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The Fuel Powering America’s Public Sector

The Fuel Powering America’s Public Sector

How rapid development on low-code platforms can help government agencies speed recovery.

If there was a theme song for the public sector these days, it would undoubtedly be “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie.

Now, more than ever, governments are under pressure to provide new services to citizens and more productive environments for public sector employees. Increasingly, they are responding by using low-code development platforms to accelerate innovation and provide critical services to the public.

Experts predict that more than 500 million new business apps will be created in the next five years—more than all of the apps created in the past four decades. Couple that with an estimated shortage of about 1.4 million software developers in 2021, and you can see why the public sector is turning to low-code platforms to develop new solutions in record time with minimal resources.

Compared with traditional development technologies and platforms, low-code makes it possible for governments to build modern, professional applications that serve public sector workers and citizens with simpler programming and minimized time and cost.

The increase in public demand for new digital services isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Low-code can help take the pressure off.

Supporting diplomats during Covid

The need to save costs and provide secure services with low-code technologies has accelerated during the pandemic, with many agencies tasked with delivering new services rapidly to address public safety.

The U.S. Department of State (DoS) has been using ServiceNow’s low-code App Engine to quickly provide critical services to diplomats around the world. During the early days of the pandemic in 2020, DoS was able to develop and deliver almost a dozen mission-critical apps in just a few weeks.

“These were big apps that tracked every country on the planet and what their Covid-19 requirements were,” said principal deputy CIO of the U.S. State Department Michael Mestrovich, in an interview with MeriTalk. “If you came from North America to Great Britain, did you have to quarantine? If you went from Great Britain to Germany, did you have to quarantine? If you did, what were the quarantine requirements? So, there’s a huge tracking mechanism that shows what phase these countries are in, what phase our posts are in, and the COVID requirements for each. All that was done through ServiceNow’s low-code platform.”

Once an app was developed, Mestrovich’s team could then iterate on it as new requirements came up. “That’s a huge success story,” said Mestrovich. “Before it would have taken us months to figure out the application requirements and then go back to development. But, with these low-code platform-based services, we’re able to iterate on those almost instantaneously.”

Issuing grants fast

In response to the CARES Act in March 2020 and the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, federal agencies are turning to low-code platforms to help streamline grant distribution and support citizens.

One example of this is a U.S. federal agency that used App Engine to build and deploy a Telehealth Grants Application. Created during the pandemic, the application helped manage the distribution of grant funding to healthcare providers seeking to improve telehealth programs and better serve their patients. Because it was built using low-code, the team didn’t have to spend time developing custom components and code. Instead they focused on business requirements, transparency and oversight, and the timely delivery of funding to providers.

Fighting fires

In 2020, wildfires destroyed almost twice as many acres across the U.S. as in all of 2019.

Tackling these blazes is a mammoth task, with thousands of people and dozens of agencies working together to protect life and habitat. Team integration, clarity of information, and speed of communication are critical for an effective response. One federal agency was able to use ServiceNow’s low-code App Engine to rapidly establish a centralized platform from which teams could coordinate efforts.

Previously, dispatchers responding to the report of a fire manually entered geo-location coordinates into 26 separate systems. One wrong number and life-saving support could be delayed or sent to the wrong place. With the low-code Interagency Resource Ordering Capability (IROC), officials can track and manage wildfire response resources in real time. All aircraft, equipment, crews, and supplies are easily viewable and deployable in the system, speeding response—and saving lives and property.

Importantly, this low-code application was built in months. With traditional technologies, it would have taken years. That’s the true impact of low-code platforms—and we’re only just scratching the surface of what these platforms can do.

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