Increasing agility and rapid change during a crisis

Agility within agency information systems is critical in times of rapid change and crisis.  Interoperability and transparency are essential to federal agencies’ ability to deliver services which can change to meet fast moving adoption of new business process and policy change.  No matter how robust a technology ecosystem becomes, how much data it holds, or how many users it serves, it should never become so complex that it can’t quickly and easily provide insights and meet government agencies’ goals. That means the technology must offer the ability to seamlessly integrate with other technologies and provide full transparency across the agency while maintaining necessary security postures. 

One proven way federal agencies can enable both integration and organization-wide visibility is to shift from manual-based processes to digital workflows supported by machine learning and artificial intelligence. This type of digital transformation is the driving force behind a modernization strategy that makes it faster, more cost-effective, and easier to share information and provide services while increasing overall contextual awareness across the enterprise. 

A single platform with digital capabilities, process automation, and machine learning, especially one that’s cloud-based for scalability, can empower agencies to improve the delivery of services and enhance outcomes for their employees and citizens alike. Whether agencies are meeting the needs of military service members, veterans, Medicare beneficiaries, or other citizens, an advanced platform allows them to provide best-in-class services and user experiences. 

Ensure collaboration via a knowledge hub

One way to get past the challenge of departmental and data silos while bringing new levels of collaboration into the agency is to implement a knowledge hub. The hub can simplify the sharing of information both internally and between outside organizations, healthcare providers, academic institutions, and others. 

The knowledge hub can also offer a dedicated safe space for innovation. It’s a place for agencies and their partners to share best practices, implement standard operating procedures, and accelerate innovation to advance the delivery of care or other services. In addition, the hub can help with facilitating app rationalization, developing leading-edge technologies, and consolidating sites throughout the organization for a centralized location for information. 

What makes a knowledge hub successful is a platform that can work with the multiple systems that agencies are currently using. Many organizations rely on a mix of new, legacy, and open-source technologies. It usually doesn’t make sense fiscally or from an operations perspective to replace the entire system. Instead, a platform offering interoperability can connect all of the disparate systems to improve interaction, engagement, information sharing, and identification of market trends.

Building a knowledge hub that benefits the entire agency requires the right architecture. Find out how to architect IT to meet critical mission and business needs. 

Gain cross-agency visibility with digital processes 

Another key to reaching agency goals and mandates is having end-to-end visibility. This allows, for example, organizations providing healthcare services to access the electronic health records (EHRs) of military service people or beneficiaries. This provides a line of sight into an individual’s complete medical history, including when and where the person received treatments. 

With digital processes, agencies can share EHRs with other organizations and providers that have the proper clearance. When service personnel are relocated to different bases or Medicare beneficiaries move to new locations, their records can move with them. Agencies benefit by removing the time-consuming manual process of filling out paper forms. Digitization also avoids having redundant forms that can lead to confusion. Instead, it ensures complete records are readily available to allow providers to make the most informed healthcare decisions.

With digital processes and omni-channel visibility, agencies can experience improvements in everything from patient care via faster access to treatments to efficiently scheduling patients with the appropriate providers. Enhanced visibility helps with other business aspects, too. It allows effective communication between stakeholders, offers the ability to view key agency milestones, and enables the tracking of records from their origin to their current status. 

A new brief from ServiceNow offers additional details on bringing visibility into an agency, then optimizing the benefits. 

The Now Platform offers tech integration and transparency  

Technology continues to advance healthcare. With the Now Platform® from ServiceNow, those advancements can happen at a faster pace through agency and industry collaboration, and with full visibility across digital workflows. 

The modern digital platform helps federal agencies realize the promise of health IT. The platform has been shown to cut manual government processes from four to six weeks to just one to two days. It has delivered time-to-value productivity gains by end users that amounted to more than $20 million over three years. 

Organizations that accelerated their development efforts of apps and digital business processes with the platform improved their Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 29 percent and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) by 25 percent. The platform can help any agency reach its goals faster and get more value from current technologies already in place. 

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