Our work makes it easier for government digital services to respond quickly and safely.
By invitation from our partner, Nava PBC, we joined the NJ DOL Unemployment Insurance Modernization initiative to decrease the risk of launching modernized replacements for existing parts of a highly complex system – a system that has to continue to deliver critical services to constituents throughout the modernization process. Our work focuses on introducing capabilities to enable continuous delivery to make it possible to deliver small, incremental changes at a steady pace, rather than large, infrequent, risky releases.
As part of our ongoing collaboration with the Massachusetts Digital Service (MDS) team, we designed and implemented a software architecture program. As MDS prepared to scale up, their aim was to ensure that their expanding portfolio of digital projects continued making every interaction with the Massachusetts government simpler, faster, and more meaningful. By defining standards, the teams building digital services at MDS are able to create experiences that enhance public trust and satisfaction.
Together, we established a formal peer review process for major architectural decisions, creating a framework that documented these decisions and facilitated the sharing of the rationale behind them. We also worked to define and disseminate a set of architectural standards pertaining to DevOps, infrastructure-as-code, and automated testing. These standards provided a consistent, best-practice baseline for all new projects.
Boston's 311 team wanted to deliver consistent, reliable service to residents and brought in Mighty Acorn to strengthen the platform's release and testing infrastructure. We introduced structured release management, built QA protocols for a no-code environment, and migrated mission-critical email infrastructure. The platform stabilized creating the foundation necessary for the city's team to be able to own the governance and tooling to sustain it independently in the future.
Massachusetts early childhood educators faced a credentialing process with 150+ manual steps, pushing application times to four months and creating workforce bottlenecks. Mighty Acorn redesigned the process end-to-end, then worked alongside EEC to launch a modern, modular digital portal. Approval times dropped significantly and the beta earned an 88/100 usability score.