How America Recovers

It's physical.

We continue to live under the threat of a deadly virus, and need to ensure swift, well-structured vaccine distribution.

And it's economic.

Through the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan, local governments have tens of millions of dollars in aid to distribute to individuals and businesses that are in urgent need of support.

Without digital workflows, a rapid recovery simply isn’t possible. We need to digitize our infrastructure to quickly and efficiently deliver these critical services.

These problems aren’t new.

The public sector was the least agile industry in its COVID-19 response. And although our health-care system is further along in its digital transformation, it was inundated during the pandemic, escalating the need for more agile systems.

Source: Business Platform and Agility Survey, ServiceNow x ESI ThoughtLab, February 2021

Children’s Minnesota is among the largest pediatric health-care systems in the country. When the vaccine rollout began, health systems such as Children’s Minnesota were responsible for their own scheduling—with as little as 96 hours’ notice before the next allotment would arrive.

When Children’s Minnesota expanded its vaccination program, word spread, and it was overwhelmed with a surge of walk-in patients. On January 31, 2021, there were 600 people lining its hospital hallways without adequate room for social distancing.

Children’s Minnesota created a new digital workflow to manage vaccine distribution. Built on the Now Platform, it enabled them to vaccinate 1,400 patients in just 11 hours, reducing the wait time from three hours to 20 minutes.

Going forward, the hospital will use the same system to schedule and track COVID-19 boosters and its annual influenza campaign.

Montgomery County, Ohio, is home to more than 500,000 people. Historically, some of its local government programs were run manually with mailed-in, dropped-off, or emailed applications. Other programs were automated but couldn’t scale to handle a major influx of federal aid.

In May 2020, Montgomery County found out that it would receive nearly $93 million in CARES Act funding—which presented a huge economic boost for its community and an unprecedented logistical hurdle.

Montgomery County’s IT department used the Now Platform to handle this influx of federal aid. By June, it had developed a new digital workflow to manage and track grant applications in a central hub, and it processed more than 1,600 grant applications in the ensuing five months.

That new efficiency helped a local nonprofit get funding and serve 2,500 meals a day to seniors during the coronavirus pandemic. The same streamlined process could connect other grant applicants with utilities and rent assistance.

Faced with serious challenges, limited staffing, and mere weeks to prepare, both Children’s Minnesota and Montgomery County, Ohio, met the needs of their communities using digital workflows.

These new processes allowed them to focus on the care and services they provide without being encumbered by busy work—making real recovery possible.

The coronavirus pandemic escalated the need for digital transformation, but it can help us beyond our immediate recovery.

The key is human-centered design.

Low-code platforms let nontechnical people build their own apps based on processes that work best for them.

This is platform agility in practice: care providers and government employees updating their workflows to address new challenges.

And, most important, this approach frees care providers and government employees to do the jobs they actually signed up to do.