Dreamforce public sector highlights: Trailblazers balance trust, uncertainty and innovation

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff set the stage during the keynote, remarking that organisations across all sectors and industries need to become ‘Trustblazers’ – Trailblazers who tackle the crisis head-on and transform in ways that cultivate trusting relationships with customers. 

This theme continued right through sessions featuring public sector Trailblazers. In our first session and Public Sector keynote, ‘Trust through Transformation’, we heard from two organisations that have used the Salesforce platform to affect meaningful change and build trust in their communities. 

Fran Thompson, CIO at Health Services Executive Ireland, shared his insights from the experience of developing Covax, Ireland’s end-to-end vaccination solution. Teaming up with Salesforce, Health Services has become the trusted go-to source for information by keeping people at the heart of their processes and operations, and providing real-time critical data – often many times a day. 

Cloud-based systems meant that data could be captured regardless of patient location, whether they were in aged care homes, GPs or vaccination clinics. It’s the kind of agility that was needed for a reactive way of working, allowing multiple teams to pull data together from disparate sources to create a secure, integrated, effective solution.

We also heard from the United States’ Department of Veterans Affairs, which developed the Squares system with Salesforce to address veteran homelessness. The solution has substantially increased the organisation’s footprint and helped tackle a multi-faceted issue by connecting a variety of service providers. Essentially, Squares provides secure visibility into veteran eligibility and status, meaning that veterans who experience homelessness no longer have to navigate long identification processes in order to access crucial assistance.

With services partnering to form one delivery team in which everyone takes ownership, solutions to even the most sprawling or complex problems can start to take shape.. 

And when service partners trust each other, then veterans can better trust agencies. As Tom Guido, Senior Director of Saas and Paas Solutions put it, “Influence comes through trusted partnerships.”

Since we know that there’s a growing link between digital service delivery and trust in government, these are promising examples of how Trailblazers can use new solutions to affect tangible change.

The Public Sector keynote also revealed four exciting new products: 

• Employee Experience for the Public Sector is set to enable, engage and empower employees and increase employee productivity. This will automate IT and HR processes, digitise forms and deploy employee-centric digital experiences for any device. 
• GovSlack is a Slack First public sector tool for improving workflows, facilitating collaboration, and strengthening decision-making, all while complying with the highest security and compliance requirements.
• Tableau CRM for Public Sector uses LPI analytics and brings together data from anywhere to empower employees everywhere, streamlining processes and reducing decision-making uncertainty. 
• Business Rules Engine facilitates efficiency and agility with clicks, not code, so organisations can build, test and execute to keep pace with fast-changing policies.

In the Dreamforce episode ‘How Governments Are Building Thriving Communities Globally’, we saw organisations from across the globe who are showing how customer-centric, agile approaches – backed by innovative technology – can transform government service delivery.

From right here in Australia, Eric Savoie, Director of Planning and Coordination at Bushfire Recovery Victoria (BRV), shared how critical it is for emergency services teams to have technology that enables faster responses. Eric’s advice was to prioritise authentic, meaningful dialogue with communities about what they need, then work backward to find digital solutions that deliver on those needs, both now and in the long run.

From the US, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) has been able to leverage the Salesforce platform to create a personal protective equipment (PPE) management system and assist the state’s COVID-19 response. The platform has been able to streamline the measuring, ordering, filling and distribution of PPE across the state, relying on quick iterations for fast and ongoing improvement.

Also in the US, in the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), technology has been key to managing grant and loan applications, supporting economic recovery by helping the right businesses get the type of support they need. Data-driven insights, easy transitions to remote work and a customer-first approach have helped the OEO deliver on their mission.

In the United Kingdom, Doug Ward, Deputy Director, Business Systems & Insight Innovate UK, shared how the organisation used the Salesforce platform to cope with new volumes of applications -- this included scaling operations and shifting quickly toward remote work. Self-serve options like chatbots and video guidance, in conjunction with automated distribution of queries, meant UK start-ups were able to more easily receive critical funds and were supported to explore innovation solutions to the pandemic.

Lastly, public sector agencies all over the world understand the difficulty of reconciling digitisation imperatives with stringent regulatory requirements. And in ‘Realising Value: FedRAMP’s Shared Responsibility’, we got some great insights into how agencies and partners are navigating this common challenge.

Representatives from Collins Aerospace in the US and Amazon Web Services explained how they’re helping government agencies and contractors work toward Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a strict authorisation process for cloud security assessments and authorisations. Part of this includes a shared responsibility model, a security framework that disperses accountability and ownership across a network of partners, ensuring greater trust and security while allowing each organisation to focus on its ‘sweet spot’.

A common theme of this year’s sessions? The need for solutions that can help agencies manage immediate crises, while laying the foundations for responses to future challenges. For instance, in ‘Emerging from COVID Ready for What's Next’, we saw how pandemic responses have accelerated digital transformation and are now helping healthcare organisations prepare for future public health issues. 

From the US, the St Louis County Department of Public Health shared how the organisation is leveraging technology and systems to manage COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing. While those systems are still supporting the department’s COVID-19 management, they’re now being repurposed for addressing sexually transmitted infections (STIs). By using Health Cloud and Mulesoft to integrate at a local, state and federal level, the organisation is delivering vital, trusted information to the public and finding new ways to improve public health beyond the pandemic.  

This is a great example of the importance of a modular technology stack, one that allows rapid iteration and reskinning over top of a core platform, which we explored in our Trust Imperative 2 report. 

Regardless of country or mission, conversations during this year’s Dreamforce sessions proved that public sector Trailblazers are transforming relationships between governments and constituents, deepening trust and enabling agencies to hone in on their missions. 

So how will your agency find new ways to innovate, improve service delivery and foster trust with the public? 

Watch the Dreamforce Public Sector Playlist on-demand via Salesforce+.
Keep the conversation going by joining us for a webinar on 'Uncertainty Acceptance' with Chris Helder.

View the Public Sector Solutions and Products in action.