Government Bits

Tracking how technology is transforming interaction between governments and citizens.

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Adobe Government Assembly (AGA) is our premier corporate event to demonstrate commitment to the US Public Sector community, announce product launches/pipeline, and highlight collaborative successes with our partners across the country in federal, state, and local markets.

This year, with speakers, panelists, and customers representing almost every segment of the US Public Sector, the 2012 AGA in Washington DC proved to be a dynamic forum for exploring trends that are clearly driving the federal government’s innovative technology agenda, including ‘cloud-first’ policies, Analytics for Measuring Agency Performance, data center consolidation initiatives, and Mobile Government.

AGA session tracks were designed around the following three pillars of relevant challenges that government agencies face day-to-day as well: engaging communities through new technologies, achieving efficiencies during a time of significant budget constraints, and the threat paradigm of data security.

For example, I spoke on a popular panel that delved into the topic of improving agency efficiencies by automating mission-critical business processes.  John Montel, a co-panelist from the US Department of the Interior, detailed how DOI recently implemented Adobe solutions to modernize ways citizens interact with his agency.

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Other AGA highlights included an insightful keynote presentation from LtCol Greg Reeder, Director of Marine Corps production for the US Marines, in which he demonstrated how the Marine Corps is leveraging Adobe technologies for apps that engage a new generation of service members, veterans, and prospective recruits.

From policy makers to agency executives, AGA 2012 offered something for everyone involved in government technology. We offer our sincere appreciation to all customers, partners, and attendees who made AGA 2012 the best one yet. And based on the incredible feedback, we’re already looking forward to repeating our success next month in Ottawa at the 2012 Canadian AGA.  See you there!

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Scroll to see the full US AGA 2012 agenda and links to several of the event’s most popular sessions:

Track 1: Engaging Communities – The Soldier, the Veteran, the Citizen

Connecting with citizens, soldiers and constituents is no longer about connecting anything – not telephones, computers or even devices. As federal agencies integrate new technologies like mobility and web analytics into the fabric of their infrastructure, they are breaking past the old paradigms of communication to reach people wherever they are – connecting the mission to those that make it happen.

Session 1-1: The Next-Generation Mobile Government Experience Part II

Session 1-2: Measuring Agency Online Presence to Improve the End User Experience

Track 2: Achieving Agency Efficiency

With the federal government facing unprecedented budget strains, the call to “do more with less” is becoming deafening. As the prospect of cuts accelerates, agencies are now turning to technology to bridge the gaps. New tools are enabling collaboration on an unprecedented scale, from the desktop to the battlefield, while advances in areas like training are redefining how agencies prepare their employees for the future. But these developments are not limited to internal stakeholders; citizens are reaping the benefits of more efficient data processing and forms management, cutting out the time and the paperwork that stands between them and efficient delivery of services. The sessions in this track will explore this new definition of efficiency and how significant savings can result from real performance improvements.

Session 2-1: Bridging the Divide: Collaboration and Training

Session 2-2: Reforming Forms: Accelerating Agency Performance with Data Management

Track 3: Content-Centric Security – Defining the Next Threat Paradigm

Securing information has always been a mission of government, but keeping data behind lock and key no longer cuts it. The value of information is now defined as much by how it’s exchanged as where it’s locked away. That’s why sharing information securely – across the agency, across the government or even across the world – and ad hoc analysis to identify a particular threat, have emerged as the most critical elements of today’s security challenge.

Session 3-1: Unknown Unknowns – A New Class of Analytics

Session 3-2: IT Security is Who You Are, Not Where You Are

Re-visit the most popular sessions. To see the full archived videos, log in as a guest:

• Leveraging Digital Media
• Content-level Security
• Analytics 2.0
• Performance-Enhancing Data Management
• Mobile Government
• Maximizing Online Presence

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Adobe LiveCycle ES3 was recently released and contains several new features that will appeal to customers in both federal and state & local government.  Full resource documentation for ES3 is available here. This post will focus on the new features that will be most interesting to government customers.

CRX – Content Repository Extreme

Adobe LiveCycle ES3 foundation now comes with a full implementation of the CRX.  A Java Content Repository (JCR) based on Apache’s Jackrabbit. (http://jackrabbit.apache.org/)  It implements the JSR 170 and JSR 283 specifications.  This is a great solution for storage for customers who don’t want to purchase or don’t already have an enterprise content management (ECM) solution in place.

There are also operations in the LiveCycle Workbench for reading from, writing to, and managing the documents in the CRX.

Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES3

There were several updates to the Adobe LiveCycle Designer that will make the lives of form designers much easier.  The first is the ability to create and apply styles to objects in forms in much the same manner that CSS is able to style HTML elements.

The next new feature is added support for bulleted, numbered, and nested lists in text objects.  This is an update that was requested time and time again, and has now made it into the product.  The final added feature is support for the right to left languages, Arabic and Hebrew, which is very helpful to specific government agencies.

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES3

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management has been a great tool for governments to protect personally identifiable information (PII) of the citizenry as well as classified documents.

There are numerous new features in Rights Management with the release of ES3. The Microsoft Office plugins now support Windows 64 bit systems and also include added support for Office 2010.  The login dialog to authenticate to documents is now customizable, including the ability to implement wizards for multi-step authentication.  Authentication was updated to allow for additional authentication instruments including single sign on through SAML and header-based SSO.

Another frequently requested feature was the ability to use DRM in custom applications.  With ES3, a portable protection library has been introduced which allows developers to work with the management of rights, as well as rights managed documents, into their application. Also, the event tracking capabilities have been expanded upon.

Correspondence Management

Any government agency sending out a lot of correspondence to constituents should really take a look at Correspondence Management.  There were some significant changes that occurred to Correspondence Management in ES3.  The entire UI of the system was updated to make them more user friendly and efficient.  Features like spell checking and keyboard entry allowing for better navigation were added. Support for bulleted, nested, and numbered lists were also added, as well as the ability to use tables.

The system was built around the CRX which greatly improved performance and made the auditing of assets easier as well.  The ability to make more intuitive templates was made possible by support for complex and inline conditionals in text modules.  Template assets were also updated to allow for more control through specific public or retire dates and the ability to retrieve templates that were active in the system on a specific date.

Overall the Correspondence Management solution had big improvements made that makes it even more attractive for agencies seeking to streamline and save money on their correspondence. For more information on Correspondence Management, head to http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/correspondence_management/.

Odd and Ends

While the above features fit into nice little categories, there were some features that don't, but that certainly bear mentioning and will be of interest to government customers.  First, the ECM Connectors were updated to support IBM FileNet 5 and support for Microsoft Sharepoint deployed in farms.  For archival purposes, document conversion now supports the PDF/A-2b standard. Finally, the PDF Generation Windows based OCR service now supports multiple threads and conversion of Office 2010 documents is now supported through the addition of Acrobat 10 support.

Overall, the Adobe LiveCycle ES3 release added lots of new features that should interest government customers to help them streamline their processes dealing with documents and their interaction with the citizenry.

Please join Adobe for its annual Adobe Government Assembly, February 8th, at the National Press Club.

The AGA is a forum for federal, state and local IT, acquisition and security professionals to discuss strategies and actionable tactics for meeting today’s challenges and revolutionizing tomorrow’s government operations. You’ll hear from public sector leaders and industry experts on the key issues of advancing citizen engagement, implementing innovative technologies and protecting critical information.

Keynote speakers include GSA’s David McClure, Associate Administrator of the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, and best-selling author Peter Sims.

Click here to register.

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Health Reform, Medicare funding, economic matters, illegal immigration, national defense, foreign policy, and the list goes on…

There is no shortage of issues for American voters to consider when casting their ballots in this year’s presidential election. In fact, all the candidates (including the president himself) have been working hard to ensure their positions are clear and their messages resonate as they plead their cases to be commander-in-chief for the next four years.

However, campaign speeches and heated debate performances sometimes contain rhetoric that is sprinkled with embellishments and vague inaccuracies. Regardless of political affiliation, most people agree that it’s impossible to make educated decisions without fact-based research.

To help weed through the maze of politicians’ attention grabbing sound bites and unsubstantiated claims, countless voters have turned to PolitiFact, a non-partisan journalistic organization whose mission is to use the Web to help citizens “find the truth in politics.”

Since winning the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2009, PolitiFact has surged in popularity. In turn, they looked to Adobe technologies to extend their online reach and enlighten the masses through data visualization and an engaging mobile experience for iOS, Android, and the Blackberry Tablet OS.

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“The new PolitiFact Mobile app repackages our extremely rich data to present it in creative and helpful ways,” says Bill Adair Editor, PolitiFact, and Washington bureau chief, St. Petersburg Times.

And in June 2011, PolitiFact was named the #1 news app in the iTunes store; proof that more than ever, in the hands of the people (across multiple digital channels), knowledge is power.

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With each New Year, there is a propensity to want to leave the past behind us. Resolutions to start anew are often key drivers behind seasonal surges in new gym memberships and other short lived self-improvement initiatives.

Enterprises typically seize the beginning of a new cycle to re-invent themselves as well. However, regardless of the reason for the fresh start, forward-thinking leaders find ways to harvest lessons learned and relationships established in the past, and leverage them as they plan for the future.

With the emergence of a robust digital ecosystem, including social networking, mobile devices, and cloud computing, that’s now easier than ever to achieve. But sustainable results still require an innovative enterprise platform and an adaptive strategy.

Before the holidays, I was invited to participate as a panelist at the 2011 Government Mobility Forum in Washington DC. The theme was “Revolutionizing Agency Communications and Citizen Service” and the keynote was delivered by Phil Simon, best-selling author of “The Age of the Platform.” Afterward, we explored ways that technology may be deployed to extend the reach of personalized interactions, thereby providing incremental value with every touch point for the customer, citizen, or patient.

See full encore video here.

Digital communications strategy is at the heart of efforts to modernize user experiences throughout the public sector in North America and worldwide.

From mass transit agencies that deploy mobile apps for keeping commuters updated in real-time, to healthcare agencies that facilitate provider collaboration with online access to health records, Adobe Digital Government Solutions are driving the transformation in many cases.

In fact, last week from Washington DC, President Obama remotely addressed over 25,000 constituents at multiple caucus sites in Iowa by using Adobe Connect and Connect Mobile, our best-in-class web conferencing solutions that are also trusted globally by the US Department of Defense.

So for 2012, consider a resolution of improved engagement, efficiency, and effectiveness. You’ll be in great company, and no spandex is required.

What’s your digital resolution?

Let us know on Twitter @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM, or on Facebook.

Relationships between health payers and their provider networks have traditionally been complex on multiple levels. Until recently, such complexity was often apparent from the very start of each relationship, as tenuous onboarding processes forced new network providers to wait weeks before treating their first patients. Meanwhile, contractual agreements and related documents bounced back and forth for updates, approvals, and signatures.

However, this costly bottleneck has now been completely removed for many leading health payers as they launch solutions powered by Adobe EchoSign, a disruptive cloud-based technology for electronic signatures and contract management.

Since acquiring EchoSign, we have seamlessly integrated this pioneering solution into the Adobe document exchange services platform, including the ubiquitous Adobe Reader and newly launched iPad app, for securely providing universal service access while satisfying rigorous compliance requirements.

Impressive results throughout the global health payer community have been garnering attention in the public sector too, as Medicaid agencies and others face workflow challenges similar to their commercial counterparts.

At Aetna, where the average contract processing time was decreased from three weeks to one day, three-quarters of all contractual transactions with providers are now electronic. Additionally, Aetna has significantly reduced its carbon footprint, as well as costs associated with postage and paper. These changes helped Aetna earn the 2011 InfoWorld Green 15 Award, presented by International Data Group (IDG).

“As a health care benefits company, we also are focused on creating a healthy environment. Our paperless contracting is one way we are advancing this mission,” said Carl King, head of National Networks and Contracting Services for Aetna.

At Cigna, average onboarding times for new physicians and small practices have been cut in half. As their expansive provider network continues to grow at a rate of over 20,000 new providers per year, over a million pages of contracts are efficiently managed digitally with the auditable Adobe EchoSign solution.

“Electronic contracting expedites the overall contracting process for physicians and enables Cigna to more quickly add physicians to its growing network,” said Cigna’s Julie Vayer, Vice President, Health Care Professional Solutions.

At the end of the day, electronic contract management isn’t about placing the image of a signature into a document. Instead, it’s about driving business results by facilitating transactions anyplace the customer may be, in as close to real time as practical.

And as Adobe responds to dynamic market needs with comprehensive digital media and digital marketing solutions that grow relationships, we are committed to making it easier for our customers to provide optimal experiences for their customers, on their terms.

I guess you could call it a sign of the times.

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Although most of us mindlessly take it for granted, Internet access in the US is by no means ubiquitous. However, the dynamic mainstream adoption of smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices has helped to drive irrefutable progress among rural residents and underserved populations.

By literally placing the power of the web into the pockets of many citizens for the first time, mobile devices empower these segments with a surge of newfound access to unlimited information (cell tower coverage and data plans permitting).

However, a closer look reveals a new challenge, as mobile devices are often the only gateway to the Internet for many of these new users. Despite the significant advancements they represent, these devices will not realize their full potential until enterprises, like government agencies and other organizations, deliver consistent experiences for meaningful business processes and human services across these channels – from start to finish.

For example, imagine what it would be like to exclusively use a cell phone to conduct an exhaustive job search… then actually write and submit a resume on the same device.

Or maybe you need to research and compare your options for health benefits and other social services… then actually select a plan and submit multiple forms of information to enroll a family of five.

In most cases, these simple tasks would be difficult to say the least on a mobile device.  But they don’t have to be; technologies exist today that can extend robust Internet experiences through these channels and then measure their effectiveness.

This new digital divide, which also includes the lack of universal broadband availability (an issue that deserves a posting of its own), was among the topics covered as I recently addressed tribal leaders and executives on tribal health IT at the 12^th annual Tribalnet conference in Scottsdale, AZ.

This year’s theme was Bringing Technology and Tribes Together, and that was comprehensively explored throughout the three conference tracks offered: IT Governance, Tribal Health, and Virtualization.

As some Tribalnet attendees prepared to also attend the upcoming White House Tribal Nations Conference to continue these important discussions, I was reminded of our government’s commitment to these issues. Regarding improved service in tribal lands, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, recently commented “Our actions will further empower native nations to access and use the latest technologies to grow their businesses, increase their access to quality health care and education, reach 911 during emergencies and receive public alerts and warnings.”

And while this level of attention to such a vital lifeline for so many is commendable, I am personally hopeful that we won’t stop there to ensure that meaningful access eventually becomes a mindless afterthought for everyone.

Let us know what you think on Twitter @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM, or on Facebook.

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As the fifth annual Health 2.0 conference recently kicked off in San Francisco, the vibe was electric and incestuously contagious; I felt it more with every interaction there.  The event, which focuses exclusively on celebrating innovations in health IT, continued its tradition of generating more buzz and excitement than the year before.  Just as impressive, though, was the humbling sense of community and shared purpose as evidenced by the launch of Health 2.0 MatchPoint, a program dedicated to matching young innovators with established organizations. Mark Smith, President and CEO of the California Health Care Foundation, expounded on the significance of the matching concept in his spirited keynote remarks.

Form new start-ups to household names like Adobe;  from public sector agencies to publically traded corporations, the diverse “Health 2.0” entities that were represented each embodied three common elements, according to conference co-founders Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya.

Those elements included (1) use of adaptable technology that integrates with the wider cloud and “unplatform” ecosystem, (2) a staunch focus on the user experience through design and usability, and (3) use of data to drive outcomes that improve health care through lowering cost, improving efficiency and improving intelligent decision-making.

On behalf of Adobe, I had the privilege of announcing the Innovation Showcase, featuring this year’s winners of the Health 2.0 Developers Challenge. The session was particularly special for me since I had the honor of standing on the same stage a year ago to accept the Developers Challenge Award for Adobe’s Blue Button solution for electronic health records at the US Veterans Administration (VA).

Since last year’s win, Adobe has been working closely with our partner community to nurture innovation throughout the healthcare ecosystem. During this year’s conference, I caught up with a couple such partners who leverage Adobe technologies as part of their own solutions.

CareCloud, a provider of cloud-based practice management and medical records solutions, incorporates Adobe technologies into their revolutionary Central product suite. CareCloud Central simplifies administrative processes like billing and insurance eligibility so that physicians in private practice can focus more on delivering patient care and improving outcomes.

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Videum, a joint venture between Publicis Healthware International (PHI) and dotSUB with a planned launch in early 2012, leverages Adobe technology to offer global users the ability to share, search, and view video with healthcare content – in any language.  Such a game-changing portal, according to the press release, will provide a cost-effective solution for global healthcare communications using video online while providing unparalleled, universal access to content.

Overall, I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment that Matt Holder and Indu Subaiya expressed in their welcoming statement, “Health care is everyone’s business and it is ultimately a vital and personal journey for all of us.”   I may be a little biased, but I cannot think of any better area to focus all our innovative resources than that of progressing the way we individually experience healthcare from own unique perspectives.

Let us know what you think on Twitter @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM, or on Facebook.

Obviously the answer to that question will vary greatly depending on who asks, and his stake in delivering (or experiencing) an engaging interaction.

CEM for the enterprise is typically associated with substantial benefits, like brand loyalty and competitive differentiation, but those may initially seem like non-issues for so-called entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, and others. That’s because, unlike in the competitive private sector, consumers of these programs often don’t have the benefit of choice.

Many would argue, however, that CEM offers a matrix of far-reaching benefits to any enterprise, some of which aren’t always immediately obvious. Customer communications is a perfect example. Consider the Explanation of Benefits (EOB) form that is sent to millions of Medicaid members in any given month.

Recently, at the 2011 State Health IT Connect Summit, I presented an interactive electronic version of that familiar EOB statement as part of a Health Insurance Exchange demo. By leveraging components of the new Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP), recipients of this interactive EOB would be able to intuitively communicate back with its sender from within the document, while maintaining privacy and security of health data.

Now, consider the added convenience for diverse populations where multi-lingual content and responses may be automatically translated by backend processes as the correspondence is exchanged. Customer experience is improved even further as members may effortlessly dispute the accuracy of a claim displayed in that EOB, again from directly within the document.

For the enterprise that sent the EOB, this presents an opportunity to realize significant savings. Overcharges and potentially fraudulent claims that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks may now be identified and investigated, simply by making it easier for members to participate in the process. There are countless other examples of ways that HHS agencies may optimize efficiencies and generate measurable ROI by deploying solutions that strive first to better serve their members.

More often than not, a win-win scenario emerges for everyone as innovative executives are learning that the byproducts of optimal customer experiences include measurable impacts to the bottom line for organizations of all types, in both private and public sectors.

What are your thoughts on this trending hot topic? Let us know in comments and on Twitter @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM.

Last week, we launched the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP) for customer experience management (CEM) — a unified suite of solutions for managing multi-channel digital experiences that transforms how enterprises attract, engage, and service today’s digitally immersed consumer.

Launch announcements occurred simultaneously in several major venues, including Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, JAX Developers Conference 2011 in San Jose, and Forrester’s 2011 Customer Experience Forum in New York (where Adobe was also presented with Forrester’s “Voice of the Customer” Award).

At the State Healthcare IT Summit in the Washington DC area, I had the privilege of announcing the launch of ADEP to an exclusive audience of government policy makers as well as Healthcare IT executives and thought leaders.

The announcement was met with enthusiasm and excitement as our government audience discovered for themselves the possibilities that ADEP provides in real-world applications throughout healthcare and government. And the timing couldn’t have been better, considering President Obama’s recent executive order for agencies to streamline service delivery and improve customer service. The president is tasking agencies to leverage technology in order to keep pace with the private sector.

To demonstrate how the new Adobe platform can help achieve such improvements, along with measurable results, I provided a detailed presentation of our new solution for Health Insurance Exchanges (HIX). These exchanges, a central mechanism of Health Reform, are state-facilitated online marketplaces that allow small businesses and citizens to research, compare, and enroll in health care plans provided by private insurance companies (or Medicaid, if the applicant is eligible).

In order to be successful, health insurance exchanges will need to provide applicants with consistent experiences, regardless of their eligibility determination, device of choice, or mode of communication.

The Adobe HIX solution delivers an engaging experience at every point along the consumer’s lifecycle (learn, validate, decide, use, commit) by incorporating each of the corresponding ADEP modules: Web Experience Management, Social Brand Engagement, Selection and Enrollment, Unified Workspace and Customer Communication. Other primary customers of the exchange (HIX administrators and health payers), and their related experiences were reviewed in detail as well.

This is the first installment of a three-part series to provide coverage of my time spent at the 2011 State Healthcare IT Summit. Check back soon for more on the summit, including interviews with state executives as they share their approaches to HIX.

In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts with us in comments and on Twitter @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM.