Citizens and customers of the government are demanding increased access to more efficient services. Covid-19 has also raised the bar on the need to provide accurate and informative data – in visualizations – to citizens who are becoming savvier about data accuracy and usefulness. Strategic communications are an essential part of raising the bar on customer experience (CX).
When people hear the word ‘innovation’ today, they often think of high-profile digital startups in Silicon Valley, impressive advances in medicine, or new tools and techniques for remote collaboration and social interaction. Private-sector organizations, with their leadership in these areas, have set a high bar for Government organizations to aspire to. So, what does innovation really mean for the Government? How can it harness the ideas in its workforce to bring innovation to life?
The Small Business Administration (SBA) certified Arc Aspicio as an SBA-Certified Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) in January 2021. The SBA recently revamped the program to strengthen their oversight and maintain the integrity of the certification process.
In recent years, government agencies have been transitioning to artificial intelligence (AI) for more efficient, accurate, and cost-friendly results. This trend will continue as technology improves and becomes more accessible and cost effective. Technology using AI, including tools that exploit data, is integral to solutions that improve agency operations and processes and data-driven decision-making.
Arc Aspicio recently achieved a Capability Maturity Model Integration Services (CMMI-SVC) Level 3 Certification on October 21, 2020. CMMI is a Model that is used to guide process improvement across projects, divisions, and organizations, from Carnegie Mellon University’s CMMI Institute.
Arc Aspicio uses CMMI, a process level improvement training and appraisal program recognized for Government and commercial clients, as an indicator of high quality performance. Arc Aspicio acquired an appraisal that indicates that the company is performing at maturity Level 3 ‘defined’.
In 2020, as the 20-year anniversary of the Trafficking in Persons Act closes, Arc Aspicio commits to ongoing strategic conversations to counter human trafficking in 2021.
In November 2019, facilitators from Arc Aspicio’s Strategy Innovation Lab (SILab) and from across the Government led a conversation with a group of 30 human trafficking professionals with experience in Federal and local law enforcement, victim service advocates and providers in Government and non-profit organizations, academia, private sector, and a human trafficking survivor. This strategic conversation centered around the trends in human trafficking – both to combat it and to prevent victimization now and in the future.
As organizations across the country went virtual with the pandemic, work and collaboration continued but often in very different and innovative ways. Team meetings went online, and eventually people went on video! Workshops required new facilitation techniques and new technology to support “break out” sessions. Remote happy hours and interactive Kahoots made work more fun, even at a time when we could not see colleagues in person for extended periods.
In more ways than one, the current coronavirus pandemic has changed employee’s daily lives and conduct. New strategies for adapting to the current situation were installed in a matter of weeks and days, and, amid this uncertainness, employees had to transition to remote work seamlessly while maintaining and successfully delivering on critical deadlines.
The Government faces unprecedented challenges today that require an increased capacity for learning, innovating, and coordinating efforts in a peer-to-peer network of practitioners called “Communities of Practice.” Communities of Practice are groups of people that interact on an ongoing basis to expand their knowledge and expertise in a shared concern or set of problems and who have passion about a topic.
Professional responsibility, and a growing emphasis to address and prevent misconduct and harassment, is an issue that Government leaders are prioritizing more and more in recent years. In September 2020, facilitators from Arc Aspicio’s Strategy Innovation Lab (SILab) partnered with Women in Federal Law Enforcement (WIFLE) to lead a powerful, virtual conversation among four female leaders, three of whom are senior executives within professional responsibility functions in their law enforcement agency.
The COVID- 19 pandemic is revealing how complex coordination across government agencies and the private sector is. The public health emergency is triggering an all-hands-on-deck approach and is expanding the definition of “essential work.” Although the Government is familiar with responding to disasters and man-made hazards, the scale of the response needed now is leading to new and unexpected challenges. The Governments and the private sector is reimagining interoperable communications and collaboration between State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT), and Federal agencies as the novel coronavirus requires an even more novel approach.
Reacting to crimes after a legal infraction has occurred used to be the norm in law enforcement for decades. The growth of new and improving tools and technologies has pushed the needle back to ‘prevention’ in recent years, though, with more innovative approaches available to make committing crimes more difficult. A big part of this trend is a stronger reliance on big data as a cost-effective way to direct resources to disrupt criminal activity and networks.
Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) increase face-to-face collaboration and put all relevant partners in a room together by design. As large-scale emergencies continue to happen, this collaboration is essential. But how can we create a similar environment with virtual tools and processes? Virtual EOCs and teleconferences can replicate the physical space, but it is incumbent on all government levels, especially the federal government, to actively use these tools and create an environment of honest information sharing.
