February 2020 Newsletter

Chris Henderson, Senior Business Analyst at IOT, attended the Speaker Series this month, and we wanted to know what he took away from the event.

One of my big takeaways from the Art of the Possible Speaker Series with Apple was the focus on user-centric design. I found it interesting that Sara White talked about employing empathy as the first key part of the creation of their products. Apple focuses on understanding first what the consumer wants to do and why they want to do it, viewing the issue from their perspective. Before they ever tackle the how of solving the problem technically, they work to define the what and why of the situation. I see many organizations working to adopt this approach in their practices, often looking to agile methodologies and design thinking as the primary vehicles for tackling problems, so to hear that Apple is a leader in this space was interesting, but perhaps not surprising.

I appreciated Sara White’s explanation that while Apple is often not the company to drive the latest and greatest in revolutionary technology, they are focused on producing products that are intuitive and best-in-class. That rang very familiar to me. Having spent most of my career working in the public sector where we are often risk-averse and on the laggard side of technology adoption, I appreciated that one of the technology giants has a similar approach to leveraging technology. In state government, we don’t have the ability to really allow our products and services to fail—they have to work and they have to be incredibly reliable. White spoke of how Apple created the iPad before the iPhone but felt that the world wasn’t quite ready to adopt that device without better training and a different view of what was possible. I see similarities in IOT’s efforts in the launch of the Technology Adoption Center and the massive effort around building a community of Champions for Office 365. Apple looks first to understand what the situation is and where the user wants to be at the end of the journey, and then looks at the needed steps to get the user there. We at IOT often employ a similar strategy, meeting our customer agencies where they are at now, and looking toward what steps will help achieve the vision of where they want to go.

It really was an inspiring event and Sara White was an excellent speaker. I look forward to seeing how Apple works to court enterprise and public sector clients in the future, shifting from a primarily consumer approach. If they spend the time to apply the user-centric approach to our business needs and help create intuitive, approachable designs for products and systems, they will likely be a massive part of our future. If nothing else, it was great to hear and see more examples of how a large solution provider works with an incredibly diverse customer base to design products that are intuitive enough for children to pick up and employ with little training while also being powerful enough to facilitate the business of enterprise operations.

Executives with IOT are also proactively thinking of ways to better improve working with agency customers. The newest method to improve communication involves making sure that agencies provide feedback on statewide IT policies – called Tier 1.

The current process requires the policies to be sent to the agencies for two weeks for their comments before a final review with the executive team.

Instead of sending these policies via email, they will be now sent via Microsoft Teams to allow for a shared back-and-forth conversation. These policies will also be presented at monthly IT Directors meetings.

“We want to be a better partner,” Risk & Compliance Executive Director Anushree Bag said. “We’re taking agencies’ feedback and changing up the process.”

Tier 1 policies are in Archer and applicable statewide, but feel free to email Anu for any questions or information at abag@iot.in.gov.