Case Study

Summary

Nava is working with the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division (CRT) to improve and maintain its complaint intake portal, which makes reporting a violation more accessible to the general public, enhances the government's ability to prioritize actionable complaints, and provides remedies for civil rights violations. DOJ staff use the portal to route claims to the appropriate DOJ section or to another agency, and to respond to and analyze patterns across civil rights complaints. Nava has partnered with DOJ to improve the agency staff experience by empowering them with tools that help process civil rights complaints efficiently and effectively.

Approach

We met continuously with DOJ staff to better understand their processes and workflows, which informed what features we built. Some of the learnings we gleaned from these meetings were that staff need a quick and accurate way to identify patterns that crop up across complaints, an easy way to route complaints to other agencies, and the ability to process PDF and phone complaints in the portal.

Outcomes

We worked with DOJ to implement several tools that help agency staff identify patterns among complaints. A new data dashboard gives staff a granular view of incoming complaints as well as a big-picture view of complaints, making it easier to draw connections and notice patterns. We also helped DOJ create a feature that enables staff to tag complaints with keywords, and we introduced a map feature that enables staff to visualize the spatial distribution of complaints across the country.

Additionally, we partnered with DOJ on building tools that help staff work more efficiently. For example, we implemented a feature that enables staff to save searches for complaints using criteria such as tags, keywords, or complaint location. This saves staff the time it takes to re-enter searches, and it helps them find complaints based on broader categories. Similarly, we helped DOJ create a feature that allows staff to contact both the complainant and participating external agencies via the portal instead of relying on PDFs and email. 

Finally, we helped optimize educational content on the civil rights portal that informs people of their rights, how to use the portal, and to which agency they should send their complaint. Effective content not only makes claimants feel confident in DOJ’s processes, but it also helps claimants submit their complaint to the right agency, saving DOJ the effort of routing complaints.

All of the software DOJ used for this work was free and open source, and we helped DOJ build these tools within their existing technological infrastructure. This enabled DOJ to improve user and staff experiences without having to invest in costly technology solutions.

Process

Helping agency staff identify complaint patterns

We began this work by meeting with CRT staff to better understand their workflows and norms. We learned that staff often must track certain aspects of complaints — such as location or topic — to identify patterns. With DOJ, we identified this as a potential need to explore. 

We proposed tagging, data dashboards, and saved searches as features that might be advantageous for DOJ staff. We then spoke with different sections, or divisions, within DOJ to determine if these tools could help agency staff. From these conversations, we found that different sections each have their own needs, so we iterated on our approach to be more flexible. By speaking with staff in each section, we were able to tie new features to staffs’ existing workflows. 

For example, we initially planned to build data dashboards with universal data visualizations that we thought would be of use to staff across the CRT. However, we found that different sections have very different data needs. So, we pivoted to develop dashboards for each section, and we made the dashboards interactive so agency staff can customize how they view data. 

Once we had a holistic understanding of staff needs and workflows, we developed MVP versions of each proposed feature. During this process, we continued to gather feedback from DOJ staff and iterate. Continually engaging with DOJ staff helped us add enhancements and features that better meet staff needs. For instance, we created a feature that enables agency staff to save searches directly from their main landing page where reports are listed, which is part of their normal workflow. 

Optimizing educational content 

DOJ has an education page where people can learn about their rights and how to file a complaint. It’s important that this content stays current and that it’s written in plain language to maximize accessibility. In an effort to improve the content’s usability and accessibility, we partnered with DOJ to review and assess the content. 

We also conducted an analysis of other government agencies’ educational content to determine what works and what doesn’t. This enabled us to present recommendations to DOJ that would improve usability, clarity, and accessibility. Working closely with DOJ’s product team, we’re updating content to make it easier for people to understand the complaint process. When people understand their rights and how to use the portal, it ultimately saves agency staff the time they spend re-routing complaints to different agencies. It also builds trust in DOJ and its systems.   

Conclusion

The CRT’s complaint portal makes filing a civil rights complaint accessible to the public. DOJ’s staff operate behind-the-scenes to ensure the complaint process runs smoothly, so it’s important that DOJ staff have the tools to do this essential job well. This is why DOJ partnered with Nava to build tools that improve the agency staff experience, helping staff spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on processing complaints. 

Special thanks to Chloe Hilles for contributing to this article.