Governments should prioritize agility in IT projects, expert says

State and local governments face immense pressure to provide service delivery that’s quick, easy and on demand in an ever modernizing world. But one expert says that despite such pressure, governments should avoid rushing into transformative IT projects without a proper plan. 

Speaking at the American Public Human Services Association National Human Services Summit this week, Waldo Jaquith, a government delivery manager at nonprofit U.S. Digital Response, pointed to a challenge-riddled modernization effort in Rhode Island to underscore what’s at stake when governments don’t take a slower approach like agile acquisition and development of software. 

In September 2016, Rhode Island had launched the Unified Health Infrastructure Project, or UHIP, aimed at creating an integrated enrollment platform for recipients of public benefits like Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The project began in 2011, and the state contracted with Deloitte to build the system in 2013. 

The UHIP system — which was initially projected to cost $135 million but has grown to $794 million over the last decade — was riddled with operational and technical issues since it went live, Jaquith said. 

State officials, for instance, said that the IT system contained data issues that resulted in case and reporting errors; poor user functionality and interfaces; and, ultimately, disruptions in disbursing benefits to thousands of residents. 

“It was an absolute debacle by any measure,” he said. For months, “Medicaid recipients were cut off, no new SNAP benefits were awarded and people couldn't apply for new unemployment insurance benefits,” Jaquith explained. 

Years after the system’s disruptive launch, Rhode Island faced lawsuits and federal fines. The system, which was rebranded as RIBridges, still faces challenges today. In December 2024, its database was breached by a cybercriminal group, exposing the data of an estimated 657,000 people. 

“Every state, every locality has some sort of horror story like this,” Jaquith said. Too often, governments undergo a massive IT project that’s planned, designed and implemented in separate stages, leaving any necessary changes or improvements to be done after the system has launched. 

“The other problem is the way that the money is provided for these projects. It is normal for a legislature or for a federal grantmaking agency to award a big chunk of money and require that it all be obligated within the fiscal year,” Jaquith said, in an interview with Route Fifty. 

This approach, he said, leads to extra time, money and other resources being spent inefficiently to meet those parameters, and delays the onset of a new system’s user value. 

That’s why governments should consider an agile approach to software development projects. Under an agile model, software developers will collect feedback from end users to learn about challenges with their software program that can be resolved and then implement them, typically following a two-week cycle, he explained. 

Agile development encourages the implementation of human-centered designs, which can help increase customer experience and user satisfaction in government services. 

Another key part of agile development is creating the role of a product owner, or an individual within the government or agency who is responsible for overseeing vendor activities to ensure “the right work is being done,” Jaquith said. “Do not outsource control of your agency’s mission.” 

This way, “you spend down the risk as you go, so that you're increasingly assured of success with passage of time,” Jaquith said. And if any issues arise throughout the modernization journey, “you're going to find that out at the beginning of the project, not at the end of the project.” 

This model also enables governments to issue vendor contracts at a lower cost, he added. Jaquith said that “broadly speaking, a threshold of $10,000,000 [and] three years makes lots of sense for state agencies and for large municipalities.” 

For smaller jurisdictions, like “a county of 100,000 people, that depends on your own budget and your own risk threshold,” he explained. 

Jaquith pointed to the Alaska Department of Health as an example of a government moving toward an agile model for IT projects, which he said has gained popularity among state and local governments over the last decade but still lags in widespread adoption. 

The agency and the state’s Division of Public Assistance recently published a $20 million agile solicitation to modernize its public assistance eligibility system, according to the department’s GitHub site. 

“The goal of this approach is to incrementally improve the current situation in a measurable and sustainable way, and eventually allow the continued migration of programs away from the previous eligibility system and onto something more modern, flexible and maintainable,” the RFP states.