Federal agencies, particularly those that focus on managing cases and delivering programs, benefits, and services to constituents, are constantly on the look out for solutions that enable them to manage interactions between people, process, data, and content in better ways. But the current framework-based case management tools are, like most, federal systems, part of the legacy IT burden.
While the framework-based case management tools have performed adequately over several decades, as the business of government gets more complex and constituents demand better user experiences this current generation of tools can’t keep up, said Jason Adolf, Industry Practice Lead – Federal at Appian. “Federal agencies need tools that can be dynamic to manage the ad hoc and unpredictable cases that they handle on a routine basis so that they can unify these interactions for better decision making,” he continued.
Enter Dynamic Case Management.
According to Adolf what Dynamic Case Management (DCM) enables is intelligent decision making by the removal of structure from what has traditionally been a highly structured and rigid process. “Previous generations of case management solutions have prescribed pathways to solutions that are often not satisfactory outcomes at all,” shared Adolf. “Being unable to resolve a case because of rigid prescribed pathways is extremely frustrating for both sides; but by removing the rigidity and empowering humans within a governance structure enables agencies to deliver better outcomes, more quickly,” he said.
This shift to DCM is possible because of the maturation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), or as Adolf refers to it intelligent automation. Intelligent automation not only facilitates the resolution of simple cases, but it enables dynamic pathways to resolution to be created during an interaction. “Federal agencies, especially HHS and DHS, face more and more complex cases,” Adolf shared. “If you think about the complexity of newer laws like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or some recent immigration policy changes it’s impossible to design a rigid system to account for every case type or outcome,” he continued. Add to that constituent expectation about ease of interaction shaped by experiences in the private sector and suddenly the pain points are all too clear.
In the end,” Adolf said, “we want to create tools that are flexible for users while maintaining the appropriate governance. We want to build solutions that establish boundaries, but that allow for dynamic routing and enable the agency worker to have at their disposal all of the information and insights to make informed decisions.”
Interested in learning more? You can download the Forrester Wave™: Cloud-Based Dynamic Case Management.
