Connected millions of New Jerseyans with vital information, services, and programs

During the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Office of Innovation worked with State departments and agencies across State government to rapidly respond to emergent challenges. This work led to the development of dozens of new solutions and tools to ensure New Jerseyans could access key benefits, services, protections, and critical information in a timely manner.

Challenge

As the pandemic ground the economy to a halt and strained the medical system, New Jerseyans turned to the State in record numbers for help with unemployment benefits, rent relief, food assistance, business loans, medical care, and more. But with many State benefit offices physically closed due to public health guidance, residents were left accessing benefits remotely, which exposed the underlying challenges of legacy systems that had not been fully modernized. Meanwhile, residents struggled to find accurate information about government services and public health guidance amid frequently updated guidelines and rampant rumors and misinformation. As a result, residents were frustrated as they tried to access key government benefits, while State employees struggled to serve record numbers with inefficient systems.

Innovation In Action

Working with its agency partners, the Office of Innovation used human-centered design and agile, iterative methodologies to rapidly generate solutions, test them, and introduce additional improvements and features in a continuous cycle. OOI was able to work quickly and with a greater degree of confidence because teams regularly talked to residents and frontline staff to understand the primary choke points and difficulties in the process, and then continually tested solutions with them.

For instance, these principles led to the creation of the COVID-19 Information Hub, where content was determined by user needs. Unlike traditional legacy government websites, which feature static content and press releases, OOI presented content in simple language based on the most frequently asked questions by residents. Site content and layout was constantly updated based on frequent reviews of search data, user-submitted questions, and website behavior to proactively identify emerging needs or shortcomings in existing content.

Following residents’ needs also led to the creation of the COVID-19 Vaccine Appointment Finder, a tool that helped New Jerseyans find open vaccine appointments near them, rather than calling pharmacies and waiting on hold as thousands of others did the same.

Similarly, OOI built the Eviction Protection Tool, an interactive form that helped renters and homeowners at risk of eviction determine what protections were available to them during the pandemic. Rather than deciphering eligibility requirements across multiple programs or waiting for the limited number of State agencies available to guide them through the process, renters and homeowners could enter information about their specific situation and get information tailored to their needs. By using this automated digital tool, residents were able to get the help they needed and State agencies were able to help more New Jerseyans.

OOI also built the Emergency Assistance Eligibility Wizard, a similar online tool that helped New Jersey businesses quickly find and apply for newly created State and federal pandemic relief programs - each of which had different eligibility requirements and benefits, and no central way to determine which could help a specific business.

These are just a few of the tools OOI built in partnership with State agencies that helped millions of New Jerseyans and hundreds of thousands of businesses across the Garden State find information, access benefits, get medical help, and more. To see the full scope of our impact from our COVID-19 response projects, visit innovation.nj.gov/projects/COVID19

Impact

• As of August 2024, the COVID-19 Info Hub has been visited more than 90 million times, providing visitors with life-saving health information and critical resources. The site has been updated or enhanced more than 134,000 times.
• The COVID-19 Vaccine Appointment Finder, which was created in response to user demand, was used used more than 5.3 million times, helping residents get appointments for COVID-19 vaccines
• The Statewide Update is an email newsletter program created during the COVID-19 pandemic to broaden awareness of key policy updates, programs, and information that affect residents. As of April 2024, the Statewide Update regularly connects its 2.1 million subscribers with critical information, driving uptake of State programs and other valuable resources.
• Just 15 days after the first reported case of COVID-19 in the Garden State, OOI officially launched the State’s COVID-19 symptom checker, giving residents personalized medical guidance and easing the strain on the State’s call centers. By late April 2020, approximately 200,000 people in New Jersey, or roughly 2% of the entire state, had used the symptom checker. This usage generated data that offered officials a wealth of granular, ZIP-code-level data at a time when information was scarce. By February 2021, the symptom checker had been used over 600,000 times.
• The COVID-19 Jobs and Hiring portal was an online jobs board that connected short-staffed employers with workers who had lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic. To ensure high-quality listings, each post was vetted to ensure employers were permitted to operate during pandemic-related closures and what safety measures they were taking to protect workers. In its first week, the portal was used by more than 150,000 people. Throughout its lifespan, the Jobs Portal attracted more than 960,000 users and featured 57,000 jobs from more than 1,200 employers.
• The Emergency Assistance Eligibility Wizard was used more than 210,000 times by more than 140,000 users to quickly find and apply for newly created State and federal pandemic relief programs for businesses.
• The COVID-19 Eviction Protection Tool helped prevent low-income New Jerseyans from being evicted if they suffered economic hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic by helping renters understand the protections they are eligible for and submit the necessary forms. As of April 2024, more than 85,000 residents had used the Eviction Protection Tool since its launch in 2021.

Partners

• Statewide initiative, in partnership with all State Departments\

What New Jerseyans See

Read More

See the latest at the COVID-19 Response project page.