Our Vision
“To provide accessible, simple, and secure digital experiences that adapt to a person’s needs, so that every time they engage with any part of their government, they're getting the most and best of the Commonwealth.”
We want to make it easy, safe, and convenient for everyone in Massachusetts to use digital government services.
Our Values
To transform our state’s digital services, we need to understand what constituents need and expect. Feedback from constituents and our agency partners helped us to identify 7 core values. They are:
- Keep it simple
- Include me
- Recognize me
- Don't waste my time
- Keep me in the loop
- Put it within my reach
- Earn my trust
These values guide our work so we can make sure we invest our time and effort on what matters most to the people we serve.
Our Strategy
The Digital Roadmap is all about making state services easier, faster, and more meaningful. To do this, our strategy includes:
- Technical Enablement: Build and share new digital tools and solutions.
- End-to End Experience and Service Improvements: Improve experiences through research and design. We evaluate people's experiences across all interactions they have with government.
- Capacity Building: Help organizations learn and grow so they can deliver high quality digital services.
- Digital Governance: Create rules and plans for how we use technology, time, and money. Provide leadership, responsibility, and guidance.
- Cross-Agency Engagement: Make it easier for teams across state government to collaborate. Make sure they have access to the same standards, tools, and services.
We work with agencies to implement these approaches to improving experiences. We introduce better technology, smarter service design, and constituent-centered ways of working. Every initiative we work on offers a chance to create digital services that truly meet people’s needs.
Roadmap Initiatives
The Digital Roadmap focuses on the things that matter most to Massachusetts constituents. Because we know needs change over time, our initiatives will also change over time. Current initiatives we’re working on include:
- MyMassGov
- Seamless Engagement
- Life Experiences
- Digital Accessibility
- Service Standards
- Constituent Experience Center of Excellence (CXCOE)
MyMassGov
MyMassGov is a secure website where people can use one account to access certain state services and applications. It helps people save time by reducing the number of forms and information they need to enter. We're always adding new features to make MyMassGov easier and better to use.
Video: What is MyMassGov
Skip this video What is MyMassGov.At-a-glance progress:
- MyMassGov now supports more than 2 million people in accessing multiple state applications.
- People can create and update their profile, including their name, password, email, and how they log in.
- We’ve added more state programs to MyMassGov. These include the Virtual Gateway, Paid Family and Medical Leave, and Unemployment Services. Hundreds of thousands of people are already using these programs — and more will be added soon.
- Our identity verification tool helps people easily and securely prove who they are. This means they don't have to do it again when they apply for state services.
Seamless Engagement
Seamless Engagement is about creating connected experiences across state services. We want to make it easier for people to get help, ask questions, and use different ways to connect — like websites, email, or chat — without losing their place. We’re building tools to help agencies work better together and keep communication smooth. Right now, we're focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve state websites and applications. We want people to get quicker, better answers to their questions no matter how they contact us.
At-a-glance progress:
- We're working with the Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) to create a Virtual Assistant chatbot. The Virtual Assistant uses Generative AI to help people get answers easily and quickly. We launched it on RMV webpages in April 2025, where it helped people learn about upgrading to a REAL ID before the deadline on May 7, 2025. Today, it can also answer questions about licenses, vehicle registrations, titles, and more. It handles about 1,500 conversations a day.
- This project has involved updating web content, building the AI chat tool, and supporting RMV staff. It has also helped us prepare to bring AI chat to other agencies and offer live chat in the future.
- We’re creating a shared Virtual Assistant system that many agencies can use. We made a template to help set it up faster in the future. This means we can reuse the same technology, processes, and infrastructure each time.
Life Experiences
Life experiences (LX) are big events or changes like having a baby, losing a job, or retiring. These often require support from multiple government agencies. Right now, it’s hard for people in these situations to get help. They often have to search through many websites and figure out confusing systems by themselves. Our Life Experience (LX) framework helps government agencies work together more efficiently. It uses Human-Centered Design (HCD), an approach where you listen to people, design solutions based on their needs, test those ideas, and make them better over time. Our model encourages organizations to coordinate and share information. We want to simplify services and make sure that we design things that truly meet people's needs.
At-a-glance progress:
- In January 2025, we started working with the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) and the Executive Office of Education IT (EOE IT). Our goal is to give better career support to early childhood educators. We’re creating better experiences for educators who want to grow their skills and careers. We're looking at the full journey — from the first time they reach out to the support they’ll need over time. We’ve already made several important updates to the professional certification process. These include changes to both the parts people see (like forms and websites) and the behind-the-scenes steps that make everything work smoothly.
Digital Accessibility
Digital accessibility means making digital experiences free from barriers that block access for people with disabilities. When digital experiences are accessible, they’re more usable and fair for everyone. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice made a rule that says state and local governments must make their online content accessible. This includes websites, mobile apps, online forms, videos, and social media. They must follow standards called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1, levels A and AA. Making sure that everyone — including people with disabilities — can use state services is an important goal of the Digital Roadmap. That’s why we’re helping state agencies learn about and follow the new accessibility rules.
At-a-glance progress:
- The 2023 Executive Order 614 established the Digital Accessibility and Equity Governance Board, Chief IT Accessibility Officer and Secretariat IT Accessibility Officers.
- Created a central accessibility team to provide policy, standards, guidance, and information to drive accessibility and help implement accessibility for digital assets.
- Commonwealth employees can now take trainings on accessibility topics and meet with the accessibility team during office hours. They can ask accessibility questions and learn from subject matter experts and others.
Service Standards
Service Standards explain what people can expect from a service and give guidance to agencies on how to deliver those services. They help make sure all state services are simple to use, work well, and are trustworthy. Service Standards also help make sure all state agencies are following the same values and using proven best practices.
We group the standards into:
- Principles that focus on people’s experience using the service
- Principles that focus on how agencies build and manage the service
We’re focusing on standards for digital services, with a plan to expand to additional channels over time. This includes things like improving constituents' experiences with public-facing websites and applications. One example of a digital service standard is that websites should meet accessibility rules. This helps make sure that everyone — no matter their skills, background, or abilities — can use online services equally.
At-a-glance progress:
- We defined Service Standards to help agencies deliver high-quality, people-first digital experiences. We’ll launch the standards through an early adoption program to help state organizations implement them smoothly.
- We'll introduce the standards through our existing domain request process. This will ensure that new sites comply with the domain and accessibility policies. It will also help us engage agencies to participate in the early adoption program.
- We've developed an operational governance program to ensure that organizations adhere to enterprise policies and standards around privacy, security, data, and AI.
- We've created a robust, automated process that assesses how business owners implement digital service standards.
Constituent Experience Center of Excellence
Helping agencies design and deliver great constituent experiences is a foundational strategy of the Digital Roadmap. This is why we created a Constituent Experience Center of Excellence. This team includes experts in experience research and design. We advise, share best practices, and offer tools and trainings to help agencies design services that put people first.
At-a-glance progress:
- We help organizations grow their skills and staff so they can improve constituent experiences. For example, in one collaboration, we’re helping a content team learn to integrate constituent research into their work. This helps them improve how they design webpages and information. In another, we’re helping an organization start a research and design team. This includes helping them design roles, review resumes, and select candidates.
- We launched Communities of Practice (CoPs) where agency staff can collaborate and learn from one another. Example communities include:
- The Experience Research CoP, focused on learning how to conduct research with constituents
- Content Lab, focused on content strategy and creating effective, accessible plain language content
- We created a resource library to help agencies build teams and deliver great experiences. It includes:
- “How to” guides, templates, and guidance on building constituent-centered teams and ways of working.
How we got here
The Commonwealth Digital Roadmap aims to make it easier for people to use state services online. It focuses on making digital services simple, safe and accessible to all. The Roadmap was created by our team in Mass Digital, part of the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS). To create the Roadmap, we collaborated with other state organizations and got feedback from the public.
The idea for the Roadmap started in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, more people than ever needed to interact with the state online. EOTSS and other agencies worked to come up with new technology solutions and to improve digital service delivery. We learned how important smart digital tools technology is for accessing government services.
We began working on the Roadmap in 2022. Governor Healey’s Future Tech Act of 2024 authorized $110M for its implementation. We brought together teams from across state government to identify shared challenges and come up with ambitious plans for solving them.
Over 4 months, we used research and workshops to create a plan. This plan is flexible. We know that it will need to change as new technologies become available, and as organizations adjust to meet people's changing needs.
Looking Ahead
The Roadmap calls for investing in technologies and platforms that connect experiences across digital services. Stay tuned for updates throughout the year on our progress!