The Government Technology Insider Podcast · Government Technology Insider

How State Government Agencies Can Become Data Sharing Organizations

·21 min·1 clip

Rick Mayer says workforce agencies will wish they had started improving customer outcomes one year earlier.

1. The Government Technology Insider Podcast episode examines how state governments can become data-sharing organizations by reusing workforce and unemployment-insurance data. 2. Lucas Hunsaker introduces the episode, Dale Smith hosts the conversation, and Rick Mayer contributes experience from Mayer & Mayer and Adaptive Human Capital. 3. The episode asks how state agencies can connect systems and share data to improve economic mobility and customer outcomes. 4. Rick Mayer says Congress created a siloed structure of separate programs with separate leadership, eligibility criteria, performance measures, and IT systems. 5. Workforce programs addressing mental health, job training, child care, transportation, and food insecurity serve the same customers but often collect demographic information repeatedly. 6. Mayer identifies missing referral tracking, duplicated data entry, manual processes, and disconnected systems as barriers to integrated service delivery. 7. Mayer says flat funding, potential congressional cuts, and overstretched staff make better data use necessary for improved outcomes and productivity. 8. He argues that professional staff lose substantial working time to duplicate data entry and manual processes, contributing to stress, quiet quitting, and departures from the system. 9. Mayer rejects the historical effort to make programs adopt one common case-management platform because existing platforms meet individual program needs. 10. He proposes common intake questions and a cloud-based layer containing customer demographic and whole-person needs data across existing case-management systems. 11. Mayer recommends mapping the customer journey and writing problem statements before deciding which technology investments to make. 12. He describes a minimal viable product as a practical fix for a problem within an agency's resources and control. 13. Mayer cites Gartner's reported 75% failure rate for large enterprise-resource-planning solutions as a reason to avoid assuming that bigger platforms guarantee transformation. 14. He suggests using off-the-shelf solutions and AI tools for focused improvements such as resume construction. 15. Mayer says agencies should include professional staff as customers when identifying duplicated work and productivity losses. 16. He uses Pennsylvania's “free the data” initiative and Dave Eves's idea of breaking through the inertia of the status quo to illustrate a mindset shift. 17. The interview is a structured, policy-focused conversation between Dale Smith and Rick Mayer, with Lucas Hunsaker providing the opening and closing narration. 18. Mayer's tone is practical and urgent, combining criticism of programmatic silos with a call for leaders to take measured risks using cloud systems, AI, and predictive analytics. 19. Workforce leaders planning practical data-sharing improvements. 20. Listeners seeking entertainment or personal storytelling may skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded case for helping state programs share data by starting with the whole person.

State agencies already hold workforce and unemployment insurance data that could support better public decisions, but this episode keeps the focus on the harder work of connecting systems and sharing information across departments.

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Why you'd press play

You will hear a practical case for helping state workforce and unemployment insurance data become more interoperable and useful across departments.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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