Decision Lens

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) faces the challenge of maintaining and improving its infrastructure, including nearly 6000 miles of paved roadway, bridges, and other surfaces, amidst increasing population and urbanization. The state's unique geographical and demographic characteristics, being the 9th most urban state in the U.S. and 12th largest by land area, add to the complexity of the task. UDOT also has to comply with federal legislation such as MAP-21 and the FAST Act, which have implications on how funds are allocated. The department needed a way to gain better insights into the performance of their assets to make more informed decisions and get higher value returns on their investments.

The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) in Washington State Government is tasked with ensuring that the state's annual IT budget of over $900 million is spent in a way that advances the governor’s policy objectives. The projects must either improve revenue or reduce costs and have a direct and positive impact on citizens or public safety. In 2013, State agencies proposed 86 different projects that were either level 2 (medium risk/complexity) or level 3 (high risk/complexity) IT projects. The projects ranged from settling tax boundary disputes to tracking marijuana from seed to sale to Medicaid shopping plans. The challenge was to analyze these complex IT projects and provide a set of easy-to-read recommendations that even technophobes can understand. The legislature asked the OCIO to create a prioritized list that ranked the projects as high, medium, or low.

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is a non-profit organization that serves as the nation’s Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). Over the last 25 years, the number of organ transplants performed in the U.S. has doubled, but there are still people on the waiting list. The current system for matching donated organs to potential recipients includes a classification system with dozens or hundreds of characteristics for each organ. This system has hard boundaries on the different classifications, which can result in unfair allocation of organs. For example, someone who qualifies for an organ 251 miles away is lower on the priority list than those who are only 249 miles away, even if other attributes were comparatively more urgent.