Stop for a moment and think about your month so far. How many times did you have to decide where to park your car, which restaurant to choose, or which healthcare provider is right for you? With so many options and so much information at your disposal, modern decision-making processes often can feel overwhelming. This feeling is especially prevalent when navigating the ins-and-outs of government bureaucracies. Information can be scattered across multiple sources, and you might not have time to research every available website and document—especially for time-sensitive decisions like choosing a healthcare provider.
Government agencies can drastically simplify some of life’s most critical decision-making processes for citizens with user-friendly, familiar, and responsive applications that curate and communicate the wisdom of government subject-matter experts. This blog explores the transformative power of well-designed locator applications in enhancing citizens' day-to-day interactions with government agencies.
Consumers typically face a few common pain points when navigating government information systems and applications. First, consumers might not know what information should guide their decision-making. For example, a consumer might not be aware of ranking or scoring systems that agencies use to evaluate the performance of schools, healthcare providers, and more. Also, all the information needed to make a decision—like finding a healthcare provider—can be hosted on several different government websites and platforms. While this often the result of government organizational structures, this pattern nevertheless presents significant challenges to consumers. Finally, legacy government systems and applications often feature user interfaces (UIs) that no longer feel relevant and modern to the average consumer.
"Government agencies can drastically simplify some of life’s most critical decision-making processes for citizens."
Importantly, government agencies also face significant challenges and obstacles in modernizing their public-facing applications. Agencies often do not have the ability to divert staff members’ valuable time away from day-to-day responsibilities toward application modernization efforts. Also, state governments might collectively possess all the information relevant to choosing a healthcare provider or school in their state, but the information might belong to different individual agencies. This shared data management and governance often requires data sharing agreements and inter-agency collaboration to make information easily available for the public. It is also difficult to retool or rebuild applications—this often requires robust qualifications in IT and data analytics that might not be readily available in-house.
So where does this leave us? Consumers rely on government data to help make some of the most critical decisions in their lives, but this process is often aggravated by disparate data, unfamiliar UI, and/or consumers’ lack of knowledge. Governments and their SMEs have valuable information to provide consumers, but they face constraints in data sharing, time, and in-house technical expertise.
Fear not: modern software, such as Tableau, can vanquish these problems by reducing the technical barriers-to-entry, providing user-friendly UI options, and embedding custom applications directly within existing organizational websites. With proper planning, SME-engagement, consumer-input, and robust data analytics expertise, government agencies can develop powerful, modernized applications to support, educate, and empower the public.
So how do you get started; what makes a locator application stand out and work for consumers? Think about your own experiences when searching for a healthcare provider or DMV, for example. You likely care about the proximity to your home, want the ability to see the location(s) on a map, need to know crucial operational information for each location, and much more. These are vital, foundational features for locator applications; however, more advanced features can provide exponential value to the user experience.
For example, each of the features listed below can significantly improve the experience for consumers by providing education, empowering comparisons, and enabling easy sharing with friends and family:
- Comparisons: Facilitating side-by-side views of two or more locations that users to compare and score locations on the same set of criteria.
- Sharing findings: Empowering consumers to email or text their findings with others who might be involved in the decision making process.
- Geolocation: Enabling web browser-based geolocating services and asking consumers to share their location to drive and refine search results.
- Education: Linking out to SME-curated educational resources that help answer questions or provide additional information.
With these enhanced features, government agencies can overhaul and drastically improve the user-experience for consumers interacting with the public sector.
Are you or your agency thinking of modernizing your public-facing applications and improving the user-experience for the public? Avaap has a robust record of delivering modernized embedded analytics solutions that empower citizens to explore and select government service offerings, locate licensed-facilities, and more. Whether it is UI/UX design, back-end data engineering, Tableau application development, and more, you can rely on Avaap’s proven expertise to deliver powerful and user-friendly applications for the citizens you serve. Contact our team to learn more!
Dylan Tuttle is a senior consultant in Avaap's Data & Analytics practice. He is passionate about the intersection of people, data, and public policy, partnering with clients to turn complex data into meaningful and valuable insights.