How Identity Management Can Drive Improved Citizen Experience

Citizen Experience is a focus of government agencies from federal to state and local. Governments are working to give citizens the same service experience they get as consumers in the commercial market. A huge piece of this is understanding who the citizen is and creating a "journey" tailored to their needs. This starts with the rather technical and security-minded practice of identity management.

Traditionally, identity management has been viewed as a way to enable access to systems for a workforce. It is the practice that assures that the proper people have access to the technology and systems they need. If we look at it in the context of citizen service, identity management is more than giving people access to their accounts. It is about giving people and systems that serve citizens insight to how they can better serve each citizen. In fact, a well-thought out identity management strategy can proactively offer applicable programs related to public health and social services.

Identity management is playing a role as part of robotic process automation (RPA) solutions designed to speed up benefits to citizens. In an effort to improve the turnaround time for loan distribution during national crises, RPA can enable a compilation of an applicant's record from multiple systems, channels, and service providers for collection and entry into systems for underwriters to analyze. Identity management is key to achieving 10 to 100 times faster processing, ensuring that the person applying for the aid is who they say they are.

The city of Sacramento found that identity management was key to improving service across the city government. Over time, each department had implemented its own apps, with their own credentials, and there was little or no interaction between them. The city set out to create a single online "citizen identity" system that works across all city departments and integrates the disparate departmental apps.

Identity management also plays a huge role in reducing fraud. Just this year, California rolled out a new verification process, ID.me. ID.me is designed to speed the process of verifying claimants' identities, reduce the build-up of claims requiring manual review, and also crack down on fraud.

To learn more about the connections between identity management and citizen service, check out some of these upcoming events.

• Digital Dream, Municipal Utopia (December 2, 2020; virtual) - Leading governments are transforming how they deliver public services to their constituents. Learn how to deliver a better resident and staff experience with superior online and mobile services, surpassing expectations and reducing walk-ins by 80%.
• Improving the Customer Experience - Digitally (December 14, 2020; virtual) - The Digital Experience is the sum of digital interactions between a citizen and government. Many agencies have deployed new capabilities to improve the customer experience digitally. Attend this event for insight to how some agencies are using digital solutions to drive impactful change.
• How Customer Experience Personalization at Scale Will Ensure You Thrive and Survive in the New Normal (January 26, 2021; virtual) - This webinar will explore how to deliver a consistent experience online and offline, develop a personalized mobile experience, and deliver real-time personalization at scale.

Don't have time to attend an event? Download Citizen Participation in Public Administration: Investigating Open Government for Social Innovation from GovWhitePapers and read at your convenience.

Let us know where you are learning about identity management and improving citizen service in the comments.

Be sure to check out GovEvents for a complete listing of conferences, virtual events, webinars, and a library of on-demand resources.