Pennsylvania’s CODE PA like ‘human-centered SWAT team’

Pennsylvania Chief Information Officer Amaya Capellan said the Commonwealth Office of Digital Experience, or CODE PA, is like a “human-centered SWAT team,” and that its deployment across numerous projects has helped improve user experience in the state. 

The CODE PA team, which Gov. Josh Shapiro created by executive order in 2023 to modernize state services, has been central to several recent modernization efforts, Capellan said.

She pointed to the state’s upgrade and consolidation of 64 commonwealth websites into a single website at PA.gov. She said the research and development CODE PA of the website’s design was ”essential” in that process.

“We interviewed almost 100 people on the way to developing it, and we’re seeing some amazing results,” she said. “I think about a 20% lift in traffic across the board, reduction in our bounce rate of about 50% — which we read as people are staying because they’re landing somewhere that’s helpful, right? They’re not just hitting the site and moving on.”

She said CODE PA assisted with the state’s “amazing” ChatGPT pilot program, which is entering its second phase this summer. Shapiro last March said the tool is a massive time saver, with employees reporting that the technology was saving an average of eight hours of work per week. Capellan described that time savings as “major,” and that CODE PA was helping to collect feedback to measure the time savings.

Pennsylvania officials last February announced several procurement improvements, including changes to how the state is buying new technologies, including shrinking time-consuming questionnaires agencies must submit. The work was spearheaded by the Pennsylvania Department of General Services’ Bureau of Procurement and CODE PA. Capellan said the improvements have reduced the number of fields vendors must fill out in a form from more than 70 to just a handful. 

“When I speak to both my IT teams that support our agencies as well as our agency leadership, that is one of the top complaints by far, it just takes too long,” she said. “We’ve also simplified our policy footprint so that it’s easier for our vendors to understand it’s aligned to industry standards like [National Institute of Standards and Technology] so they have a really clear sense of what they need to comply with when they want to work with Pennsylvania. That also helps that whole process work much more efficiently.”