Buying Design + Technology Services
Many government agencies work with third-party vendors in order to deliver services and digital systems, but careful consideration must be paid to include human-centered processes and use flexible software that won’t quickly become outdated.
Asking for help doesn't have to be so hard.
When building a staff for a health and human services agency, most leaders are naturally focused on case workers, policy and legal experts, and other positions that concentrate on serving constituents. Agency leaders are tasked with deciding which services to prioritize, selecting vendors, and managing vendor relationships, all while continuing to deliver public benefits.
The resources on this page are meant to help agency leaders facilitate vendor scope to achieve dignified digital services that are built with guidance from the people who use and deliver them, and continuously improved over time. Here, find details about and considerations for procuring, contracting, and managing third-party vendors, as well as the steps to take in order to develop design and technology capacities within your own agency.
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California Employment Development Department: User Personas for Government Technology Procurement
The California Employment Development Department (CA EDD) has over 10,000 employees across 8 branches. The agency administers multiple benefits programs including Unemployment Insurance (UI), Disability Insurance (DI), and Paid Family Leave (PFL). During the pandemic, CA EDD saw an increased volume of UI claims which exceeded their processing capacity leading to backlogs and delays for claimants. CA EDD also faced challenges appropriately detecting fraudulent claims, without blocking eligible claimants.
Coming out of the pandemic, CA EDD is pursuing a multi-year modernization initiative, EDDNext. The initiative aims to improve customer and employee experiences across EDD’s programs. As part of this initiative, EDD sought to find user-centric strategies to procure new technology and systems for an updated digital identity verification system.
