GX Talks - Leadership Dialogues with Lauren Aaronson, Santiago Garces, Martha Dorris, Carolyn Staats and Dan Chenok

New digital technologies have created a radical shift in customer expectations, resulting in a new kind of modern customer for industries and governments.  Customers today are constantly connected, app-native, and aware of what they can do with technology. At the same time, innovative organizations are using data and analytics to transform the art and science of customer experience, and creating competitive advantages for themselves with the public. 

• What does this mean for governments when it interacts with the public?
• How can government create user-centric, integrated and dignified journeys that delight and empower citizens and customers, as well as enable them to get government services they need?
• Can the power of data and new tech enable governments to reduce burden on end-users to navigate the impossible landscape of burdened bureaucracy?

Join our illustrious panel of leaders for a glimpse into what they have done, what they have learned, and what's possible, as they delve into the answers to these questions. This session has been hosted in collaboration with the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Here are the details of the panelists:

Transforming public service experiences through the power of data and new technologies

• Carolyn Staats, Director of Innovation for the County of Sonoma and the IT Director for the ACCESS Initiative, CA, USA
• Martha Dorris, Founder of Dorris Consulting International, USA
• Lauren Aaronson, Deputy Commissioner, Business Process Innovation and Design at New York City Department of Social Services, USA
• Santiago Garces, Executive Director, Department of Community Investment, South Bend, Indiana, USA
• Dan Chenok, Executive Director, IBM Center for The Business of Government, USA - Session Moderator

In this section, you can watch the entire session, see the highlights and read the session summary report. 

GX Talks is a dialogue series created and hosted by the Prime Minister’s Office of the UAE. GX Talks unites government decision-makers, global practitioners and renowned innovators to re-examine and re-define government experience for the future. Watch more talks at GxTalks.com.

 

How to Watch?

Watch the full session here.

Watch the session highlights here.

Learn more about the future of government service delivery on GX.ae

Speaker Profiles:

Santiago Garces is the Executive Director of the Department of Community Investment in South Bend, Indiana. Mr. Garces is responsible for economic development, sustainability, workforce development, planning, permits and licenses, housing programs, and code enforcement. Mr. Garces’s portfolio includes roughly $50 million of investments through tax incremental financing and revolving loan programs. Leading the City’s economic response and recovery efforts from COVID-19, he led the creation of an Innovation Grants for Restaurants that provided over 50% of restaurants in the City with low barrier grants to address unexpected investment and novel strategies to improve operations during the pandemic. Prior to this position, Mr. Garces was the CIO and Director of Innovation and Performance in Pittsburgh, and before that the CIO of the City of South Bend. Mr. Garces holds degrees in Electrical Engineering, and Political Science, and a master’s degree in technology entrepreneurship from the University of Notre Dame.

Lauren Aaronson has spent more than 20 years helping to transform New York City’s most complex social services programs.  She is the Deputy Commissioner for Business Process Innovation and Design at the Department of Social Services, the nation’s largest social services agency serving over 3 million of the City’s residents.  Currently, she leads large-scale efforts to improve client and worker experience across DSS through the use of modernized technology, human-centered design and simplified business processes and policies. Prior to her current appointment, Lauren served as the Director of Client Solutions at NYC HHS-Connect.  HHS-Connect is the City’s enterprise transformation program focused on using technology to break down information silos and enable data sharing between the City’s eight Health and Human Services agencies. 

Carolyn Staats is the Director of Innovation for the County of Sonoma and the IT Director for the ACCESS Initiative, a collaborative county program that has won awards for innovation in both the private and public sector.  Since coming to the County of Sonoma in July 2013, Carolyn has led several, innovative IT projects, most noteworthy are the SoCo COVID-19 Check mobile App for Sonoma County residents to self-screen before entering public locations such as businesses and schools, and the ACCESS initiative, Accessing Coordinated Care and Empowering Self Sufficiency. ACCESS enables an agile, mobile service delivery platform for providing an integrated, coordinated care model to address the most at-risk population and highest utilizers of medical, behavioral health, social services, and justice agencies. The ACCESS initiative was awarded the 2019 Advantage Award as well as two National Association of Counties (NACo) awards and the distinguished Financial Times Intelligent Business award for Public Sector.

Carolyn works with state and local governments exploring low code, no code collaboration solutions for multi-discipline approaches including Orange County and Riverside in California; Harris County, Texas; and United Way, Rochester, N.Y. Carolyn was listed as one of the Top 40 women in the world in AI by the New York Times and IBM in 2019. Most recently, the Sonoma County ACCESS initiative had the honor of being awarded earmarked funding to continue development from the U.S. House of Representatives in July, 2021.

Martha Dorris is currently the Founder of a consultancy that focuses on improving the lives of citizens through improved government services. Leveraging her knowledge of government and expertise in citizen services and customer experience, Dorris Consulting International (DCI) works with governments to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government to deliver outstanding services to employees, citizens and businesses. To improve the sharing of best practices and assist in the creation of a customer/citizen-focused culture, Martha created the Service to the Citizen Awards that recognizes champions of change in service delivery. Martha is also the Founder of the Public Service Leadership Academy where she is providing leadership training and coaching to the next generation of leaders. Martha is currently part of the US Cyber Challenge Team to identify and train 10,000 of the next cybersecurity workforce.

During her 34 years at the US General Services Administration, she worked primarily in the areas of information technology acquisition, digital service delivery, intergovernmental solutions and citizen or customer experience. She worked in both the Federal Acquisition Service and the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCSIT) (now the Technology Transformation Services). Martha has worked in category management, GWACs, cybersecurity, cloud solutions, digital services, customer or citizen experience and services.

Martha was instrumental in the creation of numerous forums to share knowledge and best practices around the world. She represented the US in many of these forums. Through North American Day meetings annually, the US, Canada and Mexico shared knowledge, created networks of like-minded officials, and partnered in projects in data sharing for the past 15 years. For almost 10 years, the US, Canada, Australia, UK and New Zealand met quarterly to discuss issues of common interest or concern. Martha was recognized for her work through numerous awards.

Dan Chenok is Executive Director of the IBM Center for The Business of Government. He oversees all of the Center's activities in connecting research to practice to benefit government, and has written and spoken extensively around government technology, cybersecurity, privacy, regulation, budget, acquisition, and Presidential transitions. Mr. Chenok previously led consulting services for Public Sector Technology Strategy, working with IBM government, healthcare, and education clients.

Mr. Chenok serves in numerous industry leadership positions. He is a CIO SAGE with the Partnership for Public Service, Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, Chair of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee of the DHS Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, Member of the Auburn University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security Board of Directors, Member of the American University IT Executive Council, and Co-Chair of the Senior Executives Association Community of Change for Governance Innovation; previously, he served as Chair of the Industry Advisory Council (IAC) for the government-led American Council for Technology (ACT), Chair of the Federal Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, and two-time Cybersecurity commission member with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Mr. Chenok also generally advises public sector leaders on a wide range of management issues. Finally, Mr. Chenok serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor with the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin, teaching at the school's Washington, DC Center. 

Before joining IBM, Mr. Chenok was a Senior Vice President for Civilian Operations with Pragmatics, and prior to that was a Vice President for Business Solutions and Offerings with SRA International. As a career Government executive, Mr. Chenok served as Branch Chief for Information Policy and Technology with the Office of Management and Budget, where he led a staff with oversight of federal information and IT policy, including electronic government, computer security, privacy and IT budgeting. Prior to that, he served as Assistant Branch Chief and Desk Officer for Education, Labor, HHS, and related agencies in OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Mr. Chenok began his government service as an analyst with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and left government service at the end of 2003. In 2008, Mr. Chenok served on President Barack Obama’s transition team as the Government lead for the Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform group, and as a member of the OMB Agency Review Team.

Mr. Chenok has won numerous honors and awards, including a 2010 Federal 100 winner for his work on the presidential transition, the 2016 Eagle Award for Industry Executive of the Year, and the 2002 Federal CIO Council Azimuth Award for Government Executive of the Year. Mr. Chenok earned a BA from Columbia University and a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

 

Download the session report below ( coming soon). Please contact Chetan Choudhury for more details.