 filers and 5,000 supervisors enterprise-wide. In fact, we’ve done it across the 39 different federal agencies we’ve worked with over the years on a range of similar projects.
A challenge of leadership
Consolidating permitting applications as suggested here would require the same approach on a grander scale. To that end, the biggest challenge to modernization in the federal government isn’t likely to be a technical one, but a challenge of leadership.
Whether it’s one form, business process, agency – or many – success often boils down to getting the entire team working toward a common goal. The benefits, however, in terms of the costs saved, efficiencies gained, and an improved experience for everyone, might just make an audacious and bold thought experiment a real and tangible transformation to consider.
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See it for yourself! We’d welcome the opportunity to show you how we can help modernize your agencies. Contact us for a no-obligation online demo.
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