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Nikhil Deshpande
"Like many others in public service, doing impactful work that helps people has always been my north star."
I joined the public sector before concepts like UX, design thinking, and iterative development were common discussions in government circles.
I currently serve as Georgia’s Chief Digital Officer and I co-founded and lead the Office of Digital Services (DSGa) within Georgia Technology Authority. Georgia is one of the first states to have a team of digital services experts driven by design thinking, accessibility, transparency, and innovation. We are dedicated to improving government services and it is an honor to be able to recruit and lead a diverse, talented, and outcomes-oriented team.
My initial challenge was redesigning the state’s flagship website, Georgia.gov. The impact of that work inspired me to do even more, and I devoted myself to digital service design within civic tech. Like many others in public service, doing impactful work that helps people has always been my north star. One accomplishment I’m most proud of is creating a Drupal-based centralized content management platform to serve state information in a way that is intuitive and simply understood by human users and comprehensible to bots. We created a visual brand and a design system for the state so that all websites have a cohesive look and feel enhancing the constituent experience. Along with establishing open source as an enterprise solution, I led the effort to make this platform accessible for users with disabilities.
