Showcase honors state projects for ‘doing things differently’
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By
Chris Teale
Online government platform Apolitical joined two other bodies to celebrate public sector breakthroughs throughout the nation, including on AI, digital transformation, citizen engagement and emerging tech.
Three groups last week honored projects from every U.S. state, as well as Washington, D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico, in a first-ever effort to highlight innovation and new ways of thinking.
Apolitical, an online government platform, combined with the National Academy of Public Administration and the nonprofit Humans of Public Service for the showcase, dubbed “50 States, 50 Breakthroughs.”
They honored projects in areas where they felt that innovation “can significantly improve public outcomes,” the groups said, including in artificial intelligence and emerging technology; climate, energy and disaster response; digital transformation; workforce planning and transformation; policymaking; transport and infrastructure; housing and health; and citizen engagement. Those efforts come at a time when the federal government is scaling back much of its traditional work and has left the states to step up in challenging circumstances.
“Across the country, public servants are facing extraordinary pressures, tight budgets, workforce shortages, rapid temperature change and rising expectations for the people that they serve,” James-Christian Blockwood, NAPA’s president and CEO, said during a webinar to mark the report’s release. “There's also change, uncertainty and a very different environment than people are used to happening right now, and this is especially true when it comes to the federal government.”
“Yet, at the very same time, something remarkable has happened in state governments,” he continued. “Across all 50 states, public servants are not retreating from complexity. They're meeting with creativity, courage and results.”
Among the projects highlighted were Maryland’s AI-backed Legi-Assist tool, which automates how civil servants read, analyze and summarize legislation, as well as instant translation devices that help Arizona residents engage with city services in more than 120 languages. Also honored were Hawaii’s AI-augmented plan review tool to speed up permitting, a fee permit calculator in New Hampshire, Mississippi’s modernization of eligibility verification for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and many more.
“Reading these stories fills us with pride,” Brian Whittaker, executive director of Humans of Public Service, said in a statement. “Public servants across the country are deeply committed to their communities and are finding new, thoughtful ways to serve them better.”
Colorado’s project was especially timely as its residents are among many dealing with high energy costs and a smorgasbord of assistance programs across its utilities, nonprofits and government agencies. That could lead to confusion as those in need of support don’t know where to start, and prompted the state to start the Colorado Energy Savings Navigator.
The online tool brings together information from multiple jurisdictions and presents residents with a single screening tool so they can see in one place every energy benefit or incentive they qualify for. The effort was seeded by funding from the Statewide Internet Portal Authority, and now shows more than 670 clean energy and efficiency statewide initiatives.
It was challenging to bring so many disparate sources together and do so in a fiscally prudent way, said Manali Mohanty, a senior digital service expert at the Colorado Digital Service, but the effort has already given residents better access to various incentives and saved them thousands of dollars.
“So much of our work was informed by human-centered design and just recognizing the importance of place-specific research, such as understanding the culture and unique physical characteristics across Colorado or the legislative environment,” Mohanty said during the webinar.
While it may be tempting to see innovations like this and others as purely technologically driven, Blockwood said it is far wider. Instead, he said, it involves rethinking how government operates, how processes are formed and how civil servants can make residents’ lives easier and service delivery more efficient.
“None of this work happens in isolation,” Blockwood said. “States are partnering across agencies, with their respective local governments, nonprofits, the private sector and with each other. And innovation here is not about silos. It's about systems. These breakthroughs remind us that innovation in government is a collective endeavor. It's about solving real problems for real people. It's about public servants who test new ideas, learn from experience and stay focused on outcomes, and even when the work is hard and the spotlight is small.”