Focusing on the Digital Experience
The goal of the Digital Innovation Lab is to learn, share ideas, and explore how we can continue to improve the digital experience across New York State. Here you'll find resources and tools shared at our bi-monthly events to assist agencies in achieving this goal.
February 3, 2026 Innovation Lab
The New York State Digital Service hosted its second Innovation Lab on February 3, 2026, bringing agency colleagues together to focus on digital and paid social media campaigns. Ben Bober and Scott Stevens of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation led a discussion on in-house digital marketing campaigns, sharing insights on strategy, execution, and performance.
The paid digital marketing segment was led by Carol Breen, Director of Marketing at the NYS Department of Transportation, alongside Dessy O'Keefe, Chief Client Officer, and Sarah Adamo, VP of Google & Social Media, from OpAD, who highlighted best practices in paid strategy, audience targeting, creative optimization, and cross-agency collaboration to drive measurable results.
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View the full presentation from the February 3, 2026 Digital Innovation Lab on Digital and Paid Social Media Campaigns.
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View the accessible version of the full presentation from the February 3, 2026 Digital Innovation Lab on Digital and Paid Social Media Campaigns.
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This activity helps agencies think practically about paid social campaigns, whether they are already running them or just considering them. The goal is to identify effective practices, common mistakes, and concrete supports agencies need in order to run paid social successfully.
November 7, 2025 Innovation Lab
The New York State Digital Service hosted its first Innovation Lab on November 7, 2025, bringing agency partners together to strengthen digital accessibility, enterprise tools, and user-centered service delivery. The session emphasized improving document accessibility ahead of WCAG compliance deadlines, shared progress from the NYS Digital Service Accessibility Team, introduced expanded Bitly enterprise services, and outlined the vision to re-imagine NY.gov through a life-event–based, human-centered approach.
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View the full presentation from the November 7, 2025 NYS Digital Innovation Lab.
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View the presentation: Accessibility: The Dreaded PDF
View the presentation: Supporting Digital Accessibility Across NYS
Additional Resources:
- Creating Accessible Documents
- Whether you’re creating a new document in Microsoft Word, or remediating an outdated PDF in Adobe Acrobat, use built-in accessibility tools to simplify the process. Discover more tips and resources for fixing accessibility issues in your documents today.
- Making PDFs More Accessible
- WCAG 2.2 Compliance Resources
- Creating Accessible Documents
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View the presentation on Bitly
The Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) has recently procured a Bitly Enterprise Account. This means any New York State Agency can opt into the State's account at a better value than purchasing directly through Bitly - and have access to our custom domains:
Agency accounts also include QR code creation, custom landing pages, a dedicated team workspace, and link usage and engagement tracking.
For questions and next steps, reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].
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View the presentation on Re-Imagining NY.Gov
The NYS Digital Service is redesigning how we deliver services to New Yorkers.
When a person, family or business goes through certain life experiences it can trigger them to interact with information that is spread across various state agencies. With NY.gov being one of entry points for some of the agency's key services, we are looking to improve and expand upon the information offered.
We have created an agency survey to better understand the services, programs and information that an agency has to offer. This is designed to be a collaborative process, and we value your input and knowledge as an agency stakeholder.
If you have any questions or concerns that you would like to address, please feel free to reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].
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The New York State Design System helps teams rapidly design and build accessible, mobile-friendly web applications and sites:
- Accessible: All components are built and tested to meet accessibility guidelines in design and code.
- Branded: A sibling to NYS Brand Guidelines, the design system extends state branding for all digital experiences.
- Consistent: A unified system improves usability and makes NYS digital services feel like one ecosystem.
Innovation Lab Highlights
NYS Digital Service team members Alan Charlesworth and Kaitlin Pope at the badge pick up table.
The Innovation Lab sign and hallway entrance at the February 3, 2026 Innovation Lab event.
Lab attendees at the February 3, 2026 Innovation Lab.
An attendee at the November 7, 2025 Innovation Lab places a sticky note on the activity board.
NYS Department of Transportation Director of Marketing Carol Breen speaks at the podium at the February 3, 2026 Innovation Lab.
Dessy O'Keefe from OpAD Media speaks at the podium at the February 3, 2026 Innovation Lab.
Benjamin Bober from NYS Department of Environmental Conservation speaking at the podium at the February 3, 2026 Innovation Lab.
NYS Digital Service team member Jeffrey Knaack speaks at the podium at the November 7, 2025 Innovation Lab.
Activity poster board and sticky notes from the November 7, 2025 Innovation Lab.
Lab attendees at the November 7, 2025 Innovation Lab.
