WHEN
BY SCOTT DRAEGER
COMMUNICATIONS FAIL Many of these situations like the Texas Energy Crisis, could have been avoided
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fter spending two decades in the industry, I am aware that non-document people think what we do is boring. While it hurts my feelings a bit, they are right most of the time. If we plan, design, research, integrate and deploy our projects well, it should be boring and predictable. The communications we create and produce convert prospects to customers, deliver information, handle customer issues and trigger payments.
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However, when we cut corners or don’t understand the scope of a potential mistake, our normal communications cause serious problems. There are three infamous situations where routine communications made headlines, involving frustrated customers and the teams that were responsible for the communications. The lesson here is that each of these horrible situations could have been avoided with a bit more thinking about the context — and the potential complexity — of the communication problem.
First, we’ll look at how outdated systems allow for fraud in state unemployment systems. In the past year, COVID-19 related unemployment fraud has cost more than $36 billion. Fraudulent unemployment claims take advantage of the convergence of weaknesses in communication systems, including outdated systems, poor integrations, unreliable access from employees working from home and a massive spike in legitimate unemployment claims that creates a distraction. This problem could have been limited so it wouldn’t impact the rapid delivery of genuine unemployment benefits. Investing in much-needed improvements in inter-agency data sharing, intra-agency process design,