Bridging People and Benefits Systems

Transcript

2. Ben Sheldon Engineering Manager @bensheldon
3. We are making government work, starting with people who need it most.
4. We believe Services can be simple, accessible, and easy to use. Outcomes can be measurably better. Better can cost less. We can serve everyone with respect and dignity.
5. Principles and practices that make change real A learning community that makes change stick Show what’s possible Help others do it themselves Build a movement Government services so good they inspire change What we do and how we do it
6. $42B To have impact at scale, government programs must work better than they do today. Charitable contributions towards safety net Making government programs just 10% more effective would be bigger than all charitable spending. $470B Spent on government safety net programs
7. GetCalFresh Closing the SNAP participation gap in California
8. 45-55 minutes to use $800M to build $80M/year to maintain Applying for SNAP in California
9. • 8 minutes to complete • Works on any device, no download (50%+ of clients use mobile) • Considerate of limited data plans • Written in plain English & Spanish • Live chat for questions • Customized user flows for specific populations / exemptions Making sure applicants have what they need
10. GetCalFresh reach CA Counties 34 Applications in August 17,700 People helped in August 35,000+ ...and growing People helped all-time 400,000+
11. The past 18 months
12. The GetCalFresh Team Product Manager Program Director Program & Partnerships Research & Design Client Success Engineering
13. Version 0
15. Version 1 → →
16. Version 1.1 → →
18. → → → →
22. How we did it... ➔ Staging environments for every remote system ➔ Strict validations for every form input that maps to the corresponding county system inputs. ➔ Bulletproof parsers for names, addresses, etc. ➔ A comprehensive test library of every possible image, document, and file format in the world today ➔ ML-powered circuit breakers and job schedulers
23. How we did it... ➔ Staging environments for every remote system ➔ Strict validations for every form input that maps to the corresponding county system inputs. ➔ Bulletproof parsers for names, addresses, etc. ➔ A comprehensive test library of every possible image, document, and file format in the world today ➔ ML-powered circuit breakers and job schedulers ➔ Test in production ➔ Embrace manual workflows ➔ Leave automation till the end
24. “ [The] paradox of increased overall control through letting go a bit seems paradoxical only because our normal way of thinking about control is mistakenly static: it is not development or process-oriented because it leaves out the dimension of time. — Peter Elbow, Writing Without Teachers
25. Example: Document Processing ➔ Convert PNGs and JPGs to PDF ➔ Convert TIFFs to PDF ➔ Reduce large file size PDFs ➔ Convert DOCX to PDF ➔ Validate password protected PDFs ➔ Validate broken PDFs with missing EOF marker ➔ Validate massive housing documents (e.g. leases) ➔ Normalize mixed-orientation PDFs ➔ Convert interlaced PNGs to PDF ➔ Convert BMPs to PDF ➔ Convert Multipage TIFFs to PDF
26. Example: Document Processing ➔ Convert PNGs and JPGs to PDF June 6, 2016 ➔ Convert TIFFs to PDF April 19, 2017 ➔ Reduce large file size PDFs September 15, 2017 ➔ Convert DOCX to PDF September 19, 2017 ➔ Validate password protected PDFs January 18, 2018 ➔ Validate broken PDFs with missing EOF marker June 29, 2018 ➔ Validate massive housing documents (e.g. leases) July 2, 2018 ➔ Normalize mixed-orientation PDFs August 17, 2018 ➔ Convert interlaced PNGs to PDF September 24, 2018 ➔ Convert BMPs to PDF September 26, 2018 ➔ Convert Multipage TIFFs to PDF TODO
27. The past 18 months
28. XKCD at Scale
31. The “Wobbly Stool” model Improve client experience & outcomes Improve automation Manually submit client applications
32. How we did it... ➔ Staging environments for every remote system ➔ Strict validations for every form input that maps to the corresponding county system inputs. ➔ Bulletproof parsers for names, addresses, etc. ➔ A comprehensive test library of every possible image, document, and file format in the world today ➔ ML-powered circuit breakers and job schedulers ➔ Test in production ➔ Embrace manual workflows ➔ Leave automation till the end
33. A week in the life...
34. A week in the life... Drive Time
35. A week in the life... Drive Time
36. March 6, 2017 June 1, 2018 April 17, 2017
40. Our support system ➔ Recognize that safety and reliability is human work ➔ Talk through our natural tendencies towards catastrophizing and perfectionism ➔ Maintain a dependable backlog ➔ Have a consistent prioritization process ➔ Trust (and coach) team members to balance their time ➔ Constantly reinforce why we’re building this system...
42. We can’t make government work without YOU. (Literally.)