AWS re:Invent 2024 - Tech vs. business: How first-movers embrace emerging tech (AIM225)
Hello and welcome. The state of Tennessee is on a mission to enhance the worker and customer experience for all Tennesseans by modernizing technology across programs and departments. Today, we are gonna hear from the Tennessee Department of Human Services, otherwise known as T DH S who is taking bold steps towards improving the lives of customers. They support through food assistance, cash assistance, childcare, and other public service programs.
Setting the stage for where Tennessee has been, imagine a world where you are a worker trying to assist customers in physical offices, filled with paper beeping and buzzing fax machines, wait times that cause undue burden on families and Children all while navigating green screen systems that are unreliable and difficult to use. The need to modernize was greater than ever. In 2018, department leadership, in conjunction with Deloitte Aws and numerous partners joined forces to begin the modernization journey. The journey has resulted in incredible successes through the launch of online portals that have enhanced worker productivity, the reduction in the use of physical paper which has improved case processing time. Most importantly, this journey has introduced the ability for customers to interact with government using efficient di digital tools radically changing the public benefit ecosystem in this session, Anthony Burwell representing technology and Martha Donnelly representing the business come together in a friendly game show like discussion that showcases their modernization journey. Are you ready? I said, are you? Hello? Hello, my name is Mike Connors and I'll be your game show host for today.
We're gonna be celebrating and uh playing a little game called the Innovation Feud, uh known as, uh, Family Feud. And, uh, I cannot be more excited to, to introduce our participants, our contestants for today and get us started. But before we do, are we ready? Are we ready? All right. First up representing technology, I wanted to introduce Anthony Burwell, the cio of the State of Tennessee Department of Human Services. Give a well round of applause. Welcome, Anthony. Introduce yourself. How you doing?
I'm Will Mike. Uh, thank good, thanks. I'm glad to be here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I am the Chief Information Officer for the Department of Human Services. My goal is to provide technology direction to align with the business goals. But let's be honest, Mike, my goal is to make it right most of the time.
Hey, that's good. We like that. We like that. Awesome, Anthony. Welcome. Uh, our next contestant, Martha Donley. Martha, welcome.
All right. All right, welcome, Martha Martha Donnelly. I've been in human services for over 30 years and I am absolutely passionate about the role that support services like food and medical coverage and childcare and job seeking services stabilize, not only families and Children but our entire community. So I can't wait to tell you today about our journey in Tennessee to modernize service delivery.
Love it, love it. All right. Oh, this just in before we start, I got a quick word from our sponsors. What if T DH S could enhance the user experience? Like today's brightest, innovative companies or make applying for benefits as simple as online shopping. What if T DH S operations were as efficient as ordering on Instacart empowering their staff with tools that feel less like a five speed bike and more like a Tesla.
What if T DH has trusted their systems as much as we trust Google for answers, leveraging technology to automate repetitive tasks, bring people together and put the human back in human services. Focusing on what matters most helping the people of Tennessee. It's time to play. Innovation feud. All contestants. Are we ready? I'm ready, Anthony, we're ready. All right. Here we go
along. The modernization journey would have been Tennessee's biggest wins. Anthony clout, big board says cloud hosted good enough. All right, tell us a little bit more about the cloud. What's going on in Tennessee, right? For Tennessee, as some saw in the video, we started this migration in 2018. Um For those that are familiar with slid or government, local government uh federal, we were a mainframe uh place right. We had 2032
year old mainframe solutions and we had the need to modernize. And so our journey to the cloud was a big step for us. Um One that was uh a bit uncomfortable, but one that we had to pace ourselves with, we, we took our on premise approach uh to migrating to the cloud and it worked well for us. Um We're still learning as we grow and, and we have advanced well, so far. So we're excited about where we are today
and um look to attend conferences like this to learn more and keep progressing um as a state. Awesome Martha, what do you think about the cloud? Well, I mean, I don't know about the cloud. I'm not much of a technology person, but what I know is that in Tennessee, we have improved system performance. That's
what I know because I can't do my work if my system is down half the day. So, and being on the cloud has meant improved system performance and availability. I don't have downtime, I'm able to meet with families at their convenience.
I have streamlined system integration. Um I don't know if you all know, but these days in public services, we have a lot of information coming into the system. And so we need to stream on all of that information and get it integrated into one place so that we can help people as quickly as possible. And it has improved our data integrity and reporting capabilities. So lots of great things about the cloud for me. Wow. Wow. Awesome. All right,
we good tracking how we doing audience. All right. All right, we're getting there, we're getting there next up. Biggest wins, Tennessee Modernization Journey Survey. I didn't say I didn't. Oh, thank you though because I can remember what you said.
Text and email, not, it looks like it's for us. Oh my God. How about that? Imagine that I got the right answer, text and email notifications. No. But seriously, I do want to tell you about the role that they play in human services. This has revolutionized our outreach to our customers. We're
able to reach people to remind them of appointments and help them get the documentation that they need in. It has improved our service delivery across the board and our operational effectiveness. We have reduced our wait times for benefits for families in Tennessee dramatically just through the use of on time, emails and texts to get people to do the right things at the right time. So it's a great win for us. I almost took the
words right out of your mouth. You almost, it almost did. All right, Anthony, what do you think about text? And um as Martha said, it was definitely um uh a game changer for us. Well, she didn't say game changer. I did but um but, but
no, it's, it's a good move for Tennessee um we had, as the video mentioned, we had folk or Mike mentioned, we had folks um in our lobbies that were waiting for assistance, um that could communicate, us can communicate with us with the medium that they use for many of their own personal services. So text messaging came in um as uh as as simple but, but, but such a efficient thing. Um We leveraged uh Aws Pinpoint. Um
It's a native service. It was right there. I'm sure there are lots of things in the market, but uh pinpoint was uh was the most convenient. It was there. Um It was scalable.
Um You know, it provided all the ana analytics that we needed for if folks opened that text message or who did not uh to, to make sure if it was effective. Um It was cost effective uh from our perspective and we're allowed to configure it in such a way that we can uh build more journeys on top of that um for our customers. So we're able to scale and use this across many different means across all of our platforms. So it's good for us. Wow. Game changer, Anthony. That's amazing. All right. Let's make sure I don't mess this up. Let's go to the next
one. Biggest wins. All right, you could have done that and then that last one. But go ahead. J Boss J Boss services. Lightweight J Boss. Oh my gosh, Anthony, what in the world is J Boss. Well,
II, I don't know if folks know this, but Tennessee was the first state to implement J Boss for a human services eligibility program. Um, so we didn't get a trophy for it, but it's ok. We're here at Amazon in the mail. So, um, but, um, but it was, it was a game changer for us, another game changer for us as we were able to, um, use that application, um, with uh lightweight, um uh low overhead and lightweight uh uh touches to it. Um And it's worked well for us. Um It allowed
us to accelerate our bill process, you know, complementing our C I CD pipelines. Uh It, it provides better monitoring. Uh and it's a good compliment to our Dev ops deck. So, wow, that's incredible. Number
one, it's good to be, to be number one. Congratulations, Martha. What do you know about J Boss? Um Nothing fair enough. And Anthony tells me it's a really good thing though. So I'm sure that it is. Anthony says it's good. It's good,
but I do want to talk about go to the board, my self service portal one DH S it looks like you've gotten that correct. Martha, you read my mind. Yeah, I do want to tell you about our customer portal. So one of the hardest things in human services is getting folks to apply for benefits, getting the right people to apply, getting the right information, getting the right amount of information, getting together all their documentation. You know, these days people are doing so many different types of work, they're doing gig work for Uber and they're doing all kinds of different things and they need to get documents to us.
Our self service portal, our cus it has completely transformed the customer experience which in turn has really transformed our entire organization. Workers who have the right information at the right time are able to act so much more quickly on applications for benefits. And not only that, but people can apply for multiple programs in the same place. What a concept, right? They're not running
all over the place. I would go here to apply for childcare. I go there to apply for food. I go over here for medical help. So there's
the one DH S experience has brought all that together for our customers. I'm so pleased with it, Anthony. How pleased are you? Right. Um Ditto. So the the no wrong door approach for Tennessee was was great. Um We had despaired
web solutions, we solutions across, but um honestly, they weren't very good, right? They were a bit disjointed. Um So coming up with this solution customer portal which is service now built on Aws um was again, I'm gonna game change. I'm gonna overuse it as I talked today, but um it was really big for us. Um You know, as
Martha mentioned uh application, uh we built one applica, one shared application for multiple services and also uh enhance our document upload capability. Um But the biggest of all is we have seen a 70% adoption rate um for a customer portal, right? That what that tells us, our folks don't want to sit in our lobbies. Um You know, they don't want to call us and wait on our contact center, they want to submit their application online, provide all their verification documents and just wait for their eligibility to be determined. So it's uh been working really well for us. Wait, I forgot to tell you one thing that I love about it. Our self service
portal portal is mobile optimized. So we know that most of our customers use their phone for everything. People are not gonna go and find a computer or a laptop to be able to communicate with us. So the mobile optimization has been a a great deal for our customers, Anthony. Aren't you gonna tell us about tokenization? Yes, sure. Um
No. So single sign on is a big thing for us, right? So with those separate web applications that we had and we have multiple and for Tennessee Department of Human Services, we have multiple clients from child support, child care, family assistance for snap tan of. Um so we also have different regulations from uh many federal agencies. So um streamlining that and building a, a single sign on for one log in for all services was big for us. So, yeah, tokens,
you got it in there. All right audience. How are we doing? OK. They're still with us. We're good. We're good. We're good.
All right. Next up. Biggest wins in Tennessee modernization journey. Oh, man, I thought I was the game show host. But yeah,
uh Jaija, I, no game show is complete without the mention of A to talk about it. Let's see. Gen A I, it is Anthony. Tell us more about your gen A I experience,
right? So for, for our child support uh effort, we have been using Copilot to assist our developers with developing code. Um It has provided efficiencies, it's helped with error correction. Um And we've seen a 15% increase in better coding.
Um So we're very excited about that. Um The machines are coming to take over Mike. Um So, but uh but, but it, but it's OK, we will adopt and uh and uh live with it and try to make, try to make sure it's not a bad movie. Um But that's where we are and, and we see that it can only go up from here and we look to just expand on this as we adopt more A I technology for our organization. Oh man, that's incredible. Well, we gotta make sure it's
safe though. We gotta make sure it's safe. Ethical. Uh Martha, what about A IA I I have, I've heard about a, I actually one of the greatest tools that we have is in A I, is an interview assistant. So I, one of the problems that we have in human services is keeping staff over the long term because it is hard work and it doesn't pay that well and it's very difficult to keep people working. And so, um one of the things that we are doing with A I is giving our Anthony mentioned copilot, we're giving our staff um an interview assistance. So it listens in on the interview with the customer and then suggests questions to the worker so that they can get all of the information that they need. Um Ja I has been a big game changer for us too and just getting speed to market just getting because there are so many federal cha so many federal guidelines around all of these programs and they change so frequently we're expecting a few changes coming up probably in January.
Um And as those changes come about, this allows us to react quickly and make those changes and keep moving forward for our families. It's huge. It's huge. Wow. Ok. Are we ready for more? We are ready for more. Biggest wins in Tennessee modernization journey, Anthony containers, containers. OK. Let's try it out.
Containerization. All right. Yeah, Mike. So um we have two environments that are very popular across all of our teams, right? Um We do our best to keep the infrastructure and developer folks from fighting against each other. Um But for identity and access management, which is Forage Rock. Um And also for our um integration layer openshift, um we felt the need that we needed to build containers um Eks uh around these environments to allow for faster deployment to be deployed for multiple teams that need them many times. Um Everyone wants to get away from the um you know, this environment or that environment not available due to maintenance or whatever or, or just this conflict. So we found
containers to be work well for us. Um They have reduced costs for us. Um They are um efficient from our, from our perspective.
Um And uh we built security and, and uh and also maintaining that uh um security around the data around that. So um for our integration layer, I will say that we um for, for state government, we um our integration layer is fed rep approved. Um So we take that extra measure to make sure that we have the proper security standards in place. So we're good, excellent. This is getting good, Martha. What do you know about containers well, container containerization. So what I know about containerization is that it allows me to dynamically change roll configurations.
And what I mean by that is if I have a certain team that's working on a certain project, and I need that team to move over and work on a different project, I need to be able to dynamically and quickly move them to a different role with security obviously, because you can imagine in human services, the data that we're really dealing with about people is extremely sensitive data. So this allows me to dynamically move my staff from one part of the state or from one place to another, from one job duty to another. Uh Also you mentioned Anthony, my favorite thing, decrease maintenance outages, you know, having a worker sitting at a desk waiting to do work because the system is down is just not cool. So that has been one of the big benefits for us. Um
And then, you know, I mentioned it before, I'll mention it again. One of the main things about human services is that regulations are constantly changing. Um And so containerization gives us increased in flexibility to change rules, change priorities, move things around as we need to, to meet our needs. Excellent, I'm I am learning a lot tonight. That's amazing, great job. Uh We're ready for more. We only got two more left.
Biggest wins, Tennessee modernization journey, Anthony again, partner programs. Let's check it out. II I don't know what to say. I'm gonna play the slots after this now. Tell us more. Tell us more. So, um so uh being a government agency, of course, um cost is definitely a factor, right? I'm sure it is for all organizations, but um for our partner programs, we love coupons, right? So we love to save where we can, right? Um Being the best fiscal stewards of the taxpayers dollars as we can be. Um So what
we, we've come to learn right about the different partner programs with Aws. Um, the map program uh is where we started, right. So that we could, uh, the initial build out of our eligibility systems on Aws is where we started with map. Uh,
we then moved over into the compute savings plan. Right. We're running on the platform, you know, so that we, uh, after the first year we have an idea of how much compute we're going to use on Aws. Uh, while some are still shocked. Um, but,
and then of course, as we, in the long term, we have our enterprise uh discount program. The EDP, right? So which we have a further outlook, uh, as to how much compute we're going to use, uh, in services from Aws. So it's been working well for us. Um, you know, like I said, nearly a 40% decrease in the savings. Uh, and, uh, it's a little more, can I say? Right. It's, it's, we're gonna look for more. If anybody has any coupons, they're not
gonna use just hand it to me as I walk out. Yeah. So take him at the door. Uh, Martha. What do you think, partner programs? What does it mean to you? Well, I mean, in, in state government, any cost savings in any area can be, then be real located to serve the families in your state. So obviously, anything that we can do to decrease our costs to market for our systems management um can really allow us to reallocate that money, to have better business outcomes for the citizens of Tennessee.
I'll just give you one really simple example that was very recent um in the recent Hurricane Helene because of all the work that we've done over the past few years with modernization, we were able to get benefits to families within one week after the hurricane hit. So this is, it's incredible the um the how this journey has helped us to serve our citizens. One week, one week, one week. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. You know what else is incredible. We only have one more left. OK. Biggest wins,
integration platforms, integration platforms. Let's check it out, integrate enterprise framework, it's close enough, close enough. What do you all think about that? Well, uh for, for Tennessee DH S um one example that comes to mind is uh we, we had six different applications for address validation. Um So uh you know, how many more do you need? Right. So, uh as we build out this integrate this integrated enterprise framework uh for services, we streamline that by having one service, right? 11 api right? That can be consumed multiple times um by all applications, right? So we're this multidimensional agency, right? So again, it just makes sense to build services one time and share them across wherever there's a need for a service. We build
it in this framework and reshare it. Um So of course, there runs all on Aws uh within the container as mentioned earlier. Um So it's a great foundation for us and we're looking to build on that. Um We have about 40 or 50 services today. We're gonna
keep building those services. Some are direct api some are pass throughs. Um But uh just the reuse of it uh is the great capability and efficiency that we have with the platform makes ma amazing sense. Martha. Well, I I don't know if you, well, you, we all know how much data is available today about anyone. You me, anybody, there's so much data available about folks and we can use that data, we can harness the power of that data to help families in need.
Um But we need to be able to integrate all of that data into a system and into a format so that our um customers and our staff can access it. This is improved program coordinating across the board. So again, when you have a family in need, they generally don't just need one thing. They need childcare, they
need food assistance, they need Medicaid, they need all the different assistance programs. And so they, this integrated enterprise framework has allowed us to bring all of that together all of the data that we know all of the information from the various programs and really serve the families where they are with the information that we have available. I think this is the most incredible use of the data that we have available about people. It's way more important than putting an ad out.
Right. That's customized to you. But I can actually give you assistance for your Children that is customized to you. Makes total sense. Make total sense. All
right. Guess what? It's now time for absolutely about money. Everybody, This marks the end of the show, almost, almost. Here's how it works. Can we get a yay. Here's how it works. Uh Martha, you're going second and Martha has these very technology reindeer ones.
OK. Yep. So those are your reindeer. Uh We're gonna put those on. OK, Martha, can you hear us? OK? It looks like they work? Great, Anthony, you're up first. I'm gonna ask you five questions in rapid format.
OK? Are you ready? Here we go, Anthony single. Most beneficial technology improvement for T DH S. Oh, I'm not supposed to look most exciting emerging tech postscript, most challenging part of your journey so far cost most rewarding part of your journey so far. Business value and who benefits the most Tennesseans? Good answer. All right. Give everybody Anthony a round of applause. Alright.
Anthony will put his uh Martha. Oh, you're with us. OK, Martha's up. All right, Martha, here's how this works. I'm gonna ask you five questions that may be on the screen already. Uh Are you ready? Yes. OK. Single most beneficial technology improvement for THS is the self service portal. OK.
Most exciting emerging tech, uh A I uh an interview assistant. OK. Even better. Most challenging part of the journey. Thus far
change management. Oh, that's a good one. Most rewarding part of the journey so far. My self-service portal. I love my self service who benefits the most. Oh, well, Tennessee citizens. All right. All right.
Uh Let's give Martha a round of applause. Thank you, Martha. All right. Let's see how they did. Oh, Anthony specs. Ok. Yeah, it's good.
All right. Here we go. Anthony Martha. This is for all the money. W the first question was single, most beneficial technology improvement for T DH S. This is Cloud Martha I think, said the one DH S portal. How
about that? I did. All right. Second question. What is the most exciting emerging tech post dress and the A I interview assistant, Martha. You were good. Third question. What has been the most challenging part of the, of the journey so far? A authorization and yes, management.
24. Ok. No one's counting. Martha. I'm counting. What do you mean? No one's counting. I'm counting. I'm
not, I'm winning. How about the most rewarding part of the journey so far? Business driven innovation and customer experience. He got 28. Ok. All right. Last one. And who benefits the most? Tennis? Well, we certainly had fun today, didn't Wayne? I did I don't know if anybody else did and I did good, um, on behalf of, uh, Anthony State of Tennessee Department of Human Services, uh, Deloitte Aws, all of us at the partners. We just wanted to say thank you for attending our session today before you leave. I know we had a lot of fun,
a lot of jokes and stuff. We, we met as a team and we actually had 33 really important things. We wanted you to take home today. Just some things to think about things, maybe to take back to your team and uh stuff that we thought was was pretty important. The first one is a continue or relentless drive to innovation. As you've heard Anthony say today, even Martha on the business side today, there is a great thirst out there from your customers and from your teams on driving new technology and trying new things, tinkering with things, containerization, tokenization, all these different things that are out there. And we think that it's super, super important for you all to be a change agent in that and to be a leader in that.
The second main thing that we wanted to take back or wanted you to take back for from today's presentation is the relentless pursuit or the relentless support of our customers. Uh Martha said it best if we're not, you know, supporting the residents of Tennessee during the hurricane and getting those benefits in those ha in in those Children and families hands within a week of, of having the hurricane that is extraordinary fast, right? Some of the things that an he talked about with the one DH S portal and being able to design and deliver that portal to the individuals who need it the most. And the way that they, they act, they live on their mobile devices and other places is absolutely exceptional. And so
really, really, really take back and think through how you are helping your customers in the work that you do the third thing. And I know we just, we just met uh we just had Thanksgiving, of course, um is a bit of gratitude. Uh We all work really hard. All of us do Anthony Martha, everybody uh that put this present to presentation together, all the individuals who are not here currently from the state of Tennessee, from all of the partners that worked tirelessly to put this program together and so on behalf of, of the folks that are on this stage, we wanted to say thank you to you and also make sure that you say thank you to your teams when you get back to your respective uh offices and workplaces. So with that, with that, we are wrapped up now, officially, we are going to open up the floor for any Q and A say, thank you. Here's all our information.
2024-12-07 11:14
