Our Work

Challenge

Residents navigating State websites and tools are not always able to find what they need and may have thoughts on how to improve digital tools, policies, or platforms. However, there is not always a mechanism to provide feedback, and when there is, agencies are not always equipped to analyze and act on the many comments it receives, which can leave residents feeling ignored or disempowered. The lack of a mechanism to collect feedback at scale also means the State is not able to benefit from the insights of residents who use their programs and services. Meanwhile, feedback mechanisms that require residents to send an email or head to a separate link make the task more difficult, significantly reducing the likelihood they will leave a comment.

Innovation In Action

The New Jersey Innovation Authority developed a digital tool that can easily be embedded on most State websites and web applications. The tool is accessed directly from the site a resident is using without any external links, and asks whether the user found the information they were searching for and offers an opportunity to provide additional feedback. Using a secure generative AI environment, NJIA and its partners regularly analyze the feedback to generate detailed reports that identify and prioritize emerging issues to address in future website updates, enabling faster releases and greater responsiveness to residents’ needs. To measure the impact of improvements, NJIA and its partners use the feedback widget to carefully track how effective residents find a webpage and how those numbers change over time.

Impact + Metrics

• Shortly after launching a new Unemployment Insurance Claim Status Tool with the Department of Labor in March 2023, in response to user comments on the feedback widget, a new update was quickly released to make 1099 forms from current and previous years available in time for the April tax deadline. Feedback from the tool also drove the team to improve ID verification, which has led to major improvements for residents and staff, and cost savings for the state.
• With help from the feedback widget, the Claims Status Tool is being made even more effective. When the tool was initially introduced in early 2023, 25% of surveyed residents were able to find what they needed, but as of February 2026, around 64% of those surveyed are able to find what they need.
• Comments made through the COVID-19 Info Hub’s feedback widget directly led to thousands of edits on existing articles and the creation of entirely new articles clarifying testing procedures, testing sites, limits on gatherings, which businesses were open, and more so residents could stay safe and get the help they needed.
• As of February 2026, feedback widgets have been deployed on 16 websites across the State with residents submitting about 460,000 ratings and 100,000 comments.

Status

• Feedback Widgets play a central role in NJIA’s iterative development philosophy, which continuously introduces improvements, so these tools continue to be deployed and regularly monitored.
• The flagship nj.gov website includes the Feedback Widget as of July 2025.

Resources and Additional Information

• Pew Charitable Trust Report: “As Budgets Tighten, States Double Down on Efficiency and Tech Innovation”
• New Jersey Innovation Authority Blog: Feedback Becomes Actionable with a Widget and AI (note: cross-posted on Technical.ly)
• FormFest 2025 Workshop (YouTube): How to Build and Scale a Simple, Powerful Feedback Widget
• Beeck Center Digital Government Hub: FormFest 2025 Profile
• GitHub: Open Source Code for Feedback Widget

Key Partners

• Office of the Governor
• NJ State Department of Labor
• NJ Department of the Treasury
• NJ Department of Human Services
• NJ Department of Health
• Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority