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AGV: Offering services every day to thousands
and even millions of people is an amazing challenge
from a scale perspective.
More specifically, take workforce development programs
run by cities and states.
They are extremely important.
And as they support so many people
with an array of services that range
from job-matching opportunities, personal development via job
coaching, self-service resources, to just name a few.
And I have learned a lot about how
running such meaningful programs requires extensive coordination
across applicants, employers, community partners, and sharing
knowledge broadly.
2020 brought many challenges, especially
as in-person operations were shut down
and many were left vulnerable to unemployment.
The State of Rhode Island responded to these challenges
by modernizing their workforce development operations
and moving completely to an online platform
called the Virtual Career Center--
also nicknamed VCC.
It was developed in partnership with Google Cloud
and a nonprofit called Research Improving People's Lives.
And the VCC was fully built by Google Cloud partner Maven
Wave.
As a quick intro, Maven Wave helps a wide array
of organizations, including public sector customers,
with many types of cloud initiatives--
whether it's big data and machine
learning, building mobile applications,
helping design positive online user experiences,
moving infrastructure to the cloud,
or deploying collaboration tools like email, chat, documents.
They even offer strategy and technology advice.
Today, I've invited Joel Osman from Maven Wave
to share more about that journey.
Howdy, my friend.
Mind sharing a bit about what you do?
JOEL OSMAN: So I lead the Maven Wave digital experience
design--
our UX and design team-- as well as our custom application
development practice.
And I am also the executive sponsor for our Virtual Career
Center solution that we've been bringing to market with Google.
AGV: Joel, for the folks watching,
could you briefly share, what was the specific use
case your team focused on?
JOEL OSMAN: So the primary use case that we looked at
is, how can we apply leading-edge, emerging
technologies to help people get back to work?
And to use those tools in such a way
that we can augment the personal one-to-one interactions
that these agencies had been using with job seekers
to help them get back to work.
AGV: That's beautiful.
Joel, can you touch upon some of the products
it took to build the Virtual Career Center?
JOEL OSMAN: The VCC comprises a number of different Google
technologies.
Obviously, the custom pieces that we're
building for scheduling, for login authentication,
for data pipelines and data analytics
are all in Google Cloud platform.
And we're doing custom builds there
that integrate into the state's existing systems.
So we essentially have taken things
like Google Meet, Google Calendar, Google Docs--
so a lot of those core tool sets that people
use in their everyday lives, we've
wrapped them in this specific use case around the Virtual
Career Center.
So when a job coach is going online
to update their availability of when they can hold sessions,
that's really happening, in the background, in Google Calendar.
And when a job seeker and a job coach
get together in a video session, it's
actually happening in Google Meet.
So those are really the engines of technologies, if you will,
that are driving the entire VCC experience.
AGV: Now, if you don't mind, let's
do a quick walkthrough of what I've learned
about your architecture.
And then I would like to talk a bit more about some
of the design decisions behind all of this.
For starters, end users mainly interact
via an app built on Angular as the frontend,
and it's connected to backend services hosted
on Google Kubernetes Engine or relevant Google Workspace
products, such as Chat, Calendar, Meet,
Drive, and Docs.
From a user journey perspective, there are three main types
of users at this time, and that's job coaches,
job seekers, and employers.
Job coaches all have Google IDs in the Google Workspace domain
and therefore authenticate against the Google Identity
repository.
Job seekers are authenticated through a Cognito-based process
maintained by the nonprofit I mentioned earlier
with the Rhode Island infrastructure
team and the Department of information Technology.
For context, prior to the start of the VCC project,
the state of Rhode Island was making use of this Cognito
identity repository to authenticate users
going through the unemployment insurance application process.
And rather than adding an additional identity repository
for users interacting with the state,
the decision was made to leverage
the existing Cognito repository and its methods
of authentication.
In this release of the Virtual Career Center,
employers participate directly with Google Meet--
and to an extent, Google Calendar--
but not the Angular app.
To touch upon some of the Google Cloud components specifically,
let's start with Firestore, which
is a real-time database that keeps data in sync
across client apps.
It is used as the primary persistence
tool for the web pages.
It also has a small role to play with the login
process for job coaches.
Next is BigQuery, which is a serverless warehouse for data,
which is why it is used primarily
for reporting purposes.
Data Studio is used to build filterable dashboards over it.
Then there are Cloud Functions, which
are functions you can trigger via snippets of code
and are used for a few purposes in the solution,
such as populating jobs and training data in the production
instance, ensuring consistency between Google
Calendar and availability data for job coaches,
and for populating BigQuery on a scheduled basis.
Then there's the Kubernetes cluster
on which server-side code runs in a single region
deployment with a minimum of four nodes per zone
across three zones of the US East Region.
The cluster is set to autoscale in order
to ensure that there is sufficient processing
power in the event that there are
spikes in activity on the site.
From a security standpoint, there's
Cloud Armor, which protects applications and websites
from attacks.
And in this specific implementation,
there are several sets of NIST-compliant policies--
such as geofencing-- which prohibits access
to the site from outside of the US.
Content is accessed through Google's content distribution
network, taking advantage of caching wherever possible.
And finally, to manage the lifecycle
of the infrastructure, a Terraform script
is used, which is an open-source tool
and is structured into five folder environments.
Can you share a bit more about, what
was the experience like for users before
and after the Virtual Career Center was launched?
JOEL OSMAN: Sure.
So in a sense, the solution that we built,
it changes the way job seekers interact
with the state and the state agency.
Before the Virtual Career Center,
interested people-- there was a website
and there were website resources that people would utilize.
But it was very much, in many states,
a hodgepodge of things--
the training opportunities.
There was often a state database of jobs
that they could search into.
And there were some very basic online capabilities.
But a lot of things happened physically
in the Career Center.
There's a lot of that face-to-face interaction
where coaches could really have an impact and help job seekers.
And the challenge, when we built the Virtual Career Center,
is how can we keep that intimacy?
How can we keep that collaborative nature?
And how can we dial up the online tools,
in a sense-- because in many respects,
we were forced to-- but try to keep that tight interaction?
We strive to keep that personal interaction.
And I like to say now, a job coach can talk to a job seeker
on opposite ends of the state and they can really
focus on getting the right advice,
the right coach in front of the right job seeker.
AGV: It's exciting to me to see how
we can continue to recreate these safe spaces
in a virtual format, and on top of that,
create better alignment between job coaches and job seekers
who have expertise in navigating different services.
This is thanks to having more robust ways for job seekers
to find coaches with specific backgrounds,
such as coaches who have a history with helping college
students.
And Joel, is there a fun fact you could share
with us about the project?
JOEL OSMAN: Well, I can share one interesting fact.
Before we launched the solution with Rhode Island, which
was the initial Virtual Career Center state that we deployed
in, we were a little concerned about the adoption
from the career coaches.
They were already having to deal with working from home.
We showed them what it was going to be like.
We tried to do everything we could to ease them into it.
And we did it with sort of holding our breath.
What's going to come of this?
We were actually pleasantly surprised.
They were absolutely excited for the solution.
They were commenting how it's really going to help them out.
They couldn't wait.
They were asking how soon they can get it.
So it was kind of interesting.
I think we were overly--
not pessimistic.
We were more concerned of what the reactions would be.
But they just embraced it wholeheartedly
and were very excited.
And it got us very excited that we are doing the right thing
and we've created the right experience.
And just seeing them absolutely pounce on the solution
was very gratifying.
AGV: Yeah.
I think that fear of whether a new tool is going
to be well-received or not, especially
amongst so much change in the environment,
is extremely relatable to IT practitioners.
And so your approach is an excellent example
of how important it is to scope time to collect user feedback
and to do it very early on and as often as possible
when designing systems.
Another topic I want to touch upon is data.
By having more data centralized in a digital format,
there are greater opportunities around analytics and insights.
What were some design considerations with data?
JOEL OSMAN: We're working a lot with data in the Virtual Career
Center solution.
In particular, we're looking at analytics.
If we're going to implement a solution like this,
key stakeholders in the state, right up
to the governor's offices--
they want to know, is it working?
Are people finding jobs?
Are people having career sessions?
So there's a lot of analytics to track
what's working and not working.
And we can do this in a virtualized solution.
And we talk a lot about creating analytics and dashboards,
not just for stakeholders within the state who
are interested in how the Virtual Career Center is doing,
but we talk a lot about employers.
Because a lot of times, employers are posting jobs
and want to use those Virtual Career Centers
to connect to job seekers.
So we're talking about an employer dashboard
so they can understand, who's out there?
Who's the possible candidate pool?
And how can they see how the Virtual Career
Center can benefit them?
And we even talk about personal dashboards.
AGV: Do you envision any technical enhancements
in the future to this architecture?
And is this solution only for state and local entities?
JOEL OSMAN: So the Virtual Career Center--
or the VCC, as we call it-- is actually
comprised of three pillars, is the way we talk about it.
One is around modernizing digital experiences.
And this is taking what is, for many states, an older design,
older set of technologies that they
used for very basic online functionality,
and giving that all a new, modern look, a modern face,
a central place for people to go for all their needs
and requirements as a job seeker within the state.
So that's the modernizing.
The second pillar is around new innovations.
Can we bring machine learning and artificial intelligence
to job searches?
Can we help with resume-building or resume
parsing, where we can actually take keywords out of a resume
and match those to certain jobs, more of in a clustering
machine learning model rather than just a raw keyword search?
We also looked at chat bots and the ability
to take some of the load off the call centers
in states and utilizing natural language processing
to help guide job seekers and answer questions.
So and we looked at a number of those types of innovations.
The third pillar in the Virtual Career Center
is around taking what was a brick-and-mortar, physical
career center and putting that online
and doing it virtually using Google
Meet and other technologies to create
a virtual version of what was happening
in those physical career centers.
So far, every state we've talked to, they
tend to choose different things.
It's interesting, because you think they all need the same--
they have the same needs.
But their own history, their technology savviness,
the needs of their constituents--
it tends to vary.
And so we find different commissioner stakeholders,
different states--
they need different pieces.
And that's why it's nice to be able to put out
a-- we always call it the menu.
We tell states, you can order off the menu.
And depending what you order, obviously, they
have prices, just like a menu.
And so that's how we work through budgets and solutions
with them.
And it's been interesting to see different states.
So beyond just state governments,
we've actually had some interesting opportunities
to talk about the Virtual Career Center and the technologies
and the solution with some counties,
with some other countries, and a number of universities.
Everywhere you've got people looking for jobs,
or people looking for additional training,
or looking to better their careers,
there's an opportunity in the Virtual Career Center.
AGV: Well, thank you, Joel, for walking us
through so much great information about your journey
today.
To wrap up and leave on a positive note,
what was a memorable moment you experienced?
JOEL OSMAN: One of the things that I have said
is, throughout the pandemic--
I think for me personally, and I think for a lot of the team--
we're not frontline workers.
We're not health care workers.
We're not grocery store workers.
And we were along for the ride, in some respects,
during this whole thing.
And so being able to be part of a solution
that is doing our part--
we may be on the IT side of it.
But just being able to do something in our field
to help people's lives get better,
to help people find jobs coming out of the pandemic,
get a job that maybe they lost to the pandemic,
it really felt like doing our part
versus being on the sidelines through this whole crisis.
AGV: Ah yes.
This work is quite meaningful.
And I think it's an epic milestone
to be able to scale operations to a virtual format
in this way, which speaks to the beauty of building in the cloud
and designing for a positive user experience.
Well friends, I left several helpful links
in this video's description in case
you want to check them out.
If you like this type of content,
then feel free to watch more episodes
on architecting in Google Cloud or subscribe to the channel.
Cheers.
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