Executive Summary
At peak tax season, Colorado’s call centers receive roughly 19,000 calls a week but can only answer about 6,000. More than half of callers are asking one question: Where is my refund? One in three calls ends with an agent reading status information that the caller could have found online. This concept is called “failure demand” — a cost created entirely by the system’s failure to meet the user’s original need.
That problem is solvable. The Colorado Digital Service (CDS) proved it: a user-centered redesign of the Department of Revenue’s online refund tool, guided by direct research with Coloradans, returned more than 91 hours of residents’ time in its first four weeks — a 20% improvement with no new technology, no new budget, just better design informed by real users.
But this is not a story about one redesign. It is a story about what it takes for any government team
to do this kind of work — and what gets in the way. When CDS teams were working with an agency
partner to improve a service, the agency partner asked a question that stopped us cold: “Are we
allowed to talk to users?”
That question is the problem this nomination seeks to address. Governments invoke the language of
user-centered design while making it nearly impossible to put into practice in real-world projects.
CDS solved this by building the operational infrastructure first: pre-approved enterprise tools,
streamlined procurement, practical guidance, and direct coaching that make the good path the
easy path. Starting with a focused MVP at the Behavioral Health Administration and scaling
statewide, Colorado has built what peers in other states have called:
“One of the most helpful guides they’d ever seen from a digital government team in the US.”
Today, any Colorado agency can begin meaningful user research in days — not months.
This nomination highlights Colorado’s effort to move beyond the talking points of user-centered
design by building the actual operational infrastructure needed to execute it. By providing
pre-approved enterprise tools, streamlined procurement, and practical guidance, the On Being
Coloradan-Centered guide and Digital Maturity Professional Services model dismantled bureaucratic
barriers, enabling any government team to begin meaningful user research in days rather than
months.
