Report: How state and local governments can build digital service teams for success

For state and local governments, digital service teams are key players for improving and enhancing services in a digital age, according to a new report.

Digital service teams have gained traction in state and local governments over the last decade, generally serving as an internal group of staff tasked with enhancing public-facing tools and services, Colleen Pulawski, senior research and engagement manager for the Digital Service Network at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, told Route Fifty. 

Indeed, the teams are largely “responsible for the digital transformation of essential services, such as benefits delivery or small business support,” according to a recent report from the Beeck Center’s Digital Government Hub co-authored by Pulawski. 

Digital service teams have become increasingly popular as state and local leaders have prioritized streamlined, accessible online services, portals and other resources in recent years, but Pulawski said such teams are still a new or unfamiliar concept to many jurisdictions. 

Several trends and best practices have emerged from the early years of digital service teams, which the Beeck Center’s report aims to underscore for state and local leaders to build effective and sustainable teams amid different and evolving budgetary, political and operational contexts. 

The way a digital service team is established can be a critical first step, according to the report. “Successful DSTs have a clear mandate that empowers the team and specifically defines their authority and purview,” the report reads. 

As an example, report authors pointed to the California Office of Data and Innovation, which was codified through legislation in 2023. The code stipulates that “office’s mission shall be to deliver better government services to the people of California through technology and service innovation, data and design.” 

Such legislative actions can set up digital service teams to have dedicated funding streams and durability across administrations for delivering digital transformation and enhancement efforts, but they could also limit the team’s adaptability to changing environments, according to the report. 

State and local leaders could also consider establishing digital service teams through executive orders, agency-level initiatives or grant-funded projects. While these approaches can help launch digital service teams quicker, they can also limit the team’s scope of authority, access to resources or resilience to changing leadership, the report states. 

Another consideration when establishing a digital service team is where the organization is housed within the government, Pulawski said. A centralized structure, for example, positions a digital service team to “advocate for more resources, enabling them to carry out large-scale digital initiatives across departments,” the report reads. 

The report points to the Pennsylvania Office of Digital Experience as an example. The office reports to both the state’s chief information officer and director of digital strategy, helping the office unlock “benefits offered by both executive and administrative placements” such as increased visibility and impact and structural neutrality for long-term modernization work, according to the report.  

State and local leaders should also consider how they can leverage the hiring and staffing process to build effective digital service teams, the report adds. For instance, digital service teams often include multidisciplinary members with expertise not just in technology, user experience and design or IT development, but also in policy, administration and program management. 

“Depending on the organization, some of these roles may require new job descriptions and external hires, while some are already found in abundance and may only need minor job description updates or role-based upskilling,” the report reads. 

Indeed, hiring for a digital service team is “inevitably the first major roadblock … because [governments] are trying to bring in talent that has not historically been directly employed in government,” Pulawski said. Previously, digital service teams or experts serving jurisdictions were commonly contracted workers, she said. 

State and local leaders should prioritize investing in job reclassifications by working with their human resources staff to adapt job classifications and descriptions to more accurately reflect and communicate the mission and purpose of the digital service team position, Pulawski said. 

Digital service teams also create an opportunity for leaders to further explore unconventional hiring strategies, such as skills-based hiring, to expand their candidate pool, she said. 

The report also suggests that state and local governments can use internship or fellowship programs to attract and retain nontraditional candidates. Governments can also invest in upskilling their current workforce or partner with workforce training or development organizations to create digital-delivery talent pipelines.   

Pulawski pointed to the Colorado Digital Service team’s “tour of duty” hiring model, which enables the team to hire a digital service expert for a short period of time to fulfill certain projects. This model allows the team to bypass bureaucratic challenges that often delay the hiring and onboarding process, such as complicated or outdated systems, she said. 

“As these [digital service] teams continue to prove their value, we will see some of those structural barriers decrease, because higher-level leaders are seeing the value of these teams and want to reduce the friction that they experience in bringing in top level talent,” she said. 

It’s critical for leaders to remember that “there’s a lot of variation” when it comes to how digital services have matured in different jurisdictions across the U.S., which also indicates “that there are a lot of ways to do it right,” Pulawski said.