Four Ways States Use Digital Tools to Deliver Critical Services

Government leaders are reimagining the way they serve communities in the new digital era. They’ve traded manual, paper-based processes and in-person services for digitized, flexible solutions that offer better constituent experiences and improve operations. Google Cloud is working with SpringML to help public sector agencies address four pandemic-driven challenges with digital solutions.

Keeping the World Moving: Digital Immunization Pass

The speed and accuracy in processing COVID-19 documents is important to many organizations, including transportation authorities, hospitals, entertainment venues, educational institutions, fitness centers, and businesses of all sizes. Unlike paper, digital immunization credentials are easy to access and difficult to forge. SpringML’s digital immunization pass provides a safe way for individuals to demonstrate their immunization status or share test results and allows organizations to make informed decisions. Using Google Cloud as its foundation, SpringML’s digital immunization pass can provide access to multiple registries operated by states or private labs.

The solution is available on various devices and can work with existing digital wallet technology. Individuals can control who accesses their records, which can be configured to disclose only the minimum necessary information to the verifier. A call center application interface (CCAI) provides automated agent support, and advanced analytics track mobility trends via the data captured.

Enabling Telehealth: Electronic Visit Verification

Since the start of the pandemic, the number of virtual visits to healthcare providers has skyrocketed. But Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare payers must be able to verify such visits, or they run the risk of permitting fraud. In fact, Section 12006 of the 21st Century Cures Act mandates that states must implement an electronic visit verification (EVV) system for all Medicaid-covered home-based healthcare.

EVV verifies the date, time and site of a provider visit, as well as identifying the services provided and who provided them. SpringML’s EVV solution can use a few key data points to flag high probability fraudulent claims, using a machine learning model originally designed to detect false unemployment claims. The solution checks the claim application for anomalies and formulates a “score” for the likelihood of fraud, displaying the information on an anomaly-detection dashboard. It is built on Google Cloud, which provides flexibility and scale while allowing it to integrate with appointment management and patient billing solutions. The solution is secure and compliant with FedRAMP, HIPAA, and SOC 2.

Virtual or Live: Omni-Channel Citizen Engagement

Government call centers are often overwhelmed with requests, making it difficult for live agents to respond to each caller in a timely manner with comprehensive information and assistance. This is particularly challenging in places where citizens might not have reliable internet access, creating equity gaps in areas that often need critical information and government services the most.

SpringML’s AI-enabled call center solution allows states to integrate virtual agents and chatbots to improve customer service, automate common tasks, and boost efficiency. For example, a telephone call might be answered by a virtual agent. If the caller’s needs are not met by the bot, they can be transferred to a live agent, who has access to the previous information. Similarly, someone who connects via a computer interface can seamlessly move from a virtual to a live agent. SpringML’s omni-channel solution ensures that citizens can connect to a person no matter how their contact originated.

Opening the State of Hawaii for Business and Leisure Travel

When pandemic restrictions began to ease, Hawaii’s health officials needed a way to screen and track health data for all travelers so they could quickly identify and quarantine those with symptoms without overly burdening state resources and traveler movement—or risking safety.

The state needed a scalable digital solution that could be deployed across its systems to track traveler data in real time – while avoiding the inconvenience and expense of one-on-one human interactions. The solution needed to support a multilayered process incorporating several state departments – and officials wanted to open the state to visitors as soon as possible to help regenerate the state’s economy.

Google Cloud and SpringML took only six weeks to build Safe Travels, an electronic visit verification program that allows the state to collect and track travel and health information for all visitors. Since its launch in August 2020, more than 11.6 million travelers have used the program.

Better Together

The partnership of SpringML and Google Cloud offers many advantages in terms of rapid application development and deployment. A regional systems integrator, SpringML can move quickly, frequently providing a proof-of-concept within days and going live within weeks.  Its solutions are serverless, requiring little-to-no developer experience and minimal technical staff to deploy. SpringML and Google Cloud also offer flexibility; their out-of-the-box public data, dashboards, analytics, and best-in-class models integrate any data source to the analytics platform. This flexibility is more important than ever when speed matters in delivering vital government services.