Office of InnovationFeedback Widget
The Office of Innovation has embedded feedback widgets, a digital tool to solicit comments from the public, on many of OOI’s public-facing projects and tools to inform future improvements. These feedback widgets offer residents an easy way to leave suggestions and feedback on their experience using digital tools, and let the State know if critical features are missing or broken, enabling agencies to respond faster.
Challenge
Residents navigating State websites and tools are not always able to find what they need and may have thoughts on how to improve digital tools, policies, or platforms. However, there is not always a mechanism to provide feedback, and when there is, agencies are not always equipped to analyze and act on the many comments it receives, which can leave residents feeling ignored or disempowered. The lack of a mechanism to collect feedback at scale also means the State is not able to benefit from the insights of residents who use their programs and services. Meanwhile, feedback mechanisms that require residents to send an email or head to a separate link make the task more difficult, significantly reducing the likelihood they will leave a comment.
Innovation In Action:
OOI developed a digital tool that can easily be embedded on most State websites and web applications. The tool is accessed directly from the site a resident is using without any external links, and asks whether the user found the information they were searching for and offers an opportunity to provide additional feedback. Using a secure generative AI environment, OOI and its partners regularly analyze the feedback to generate detailed reports that identify and prioritize emerging issues to address in future website updates, enabling faster releases and greater responsiveness to residents’ needs. To measure the impact of improvements, OOI and its partners use the feedback widget to carefully track how effective residents find a webpage and how those numbers change over time.
Impact + Metrics
- Shortly after launching a new Unemployment Insurance Claim Status Tool with the Department of Labor in March 2023, in response to user comments on the feedback widget, a new update was quickly released to make 1099 forms from current and previous years available in time for the April tax deadline.
- With help from the feedback widget, the Unemployment Insurance Claims Status Tool is being made even more effective. When the tool was initially introduced in early 2023, 75% of surveyed residents said they were unable to find what they needed, but as of May 2024, 65% of those surveyed are now able to find what they need.
- Comments made through the COVID-19 Info Hub’s feedback widget directly led to thousands of edits on existing articles and the creation of entirely new articles clarifying testing procedures, testing sites, limits on gatherings, which businesses were open, and more so residents could stay safe and get the help they needed.
- As of June 2024, feedback widgets have been deployed on websites across 8 State departments and agencies with residents submitting over 37,000 comments.
Resources and Additional Information
Status
- Feedback Widgets play a central role in OOI’s iterative development philosophy, which continuously introduces improvements, so these tools continue to be deployed and regularly monitored.
Partners
- NJ State Department of Labor
Last updated on 8/6/24
