by Christina Magriples | Mar 28, 2024
About the Engagement
After New York’s five super storms in 2012, the state created a temporary agency to distribute 4.4 billion dollars in federal funds to homeowners, small businesses, and municipalities. From the start, technology served as the foundation for this nascent disaster recovery organization. With continually shifting policies, strategies, and goals, the Information Technology (IT) team was forced to create a complex set of applications for processing, analyzing, reporting, and storing critical data and documents for dozens of programs.
Business Problem
The clients’ technology solutions and processes were developed quickly, and in silos because they needed to immediately begin releasing funds/benefits. Therefore, the client sought a partner who could re-engineer the complex architecture of dozens of disparate systems that needed to be maintained or rearchitected.
Challenges
A consistent challenge across the agency was a lack of centralized strategies, techniques, and frameworks which presented unique complexities. Examples of these include varying customer service and support strategies for both staff and applications, varying frameworks and processes (or the lack thereof) resulting in missing quality assurance and quality control procedures for critical applications and departments, and inconsistent monitoring and maintenance of software through the software development lifecycle.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team provided technology strategy and execution services support to the client’s Chief Information Officer, which included the following:
- Current-state and future-state IT organizational assessment to determine and implement technology change management initiatives to improve technology delivery.
- Future-state business architecture to help determine future-state IT organizational capabilities, roles and responsibilities and staffing plans.
- Portfolio and project management support, including software architecture and design, business requirements development, testing and release management support.
- Comprehensive training modules to create structure and internal capabilities in technology delivery for project managers, business analysts, and developers.
Through the engagement team’s strategy and execution support, the client’s IT team has significantly improved its service delivery capabilities, including on-time delivery of projects and improved customer service. This work has helped train and empower the client’s IT team to be more customer-centric and improve delivery of services.
by Jessica Otunuya | Feb 6, 2024
About the Engagement
At the onset of the 2020 pandemic, a state-level agency received the task to distribute funds from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), acting as a grantee in the nationwide initiative that amassed approximately $46.5 billion. The program aimed to deliver substantial economic relief to assist households with low and moderate income who were at risk of homelessness or housing instability by offering support with rental arrears, temporary rental assistance, and utility arrears.
Business Problem
The reporting analytics team required a centralized tool to analyze data for over 100,000+ applications, which equated to $1.25 billion in funding. The reporting analytics team was overwhelmed with data dumps, and how to effectively analyze and report data to leadership; therefore, the engagement team was tasked with developing an enhanced data reporting process to ensure pre-payment determinations were made in a timely, concise, and consistent manner.
Challenges
The reporting team had to analyze thousands of applications to determine payment eligibility without a clearly structured, centralized data-verse. This inability resulted in team members inefficiently disseminating system user data and delays in briefing pre-payment and fraud related statuses to leadership.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team worked across a series of targeted areas to address the business problem in a timely, concise, and consistent manner. These areas included
- Requirements Gathering & Data Management: Completed a current-state assessment of reporting status; worked directly with reporting teams to gather detailed requirements for various reports; created and maintained daily reports for pre-payment quality checks and payment determinations.
- Internal Communication: Standardized check-in structure to include key topics like project progress and escalations; standardized agendas, notetaking and action step captured; defined expectations for performance indicators and shared accountability across the agency.
- Training, Learning, & Development: Conducted cross-functional training to ensure staff knowledge and ability to perform pre-payment report generations and refreshes; conducted regular demos to ensure business teams are trained on technical system capabilities; developed a system for project management to prioritize and implement business requirements for operational teams.
by Jessica Otunuya | Feb 2, 2024
About the Engagement
At the onset of the 2020 pandemic, a state-level agency received the task to distribute funds from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), acting as a grantee in the nationwide initiative that amassed approximately $46.5 billion. The program aimed to deliver substantial economic relief to assist households with low and moderate income who were at risk of homelessness or housing instability by offering support with rental arrears, temporary rental assistance, and utility arrears. In addition, the agency created the Landlord Rental Assistance Program (LRAP), which provides rental assistance for landlords whose tenants are unwilling to apply for the ERAP, including where the tenant has left the rental property.
Business Problem
The agency had to develop internal policies and procedures to erect a grant management and administration operation within weeks. One of the business problems is that the agency required a comprehensive communication strategy and implementation plan to ensure efficient operations, to support timely grant relief disbursement.
Challenges
Due to the nature of the grant program to expend relief to two related but uniquely different audiences, a key challenge was ensuring adequate stakeholder management, specifically factoring in needs of both tenants and landlords. Within each stakeholder group, there were complicating factors and nuances around communication for each. Examples include:
-
- Communication approaches were needed for both tenant and landlord.
- Tenant communications needed to be available in different mediums (email, postal mail, and text).
- Text messaging, while convenient, also had limitations due to character limits.
- Landlord communications were focused on one medium, email; however, tenants were not required to provide an owner email address. In those cases, an alternative method, such as text (e.g., application submission) or call (e.g., automated calling) were used to provide important updates.
- Owner communication was provided only in English, while tenant communication was available in nine language translations, with the most common being English and Spanish.
-
- The LRAP was designed for Landlord communication primarily, with all communication notices being sent only in one medium, email, and one language, English.
- The one exception to this communication was payment notices; payment approval notices were sent to tenants by postal mail, in two translations: English and Spanish.
-
- Beyond payment notices, there was no defined tenant communication, because Landlords were not required to provide the tenant email address, which stifled the completeness of the data point.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team worked with the ERAP and LRAP project leaders to develop the overall communications plan for tenants and landlords. The communication plan improved program communication and led to increased satisfaction from program participants. Notable implemented successes were:
- Communication Database: The communication database is the central repository for all matters pertaining to tenant or landlord communication.
- Communication Tracker: The communication tracker serves as the resource which identifies all outgoing communication, including the following data points: unique identifier, type of communication, audience/recipient, medium, number of applications impacted, due date of notice(s), status, and file path for the shared storage location.
- Customer Service Representative Portal: Bulk communications were managed through a central technology for transmittal in all mediums: emails, postal mail, and text.
- Client Review Tracker: The client review tracker captures notifications requiring the agency’s review, response, and/or approval, and includes a status/resolution of the notification.
- Notification Templates: Templates were created to support consistent, streamlined, and accurate stakeholder communication for tenants and landlords.
- Technology Oversight: The engagement team worked directly with development on application enhancements, routine maintenance, and as-needed bug fixes.
by Christina Magriples | Jan 31, 2024
About the Engagement
In June 2013, following the occurrences of Hurricanes Irene and Lee, and Superstorm Sandy, a state-level disaster recovery organization was created to focus on recovery and rebuilding efforts for effective areas of New York State. The agency’s aid focused on four areas: housing recovery, small business, community reconstruction and infrastructure. They were tasked with distributing billions in federal funds to homeowners, small businesses, and municipalities.
Business Problem
The clients’ technology solutions and processes were developed quickly, and in silos because they needed to immediately begin releasing funds/benefits. Therefore, the client sought a partner who could re-engineer the complex architecture of dozens of disparate systems that needed to be maintained or rearchitected.
Challenges
The common challenge across the agency was a lack of centralized strategies, techniques, and frameworks which presented unique complexities. Examples of these include varying customer service and support strategies for both staff and applications, varying frameworks and processes (or the lack thereof) resulting in missing quality assurance and quality control procedures for critical applications and departments, and maintaining varying agile, hybrid-agile and waterfall software development lifecycle approaches, since multiple systems, or lack of, were used daily, but were not maintained appropriately.
Project Impacts and Outcomes:
The engagement team led the complex change management and training initiatives within the technology team and supported or led the new software development process (design to implementation) for dozens of applications. The team initiated the engagement in the role of IT organization current-state assessment and future-state recommendations, while also supporting the implementation of numerous software. This created the optimal environment and structure to enable agile delivery, to truly understand the on-the-ground needs, and to pivot as the client’s needs changed. This assessment also included focusing on external program-facing initiatives – the process points that required collaboration and communication between the technology and business.
The team provided agency-tailored technical portfolio, project management, business analysis and quality assurance services, including strategy, training, coaching and hands-on delivery. By the end of the project, project managers and business analysts were maintaining a consistent hybrid-agile framework, leading to on-time and prioritized software delivery. Quality assurance and testing was thorough and comprehensive, ensuring applications were delivered bug-free. The IT team maintained a transparent and aligned portfolio of initiatives.
by Jessica Otunuya | Jan 31, 2024
About the Engagement
At the onset of the 2020 pandemic, a state-level agency received the task to distribute funds from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), acting as a grantee in the nationwide initiative that amassed approximately $46.5 billion. The program aimed to deliver substantial economic relief to assist households with low and moderate income who were at risk of homelessness or housing instability by offering support with rental arrears, temporary rental assistance, and utility arrears.
Business Problem
With households experiencing financial troubles, the agency needed to begin delivering relief funds as soon as possible. The agency had to ensure compliance with state and federal rules and regulations, develop internal policies and stand-up a massive grant management and administration operation within weeks. Specifically, the agency needed to develop processes and procedures to support application submission, applicant verification, benefits calculation, and documentation storage and maintenance. Lastly, given the priority to deliver relief funds as quickly as possible, the operational teams needed to be ready to accommodate changing policies, organizational governance, and technology on a week-to-week basis.
Challenges
Within the engagement, the primary challenge was system architecture and design. The system architecture/design was critical to ensure timely and efficient grant distribution. In addition, the system had to be accessible by varying stakeholders, with varying roles and aligned to the criteria set by lawmakers. The risk assessment(s) all pointed to prospective flaws in the system.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team implemented a series of systems and processes to address the high stakes need for the agency to award grants to applicants. Specifically, the team implemented: 1) Governance to ensure a model for operation and oversight of the program, with a goal of customer ease and satisfaction with the program; 2) Management/Supervision to ensure a defined understanding of decision-makers and all roles; 3) Training to support knowledge and understanding of the technology and use end-to-end among all user types; 4) Quality Assurance protocols for accuracy at all levels of engagement; and, 5) Traceability between agency goals and customer service representatives to ensure everyone understood the goals and the guiding principles to make them actionable in day-to-day operations.
