Today, it’s more important than ever for health and human services to keep pace with innovation in leading government agencies and private sector companies. On average, an individual has over 10 interactions with their government agency before accessing a service or making a request. As customer journeys grow more complex, personalization is a necessity. Yet only 36% of individuals say government agencies are effective at personalization, according to Adobe 2025 State of Customer Experience in an AI-Driven World  report.

On September 14-17, 2025, IT professionals from the government and private sector gathered at the IT Solutions Management for Human Services (ISM) Education Conference & Expo in Reno, Nevada, to learn about the latest technology trends in health and human services.

This annual event, produced by the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), is the nation’s largest human services technology conference. Through educational sessions, peer networking, and hands-on workshops, attendees had an exciting look into the innovative future of health and human services amid a backdrop of political uncertainty for the sector.

Here are five actionable takeaways from this year’s ISM conference:

1. AI is no longer experimental — it’s operational.

Generative AI represents a significant economic opportunity for the public sector, including a 19% increase in content throughput and a 14% decrease in time to market, according to the Adobe 2025 State of Citizen Experience in the Public Sector in an AI-Driven World report.

Agencies across state and local government showcased real-world deployments of AI-powered tools for use cases such as eligibility determination, policy analysis, customer support, and more. For example, the Arizona Department of Child Safety demonstrated how GenAI is streamlining court disclosures, while the State of New York deployed an agentic AI chatbot within a six-week timeframe to automate support requests. For both agencies, AI is now integrated into organizational workflows, resulting in significant time and cost savings.

Call to action: Identify one use case within your organization that would be a strong candidate for an AI pilot. Launch the pilot and collect or monitor feedback after implementation.

2. Excellence in customer experience is the new standard, powered by human-centered design, interoperability, and constant iteration.

Adobe’s 2025 Digital Government Index findings, presented at the conference, suggest that customer experience scores have declined, despite improvements in site performance compared to 2024. This means states must adopt proactive, personalized strategies to better serve residents and keep pace with rising customer experience expectations. Agencies such as the Oregon Department of Human Services and the Virginia Department of Social Services are enhancing customer experience by using human-centered design practices. On the other hand, the Tennessee Department of Human Services uses a “no-wrong door” approach — creating a unified customer experience, featuring combined applications across services, a self-service dashboard, and proactive communications.

As state and local governments modernize their tech stacks, collecting and implementing customer and user feedback is key — especially when embracing modular, scalable approaches to change. The Connecticut Department of Children and Families used customer and staff feedback to identify shortcomings and make incremental improvements to its change management processes and systems.

Call to action: Tap into an outside-in perspective to identify opportunity areas to improve customer experience, such as building a human-centered design approach on your website by utilizing partner expertise and collaboration.

3. Data governance, security, and privacy are foundational to modernization.

Agencies like the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services, the New Mexico Health Care Authority, and the Illinois Department of Human Services have championed the importance of integrated and secure data systems to enable cross-program coordination, reduce administrative burden, and improve constituent outcomes. Whether it’s the distribution of the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) program or unified case management, the message was clear: strong data governance, built on a foundation of security and privacy, is the backbone of modern health and human services.

Government agencies today offer secure and seamless methods for collecting and sending customer data. Across the country, state agencies have partnered with Adobe to digitize their data collection processes, ensuring sensitive customer information — including inputs required for benefits enrollment — is securely captured to get a comprehensive view of the applicant.

Call to action: Today, 67% of agencies are investing in a data and analytics-backed foundation, according to Adobe 2025 State of Customer Experience in an AI-Driven World report. Assess your organization’s current data workflows. How are you capturing, storing, and operationalizing customer data, and what gaps or concerns might exist?

4. Organizational readiness is essential to technology activation across an agency.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services shared some valuable organizational learnings from its recent provider hub implementation. Rather than acting as sole decision-makers, executive leaders should foster environments that empower teams to experiment, make decisions, and learn from failures. This cultural pivot requires that psychological safety be built into the process, which is as essential as the software itself. Furthermore, agencies should align on business and technology changes early in the process to collaborate more effectively. New technology brings new business processes that must be tested alongside each other to ensure stakeholders can provide feedback and iterate changes as needed.

Call to action: Evaluate your agency’s organization to establish a governance model for tracking change management KPIs (e.g., adoption, user satisfaction) and implement feedback loops to measure progress.

5. Equity and accessibility remain critical for success.

From the Oregon Department of Human Services’ expansion to 129 supported languages to the Ohio Department of Children and Youth’s integration of early childhood education into digital benefits platforms, equity was certainly a recurring theme throughout the conference. Additionally, since the compliance deadline for the DOJ’s accessibility mandate is approaching, accessibility was top of mind for many leaders across state and local governments. In health and human services today, technology is being used not just to optimize operations for agencies, but to ensure that services reach underserved, high-need populations more effectively.

Accessibility was an important consideration for the LA Department of Social Services’ (LADPSS) recent site revamp. In partnership with Adobe, LADPSS created a new site that is easier to navigate, supports multiple mobile formats, and is multilingual and ADA-compliant — helping the organization better reach the 3.5 million+ citizens that interact with it.

Call to action: Run an accessibility test to assess your organization’s readiness for meeting the DOJ’s accessibility mandate ahead of the April 2026 deadline. Identify any areas of nonconformance to WCAG 2.1 AA, create a remediation strategy, and/or consider purchasing a solution that expedites your agency’s journey to conformance.

The future of health and human services agencies requires a comprehensive support network for beneficiaries across accessible, reliable, and trustworthy digital channels. ISM 2025 showed us some of that promise from leading private and public sector thought leaders — it’s now up to agencies to embrace the next frontier of innovation.

Learn more about Adobe Government Solutions.

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