Scalable personalization: Bringing equitable government services to more citizens
Today more than ever, citizens, employees, and business partners expect more from government. Each of these groups expect to be understood, served, and satisfied with exactly what they want, where and when they want it. On top of all of that, they want their experiences to be secure, friendly, and completely effortless. Doing so, however, requires some level of personalization.
The COVID-19 pandemic shed light on the importance of scalable personalization. To serve all citizens, there was an increased need to create equity and improve awareness about critical services that users may not know they can access. Early on, employees needed to find out about remote working arrangements and their agency’s rapidly changing policies. At the height of the pandemic, citizens needed to learn about everything from health status updates and stimulus payments to the availability of vaccines. To get this information out there, it didn’t come from just one channel — It was distributed via multiple channels.
And that’s exactly what the digital journey is all about — reaching citizens where they are — and personalization is what makes it happen.
Policies on personalization
It’s clear from 2018’s 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA) that improving the digital experience for government customers was a priority. Creating equity across all channels to reach diverse and vulnerable populations is a large part of it. The executive order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility that was signed in the summer of 2021 also focused on this need. It is apparent that digital services delivered with scaled personalization are the pathway to equitable experiences for all citizens.
The four key personalization categories
With the growing need for personalization and the policies in place to ensure government agencies take action, the next challenge for many is figuring out how to make it happen. While there are different ways to go about it, Adobe identified four categories where agencies can build capabilities to achieve personalization at scale:
- Data — This is where the real-time unified customer profile lives. Data drives the entire customer experience by providing a better understanding of the needs of end-users.
- Content — Personalization of content for the delivery of relevant, tailored, and localized experiences to all segments, while maintaining the appearance and trust of a single brand.
- Decisioning — Key technology for personalization is a centralized decisioning engine powered by predictive models and algorithms. This centralized decisioning engine identifies which messages or content each customer should receive over which channels.
- Channel delivery — Optimizing experiences across channels is also an essential category for personalization. Coordinating online and offline experiences and keeping them consistent provides centralized cross-channel messaging to optimize citizen experiences.
Adobe Experience Cloud core services activate each of these categories to help government agencies achieve personalization at scale. For instance, the Adobe Experience Platform enables real-time data collection, and Adobe Experience Manager Assets helps agencies work across silos with centralized asset management and governance. Faster AI-powered content management is also possible with Adobe Experience Manager Sites to create personalized experiences. Adobe’s AI-powered decisioning capabilities can also make experiences more personal than rules-based decisions can. Adobe Target, Adobe Campaign, and Marketo provide cross-channel and omnichannel personalization and journey orchestration for better personalization at scale.
Personalization in action
Many agencies currently use some type of personalization on their digital platforms and are effectively reaching more citizens as a result. Here are just a few examples of equitable personalization-in-action:
The U.S. Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau successfully launched its first nationwide online census by modernizing five million pages of Census.gov using a scalable and secure content management system hosted in the FedRAMP-authorized Adobe Managed Services cloud. The agency also successfully leveraged Adobe Analytics to understand site utilization and Adobe Target to expand citizen reach through personalization, driving a record 99.98 percent census completion rate and offering the service in 59 languages. The agency saved an estimated $1.4 billion due to the use of innovative technology according to the General Accountability Office (GAO).
The Los Angeles DPSS
The county of Los Angeles Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) struggled to service 3.5 million residents in need, largely due to content workflow inefficiencies. DPSS deployed Adobe Experience Manger to create user-friendly, mobile-responsive website and improved user experience with simplified navigation and upgraded search capabilities. Using Adobe Analytics, the agency also increased visibility into constituent data across groups, giving them the information they needed to improve their website by consolidating more than 600 pages to 200 (68 percentage improvement in content efficiency) and the ability to add 11 language options.
The City of Dallas
Residents, visitors, and businesses in the City of Dallas were experiencing barriers to accessing services. While the City had been working toward modernization initiatives to improve digital experiences, services were still not reaching everyone. Collaborating with Adobe, the city created an innovative vision for equitable experiences. Focusing on the citizens impacted by inequities in digital experiences, the innovative vision prioritized tailored content, digital-first processes, mobile experiences, consolidated profile data, and targeted outreach to create a successful plan for equitable digital service delivery.
Government agencies have tremendous opportunities to engage citizens, employees, and business partners with personalization at scale. Agencies that are driving toward personalized digital capabilities are on the path to providing equitable experiences and ultimately advancing social equity for all citizens.
As a trusted government partner in digital modernization, Adobe has the insights to help agencies move from stagnant, one-size-fits-all approaches to more tailored and better-targeted communications and services.
To learn more about how your agency can benefit from Adobe’s scalable personalization solutions, contact us at government@adobe.com.