Without business intelligence, finding insight in data can feel about as efficient as draining the ocean by one teaspoon at a time. When you finally get to it, your data might be old news. Data integration and efficient business intelligence (BI) ensure you find the data you need right where and when you need it. Finding answers is easier when you have immediate access to easily understood information.
For state government agencies, this kind of access proves especially useful. Here are three examples of why that’s true.
Business Intelligence Helps Government Agencies Identify Inefficiencies
BI refers to the technologies and processes that collect, store, and analyze the data produced by an organization. For state government agencies that are continually seeking ways to improve their processes, BI can offer powerful insights.
Here’s one example: A report from the National Institute of Justice shows that one of the most serious challenges facing Departments of Corrections across the country is a shortage of qualified workers. From recruitment to training to retention, correctional administrators often struggle to do more with less. As a result, inefficiencies anywhere in the process can lead to some significant consequences, exacerbating an already difficult problem.
By using business intelligence, state agencies like this can rely on their own data to identify the problems in their hiring pipelines. This empowers them to shore up their own efforts and also to make better decisions in terms of where they focus their energies.
State Government Agencies Can Use Business Intelligence to Improve Processes
For decades, the long lines at the DMV have been the butt of many a joke, riffed on by hacky comedians between sets on airline food. But those punchlines pointed to a very real problem, one centered on inefficiencies and a poor customer experience.
That’s why some agencies have made serious efforts to put the principles of business intelligence into practice in order to improve their own processes. For instance, one DMV’s review of their processes uncovered the fact that they used separate databases for all 90 counties in the state. As you can probably imagine, this was a bad experience for everyone involved.
By analyzing their own data and using that data to drive modernization, the department has made huge strides toward improving their processes. That’s the kind of progress any government agency would feel proud of.
Business Intelligence Can Make Government Agencies More Agile
The COVID-19 pandemic has put huge amounts of pressure on government healthcare agencies across the country. State agencies were often trying to navigate multiple major disruptions at once, including the shift to virtual work, using federal emergency funds efficiently, and serving communities that were in crisis.
Unfortunately, many agencies quickly discovered they simply were not prepared to absorb all these changes. They were inefficient at hiring, struggled to upgrade technology, and couldn’t process data quickly enough to keep up with community trends.
While the pandemic would have been a crisis under any circumstances, some of these pressures could have been relieved had these agencies used business intelligence to identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks early on. The goal is to become more efficient and make better decisions before there’s a crisis, so that when the need does emerge your organization can react as quickly as possible, as Indiana did to help families get nutrition assistance. BI can help you become much more agile, but only if you’re ready to act.
We help state government agencies get a handle on their data. Here’s how
