Prioritizing the User: CIOs and Partners Discuss Human-Centered Technology

Among a plethora of discussions surrounding artificial intelligence, the Texas Digital Government Summit* in Austin on Wednesday hosted a panel of vendor partners and information officers discussing the importance of prioritizing human-centered technologies and sharing the strategies they use to ensure developing technologies benefit their communities.

Moderated by Government Technology Senior National Conference Director Hansa Bernal, the panel consisted of Capital Metro (CapMetro) CIO and Senior Vice President Tanya Acevedo, city of Austin CIO Kerrica Laake, and Tyler Technologies Director of State Data Solutions Elliot Flautt.

Laake identified community outreach and usability testing as the main strategies Austin employs to ensure the city’s outcomes are beneficial to citizens. To accomplish this, Laake pointed to the city’s digital services division, which itself contains a team specifically focused on digital strategy and solutions.

“Their focus is on user-centered research that directly impacts digital solutions that we provide both internally and externally to the community in the city of Austin,” explained Laake. “In that function, they’re focused on that user behavior. They're doing the research, they're doing that inquiry, they’re doing that observation so that they can create use cases and journey maps and wireframes and information architecture that maps out that journey for that individual user.”

Acevedo also pointed to community outreach as an important aspect of developing human-centric technologies, which CapMetro uses to develop a more efficient digital journey. One method CapMetro uses to conduct community outreach is through what Acevedo described as a “digital town hall,” which involves inviting users to share their input and experience with specific services online.

Regarding usability testing, Flautt explained that speaking to subject experts and conducting testing with the intended users of a particular service — especially when testing accessibility — is vital to understanding the people agencies are intended to serve.

“We see a lot of folks testing solutions from a technology perspective,” said Flautt. “It passes the par in terms of just checking the box to say, ’yes, this is accessible,’ but going beyond that to really engage with people who live with disabilities … that can get a variety of different kinds of performance.”

All three panelists agreed that the quality of partnerships between vendors and agencies also has an impact on a project’s success, with Acevedo revealing that CapMetro has begun to sever ties with current vendors in favor of partners who are more capable of innovation.

“We’re going outside of our current vendors now and we’re, you know, we’re making changes,” said Acevedo. “We’re leaving some of those legacy business partners behind and we’re choosing the newer business partners. Vendors that are doing the new and more innovative things, that are using AI, that are all cloud-based.”

Regarding AI, Laake stressed that prioritizing human-centric technologies “is just going to become increasingly important.”

“The technology is getting better, but empathy, ethics and making sure there’s no biases, to me those are still human functions,” said Laake. “Those are the things that you’re drawing out with your user research and your discussions with people. I think that practice is just going to become more and more critical as the technologies continue to evolve.”

*Note: The Texas Digital Government Summit is hosted by Government Technology. Government Technology and Industry Insider — Texas are both a part of e.Republic.