Kiosk Technology Automation Driving Self-Service Access and Better Identity Verification with Guest Speaker Steve Smith

Government automation is being augmented with kiosk technology, allowing anytime access and better identity verification. Intellectual Technology (ITI), a leader in government kiosk technology, will outline the various uses for government agencies, the benefits, and overall cost savings. Department of Motor Vehicles (DMVs) are at the forefront of this technology, and we will learn why dozens of states have deployed hundreds of ITI kiosks. 

Transcript

Narrator: Hello and welcome to the FraudKast, brought to you by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. The series that shines a light on fraud and theft across numerous government benefit programs. FraudKast is hosted by Larry Benson, Director of Strategic Alliances for LexisNexis Risk Solutions Government division, and the creator and principal author for the Fraud of the Day website. And now, here’s Larry with today’s guest.

Larry Benson: Welcome to the FraudKast. This is Larry Benson, your host. With me today is Steve Smith, who’s the Senior Vice President of Business and Strategy from Intellectual Technologies Incorporated, who builds different types of technology for government agencies. The one we’re going to focus on today is kiosk technology. Steve, welcome.

Steve Smith: Thanks, Larry. Really excited to be here, just appreciate the invite.

Larry Benson: So Steve, let’s start off by giving the listeners a little bit of background on ITI. Can you give them a little bit of an idea of what you guys do, and the technologies that you bring to the table?

Steve Smith: Sure. So ITI’s been around for a number of years and as you know, we operate in the DMV space. You could think of the work that we do stretches across driver and vehicle services for state agencies and our provincial jurisdiction partners in Canada that are providing an array of different vehicle and driver type services. And you can think of, you know, the types of things that our business focuses on. You could think of, it stretches from back end operations on the fulfillment side, printing license plates, closing the loop with the customer, and getting it to the customer mail, but also a number of citizen facing services on the driver side for driver testing, like knowledge testing. And then one of our flagship programs is a self service kiosk solution that provides an alternative servicing channel for state agencies to be able to extend services and in many ways addressing kind of the equitable access type challenges that they face. And doing it in a way that is providing convenience, it’s secure, it’s privacy preserving and, but, a way for them, for, you know, their constituents and for citizens to, you know, conduct business in a way that, you know, works for their lives. That’s a program that we’re pretty excited about.

Larry Benson: So one of the things I think the citizens would appreciate is the fact that if the store is open, the kiosk is open. Whatever the hours are of that particular establishment that the kiosk is located in, they can have access to it, whether it be 11, 12 o’clock at night. Is that true?

Steve Smith: Yes. And that’s actually, it’s a really big part of the programs that we run across States and we’ve got, we’re hoping to hit about 20 states, you know, live with the program this year. We have about 1,000 kiosks that are already deployed across the United States and the vast majority of the locations are in retail locations, so you think about grocery stores. We find that meeting the customers where they are, and where they want to be at, and so we think about where do they typically shop. Grocery stores are a really great place, and thinking about how we extend convenience to citizens so that it meets them where they are, and they, you know, have a means to be able to conduct things that are really important, critical for their lives. But in a way that works, and how they manage their lives as well. And so a lot of the program in terms of all the things that we kind of put in as supporting services, the design is, it’s focused on these kind of barriers to access. But there’s real challenges for the reasons why, people, you know, either can’t go online because they lack the means to go online, maybe they don’t possess the types of devices and technology to be able to gain access to that channel that might be convenient, but in other cases may not work for them to be able to go to a physical office. Maybe they have two jobs. Single parents run into, you know, challenges like this where they have to juggle a lot of things in their lives. So it’s those kinds of real world challenges that we think about from a design perspective and what are all the various aspects of, you know, related to barriers that we need to account for. And part of that is geography, and part of it is hey, let’s think about putting it in a place that works for them.

 Larry Benson: Yeah, I was pretty excited when I saw your kiosk in my grocery store and I was actually able to renew my registration, which was fabulous. I haven’t tried to do anything else on it, so tell me what you can do for driver services, driver privileges. Can I get a driver’s license? Can I get a government ID? What are the other things that I can do on the kiosk?

 Steve Smith: Well, there’s quite a few and I think it kind of varies depending on which state you’re in. But if you could think about all the different things you can do on a kiosk, essentially the things you can do online, that’s kind of our rule of thumb. If you could do it online, it’s possible to do that in a self-service kiosk. So we think about all the different services that you can access online, starting from renewing your vehicle, if it’s related to other kind of vehicle services for, you know, just getting duplicate or replacement kind of documents, if it’s looking up information, all of those types of services on the vehicle side are certainly possible, and we have today in many states the means to be able to access through a self-service kiosk. On the driver side, there’s a lot of you know similar type services. We think about kind of driver’s license renewal. If you don’t have to take the photo today, then you can go to one of our kiosks. If the driver services are available in that state to be able to renew your driver’s license, things around like duplicate replacement, all of those things you could think of, things that you would be able to do online. All certainly possible at the self-service kiosk setting.

Larry Benson: And I’m assuming you could do the entire transaction and pay for it right there as well.

Steve Smith: Yeah, and that’s another piece that we like to think of. Part of it is, how do we address barriers to access? Part of it is the geographical location. You’ve got language barriers. We support multiple languages. A variety of languages related to the state needs. But it’s also, you know, it’s timing access in terms of like the availability of time, and that’s why we like grocery stores, because oftentimes there are a number of grocery stores are open 24/7. And then as it relates to the experience, there’s a really big focus on experience. And oftentimes from a servicing perspective, and this is cross industry a challenge, is context switching and channel switching type issues where you do something, you can start getting and conduct business in one channel and then you’re redirected to an entirely different channel to close the loop and close out the transaction. It’s really common and it’s really challenging, we think about from an operational perspective of how you can build a holistic experience from end to end and be able to close the loop in that same channel. But when you’re able to do it, it is a really great experience for customers. And we think about when you are able to go up to a single channel and complete it and walk away and you’re done. You don’t have to walk away wondering what’s next. How long is this going to take? If it’s coming in the mail, when is it coming in the mail? So all of those things that are often stressors in life, are just simply eliminated, and that’s one of the things that’s really a big focus in our kiosk program. And so for things like you’re doing your vehicle registration, well, typically you can walk away with that sticker or the decal and the tag from the self service kiosk. And we, you know, the feedback that we get is that that’s a really big value and a benefit for citizens that are using the kiosk and why they love using it.

Larry Benson: Absolutely. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve not been able to complete the transaction within the same channel and referred over to someone else to do the final transaction, etcetera. I get cut off. It’s totally frustrating. So that sounds fabulous. So the next question is, what else do you see going on with the kiosk in time to come? Because I’m thinking to myself, why can’t I do other types of government benefits off the kiosk?

Steve Smith: I mean, it’s a great question. I think there are two main, kind of, shared problems, I think that, that we face especially with our kiosk program and just you know all the customers and partners that we work with. One is certainly, in the government context, government agencies can’t choose their customer and so they have to think about servicing for all their customers. So all constituents, all citizens, and so thinking about kind of access, equity, inclusion type factors is really critical from a customer servicing approach, and that is a shared problem. And we think about all of the various programs across government agencies in particular, there are a wide range of different contexts, different services, benefit programs. We think about SNAP, we think about unemployment insurance, especially recently over the last several years. There are a lot of challenges from a servicing perspective, especially when you have external factors like a pandemic that shut down entire channels. And so what do you do when you’re an agency, you must shut down your offices? But what do you do with all the people that need access to an in person, because maybe they can’t go online, and or this isn’t available online. And so these are real servicing challenges, but they’re also shared problems. And then the other side is fraud. Fraud is a shared problem across a number of different programs and services, and especially in government, which is, you know, it has been a target for, you know, nation state actors and criminal syndicates and fraudsters, especially over the last several years. And it’s been happening at scale. So when we think about how do we, you know, how do we see the future of a program that addresses equitable access type challenges, but then also we take a very hard look at security, and we think about how we are able to introduce and incorporate layered approaches, you know, that are not reliant on single, you know, single solutions because there is no silver bullet. But then also how we leverage the DMV infrastructure, which is our nation’s identity infrastructure, to be able to think about kind of alternative unique ways to address this. It opens the door for a wide variety of types of use cases that you can think about adding to a kiosk program that really can be considered shared infrastructure. If you think about it, if you want to add other transactions, if you want to extend access for other benefits and services across government. So we’ve certainly had a lot of interest, and a lot of conversations over the last several years from other agencies. There were like, hey, can we interact with our customers through your kiosk program? And the answer has always been, yeah, absolutely. It’s just a matter of kind of how we think about adding that and making sure we tie it into a customer servicing experience that works for that.

Larry Benson: Steve, I would think that one of the big ones that would come about would be FEMA, because when you have a disaster in a certain part of the country, all of a sudden people no longer have a laptop. They no longer have a house. They no longer have access. Cell phones are down, etc. If all of a sudden they could go to, you know, a store that’s still standing and use that kiosk, that could be really attractive. And of course, as we know, the number of disasters seems to be going up. Everything from Hawaii with the fires, across the Midwest with tornadoes, etcetera. I would think that this would be something that FEMA would just jump all over.

Steve Smith: You’re absolutely right, Larry. And it’s interesting because we’ve been at the forefront of disaster recovery working with a number of states as they are getting the communities back on their feet. I recall a few years ago in a pretty bad hurricane in Florida, a number of our kiosk locations which were located in one of our retailers in a grocery store in the South, and you know one of the better known brands that everyone frequents in Florida and we have a great relationship with. Well it was that grocery store that ended up being the community focal point because it had access to food, it had water and electricity, and then our kiosk was up and running. And so what was really interesting is that, you know, we had all of these kind of critical services that were converging on this one location. You have the community, that had largely lost its homes, that were going into this location to kind of congregate, support each other, and get access to critical services in a time of need. And we also had our kiosk available, so if they wanted to renew their vehicle registration at the time, although I’m sure that is not top of mind, but we had the means to do so. So from our perspective, it’s not a big leap, when we think about how that infrastructure is really there and if we think about in a time of need to be able to add a transaction or add a service, especially when they are fleeing a  natural disaster where they may not have a phone, they may not have any of their documents, they need to prove that they are who they say they are. Well, the state does, and the state, especially if they’ve issued a driver’s license, has a repository of photos as part of that driver’s license issuance process. And we typically interact with those systems of record. So when you think about it, there some really interesting approaches if we’re able to take the photo and compare that against the photo on record to make sure that, hey, we’ve got really good confidence, that actually is the person they claim to be. But then that opens the door to make sure that hey, we’re not introducing avenues for fraudsters to gain access to critical systems and services, for providing a really great way for people that are in a time of need, that do not have all of the documents and things they typically would have, a way to be able to gain access to those benefits.

Larry Benson: At that point, you’re just trying to get these poor people back on their feet.

Steve Smith: Absolutely.

Larry Benson: If you can do something with facial recognition, and then geolocate the property that they own and realize, yes, that’s been wiped out. So we’re going to issue out some kind of card that’s got some value on it. So they can, at least, you know, get a hotel room, get something to eat. You know, just the basics would be a big step in the right direction.

Steve Smith: Yes, absolutely.

Larry Benson: So let’s move on a little bit and talk about the fraud side of things. That’s where, obviously, we focus on and we find of interest. You know, you’ve got facial recognition capabilities. I’m assuming you’ve got some kind of multi-factor authentication built in there. Can you give us an idea of how you go about doing this to make sure that nefarious individuals don’t get access, and obviously don’t give us too much. Because we don’t want to, we don’t want to tip the scales here.

Steve Smith: No, I appreciate that. I think first and foremost, to repeat a line, it’s, you know, there is no silver bullet. Yeah, you know, we do take a multilayered approach and it’s thinking about, we do interact with state infrastructure, identity infrastructure, that can create a really great experience, but then also create some really strong controls for combating fraud. So first and foremost, the ability to work with some really great state DMV partners that we’ve had, and we’ve been able to launch some pretty interesting approaches that leverage the photo on record. And then, we like to call it facial verification, because from a kind of data privacy and security perspective, we’re very focused and understanding that the right data models, how we treat data, how we introduce and incorporate facial biometric technologies, and doing it the right way, and using best practices that are privacy preserving are really important for any kind of citizen facing type service and application. But being able to do it the right way opens the door to thinking about how we can combat a number of the fraud trends and attack vectors that fraudsters are using today. And as we’ve seen and I’m sure you are well aware of, you know the last several years, even before generative AI, there’s been a really big uptick in the use of very sophisticated fake driver’s licenses and other documents. And so document based ways of verifying identities and being solely reliant on that, well, fraudsters have found ways to circumvent kind of established practices for verifying authenticity of these documents. Not to say they’re not effective, it’s just this in some cases they’ve been able to produce really sophisticated documents that will be able to circumvent some of those controls at times. And this has opened the door for fraudsters being able to put their own photo on a driver’s license and claim that they are this person now. And so they can use mixtures of stolen data, they can use their photo, and then they can submit for state benefit programs or other benefit programs, and are getting access to critical services and information. And it’s a really big problem and they’re doing it at scale. And so from our perspective, when we saw these trends, you know our focus is like well, let’s just remove the dependency, and if there are ways to be able to still leverage, say, state infrastructure and do it in a way that addresses these attack vectors and these fraud trends, that’s a really effective way of kind of keeping the fraudsters out. Not to say that it’s foolproof, and that’s why we like to think about, like, if there are other ways to introduce, say, other forms of identity evidence as part of the identity verification process. And then also, other kinds of signals and intelligence to give a better understanding of the full, either, you know, digital footprint, or kind of broader understanding of this individual in any kind of association with malicious or fraudulent activity. All of that is important for informing an access decision, especially if it relates to things like change of address for driver’s license or duplicate replacement. These are the types of services that fraudsters are attacking today, and so there’s quite a bit of work of thinking and making sure that we’re keeping fraudsters out from that perspective. And then the other thing I would note is just around how we treat data. From our perspective, if you don’t need the data, there’s no reason to persist it and we like to focus on being a transaction service provider, and in that is ensuring that we can facilitate a transaction. But you know it’s a core focus for our company not to retain data. And to us it helps protect the citizen. It’s, frankly, it’s good business practice because if you don’t want, if you don’t need the data, you shouldn’t retain it because that’s only risk for your business. And it’s also helping states, who are custodians of their own data to advance practices and ways that better protect the, you know, citizen data, and making sure that it doesn’t leave the data source. You can find ways to be able to maybe verify against it, compare against it an authoritative data source. How you treat the data and how you interact with the state systems, or any kind of system of record, those are all kinds of different, you know, design approaches that we take very seriously and we think there are other ways to be able to effectively, you know, combat unauthorized access, or fraudsters who are trying to gain access to these systems. 

Larry Benson: Great best practices, no question. Maybe we should have you go talk to the local doctors and hospitals because they all ask for it. And then they say, well, we’re not going to use it, we just want it on file. It’s like you really shouldn’t do that, so, interesting discussions that there’s a lot of extra data around that just shouldn’t be there. But one interesting point that you’ve made is being able to use facial recognition. Now, when years ago, when I got a license in Colorado, not only did they take my picture and issue the license, but they also took my index finger fingerprint. And I’m wondering if we’re going to start seeing that more and more with DMVs. And Steve, I would think that that could become very valuable to you, where not only do you do the facial recognition, but you’d have a finger scanner right on the kiosk, put your finger right here and now it’s both fingerprint and facial recognition in one. Boy, that would be a pretty tough one to defraud.

Steve Smith: Yes. And that’s where, as we think about kind of security practices, if we’re able to introduce multiple biometric identifiers into a process, and especially if it’s tied to an in person enrollment where that individual enrolled in identity in there were strong, you know, security practices and consistent security practices for that enrollment, it’s a really great way to think about not only from a security perspective, it’s also a great experience. So if you think about some of the challenges when you are especially in a government context, oftentimes people just forget to bring stuff. And even I just, you know, personal experience, even working in the DMV space, I probably shouldn’t admit, but going for my real ID, at times, I may have had to go back home because I forgot a document. So we can minimize the amount of times you have to repeat that process, of having to go through that enrollment period over and over again. And if we could leverage things like biometric identifiers, especially if we have multiple identifiers, one, we can think from a security perspective just like you mentioned, this gives you a lot of you know a lot more confidence if you’re adding more, especially if it’s tied to that enrollment event. But then we could also think about like, well, you know, based on the risk profile, maybe we just need one. But then there’s also a redundant biometric identifier, if something doesn’t go right. So from a servicing perspective and experience, there’s all different kinds of ways that we can think about it to make sure we’re, you know, designing and providing really good experiences for citizens. And I’d say from a kiosk perspective, all of that is possible. And if we think about the kind of the challenges there, the technical piece is not the challenge.

Larry Benson: No, not at all. I think the technical pieces are fairly straightforward. And it was interesting because I spoke with somebody from Colorado on this topic, and she told me that about 10% of the people will not provide their fingerprint. And if they were made aware of the fact that having that fingerprint on file with their picture actually helps protect them against other people using their identity fraudulently, all of a sudden, I think you’d see that change dramatically. 

Steve Smith: To your point here, I think this sits on a very public debate that I think has been going on for years. You know, a lot of it’s around privacy, and at times it is abstract, and it’s difficult to connect the dots and the benefits for the citizen in terms of you know, why should I do this? And I think that’s been a really big part of what we focus on, especially in any, you know, work that we do in the DMV space that we think about stakeholder engagement. That we think about all of the various people that might be interacting with our programs, any of the citizen facing programs in particular. And we think about all of the various groups that we need to think about engaging and bringing into the conversation as we are designing, as we’re making changes, so that that conversation and that dialogue is ongoing. You know, some of the outcomes that we want to avoid is, you know, we don’t want to surprise individuals as we kind of release and introduce new technologies. We want them to understand the context. We want them to understand the value, and we also want them to be part of the conversation along the way so we can hear their perspective. Because from our standpoint, that helps with designing an experience that actually works for people. And that privacy piece, I would suspect that, you know, privacy is coming into play when people are saying, well, I don’t feel comfortable doing this because they may not know what’s going on in terms of, well, how are you sharing, like, are you sharing my data with anyone? Or how long are you retaining this, and what purpose are you using this data for? And so if you’re able to bring more transparency into that and inform decision, I think it’s a really great approach for thinking about how you address the hesitancy that you might see for individuals that might encounter a time where they need to provide information. And certainly, in the context of all the things going on, you know, related to generative AI and the advancements of direct to consumer scams, all of those things are eroding trust in institutions. And online interactions that bring the question of, am I interacting with a real person or is this person a scammer? And it’s these kinds of things that, you know, we need to keep, especially in the government context, we need to keep in mind, we certainly need to be mindful as we introduce these new technologies, we introduce, you know, scenarios where we might need information from them to make sure that we are protecting them.

Larry Benson: You know, going back to that example of FEMA, and thinking about being able to issue out a stored value card. Why wouldn’t you be able to do the exact same thing, but instead of FEMA, it’s SNAP, or it’s TANF, or a lot of the other government benefits that somebody has to qualify for, and once they qualify, the government issues out a stored value card for them to go shop, get food, etcetera. You could either issue it as a replacement right out of the kiosk, or you could actually in some cases let them qualify right at the kiosk, and do the first issuance right there of the first stored value card.

Steve Smith: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Larry Benson: That could be a huge cost savings in manpower and physical footprint that, you know, SNAP, TANF, FEMA all have today. 

Steve Smith: I’d say, other trends that we’re seeing tied to this Larry, is, it’s there are workforce challenges in ensuring that you’ve got, that you’re able to maintain staffing levels to be able to handle, you know, servicing of this scale that many government agencies face. Retention is a challenge, and then also you think about, kind of, the, you know, going back to the, you know, government agencies can’t choose their customers, so they have to think geographically. In urban areas where there might be higher population density relative to rural locations, those challenges exist throughout. And if we think about kind of all the possibilities, self-service kiosks absolutely fit into the, on the solution side, and be able to address some of these challenges. Especially you know around like, hey, can we reduce some of the burden on the existing workforce so they can focus on the things they really need to focus on, especially if it’s citizen facing, that needs a human touch, that needs to be in person. And so that we’ve heard quite a bit, and honestly, it’s a lot of the work that we do is like, what are the, what are the easy repeatable things that we can get out. And then as we look at these more complex transactions like you’re mentioning, benefit applications submissions, there’s all sorts of different scenarios and touch points that are tied to benefit programs even beyond the initial application. But all of those are, it’s certainly possible to think about how you can break those down. You can potentially integrate those into more of a self-service experience and then tie this into ways so that it maybe could be done in a kiosk in a location that’s more convenient for the individual that needs to access to the benefit. And the challenge that we’ve always seen is that, you know, how do we fit this into the existing experience that ties into their operational tactical infrastructure, so that it still remains seamless, it doesn’t introduce more complexity, and then that’s where it’s a lot of it is just around my context of like, how do you want to use a self-service kiosk solution. But to me, and I guess my personal experience working in this company is, you know, the DMVs across the US face really hard challenge because of the fact that you interact with most households, the scale that they operate is really significant. I mean, think about it. You know, for households that possess a vehicle, it’s the vast majority of households in the US and so the challenges they face, it’s a really great starting point. If the DMVs can solve it, they’re a really great example for and test bed for like trying new things and if it works, there’s a really good possibility that it would probably work in other contexts. Because the DMVs are probably interacting in certain scenarios with the context already, and that’s where like, kind of going back to your point on like, if we could do it for one, can we do it for all, a lot of these are really, it is around shared challenges and problems. So I think all of those are possibilities to think about how we can take a more kind of ecosystem approach for creating a better experience and also reducing the burden on agencies.

Larry Benson: So to your point on equitable access, I’m thinking about when you go out West, states like Wyoming, Western Colorado, New Mexico, those areas where you have to drive an awfully long way to get to any kind of office for government access. And this could certainly help with that.
So here’s the question, Steve. You’ve got 1,000 kiosks out there today, where do you see it in five years from now? Because from what it sounds like, there’s a lot of benefits to the citizen, to the government agencies, et cetera, that would really give motivation to deploy on a very wide basis to get access for citizens, for those that need that equitable access, and again for disasters. What’s your guess as to the footprint in five years from now?

Steve Smith: Well, if it’s based on internal conversations, we’d love to be in every state and jurisdiction in the US, and also again we, you know, we work in Canada, and a lot of shared and similar challenges, you know, cross borders, and when we think about the broader challenges we hear a lot of feedback from a variety of ecosystem stakeholders. Part of it is our retail partners, and we operate and work with many large retailers, especially in terms of grocery stores across the United States. I think the common theme that is typically part of the conversations is, like, can we do more? And there’s a really strong interest in it and they want to invest in their communities and they see if there are ways to provide convenience and access to critical government services, that has generally been well received from our partners and something that they have been very interested in growing across their footprints, in many of these grocery brands or, you know, across many different states. And then also, you know, say when we think about kind of shared problems and challenges, you know just my own personal perspective, if you’re able to address the coverage issue, then you could really do some interesting things, not only at the state, not only at the county level, where we are typically working today, but also we think about the federal context. And if you’re able to drive more, even more collaboration, you know, between levels of government, to me, you’re able to think about more citizen centric type experiences and approaches that create a better experience. Because I often put myself, as a veteran, in the veteran shoes, and some of the work the VA has done over the last eight, you know, nine years to create more of a single destination online, especially that single digital front door and creating more unified experience. It has a significant impact on access, on experience, on the services that we’re able to provide to individuals. And I think about the experiences over time and how they’ve improved, and how as you think about getting access to a benefit, you’re not thinking about necessarily having to go to this office. As a citizen, you’re thinking I need education benefits and or hey, I need help with food subsidies. You’re not thinking about I have to go to this office to go submit this and then I have to go over here. So the more that we can put the citizen in the forefront of how we design experiences, to me, is going to lead to much better outcomes as it relates to getting benefits and services to the people in need, in particular. And then the more that we can collaborate across not only the state and county level, but also county and state and federal, to me, is going to lead to some really great outcomes. Not only as it relates to the citizen, from the citizen perspective, but also as they are grappling with a lot of really challenging operational factors, both coming out of the pandemic but ongoing.

Larry Benson: So can we look at this from the retailer side? Because if I’m a grocery store, I mean, let’s look at grocery stores. Now you’ve got a bank in there in some grocery stores. You’ve got a CVS that’s now in some grocery stores or both, and it’s more and more. Everybody needs to go to the grocery store. That’s the one common denominator. And if now all of a sudden, I can get my benefits there too, I’m wondering if the retailers are looking at it saying that having the kiosk in there helps attract more customers to their store. Have you had that discussion?

 Steve Smith: Well, I think in a broad industry perspective, certainly finding ways to bring people into your in-store experience has always been top of mind. And you know, I think these are all, especially for the services that we currently offer for vehicle driver services. Oftentimes it’s a destination event. We think about, I need to go do this and it provides a means to think about, well, where can I do it? And so that’s where we see a lot of positive feedback on the value it brings to existing customers, but then also, as the stores are thinking about engaging the broader community. And maybe you know folks that haven’t been to the store before, it provides a way for them to start conversation and a relationship with a new potential customer. So all of those things I think are part of why our retail partners are typically, you know, asking us, you know, where else can we go, what else we could do, which we certainly are always excited to have those conversations.

Larry Benson: And I would assume that they want to put it up front prominently, so people know it’s there and it provides that attraction.

Steve Smith: Yes, and it is so important. I actually think back, and this ties into, I’m thinking back to, the specific example of this ties back into your examples related to FEMA. You know, very close to home. My wife’s family is from Paradise, California and that was part of the camp fire several years ago, and it devastated the community we, you know, personally knew so many people. And my wife had gone to high school in Paradise and, so many of the people, and just understanding their, the personal impact, and broadly across the community, losing over 90% of structures, and most of the critical buildings were just gone, in a very short period of time. And it’s a perfect example of the FEMA example that you raised earlier, in that people had virtually no time to leave. And many didn’t, weren’t able to leave in time. And then for the folks that were able to escape, they didn’t have documents. And they all congregated, again, at, you know, retail locations and parking lots down in, in Chico, California. And it became a really big servicing challenge for a community of 30-40 thousand that virtually was wiped out in the matter of hours. And we think in the aftermath, it was one of the projects that we worked on with the California DMV, and thinking about how we extend services to that community, because so many of the structures were just wiped out. So we put one, we had one of our kiosks operating in the Paradise area that’s in a grocery store. But I would say it’s been pretty exciting hearing my father-in-law and mother-in-law tell me about their experiences and interact with the kiosk. Certainly, I had a lot of enjoyment, you know, hearing the direct feedback on calls with the family at night. When we think about these kinds of real-life situations, there’s this real opportunity to think about how we, you know, address the community needs. And then also think about where it makes sense. And there is a grocery store in Paradise and the store manager at the store level loved the idea, and they helped us with placement, they helped us with promotion to the local community, and all of those things really do matter in terms of raising awareness and educating a local community and why that matters and what’s available to them. And that’s where I go back to, like, of our retail partners are really critical for success for our programs and for the state programs, and why we really, you know, appreciate these ecosystem approaches and all the ecosystem partners that work with us on these challenges.

Larry Benson: Well, hopefully over time your rollout is far broader and increases the density, because during those disasters, you’re going to have to be servicing a lot of people. I’m surprised that FEMA hasn’t come to you asking that, can we stack up a truck and be able to roll that out anytime there’s a disaster? But that may be in time to come. Steve, is there anything else that you’d like to touch on?

Steve Smith: No, I just, I very much appreciate the conversation today and really enjoyed it, Larry.

Larry Benson: Steve Smith, Senior Vice President of Business and Strategy from Intellectual Technologies. Steve, we want to thank you for your time, and we want to thank you for your service. Appreciate it. You have a great day.

Steve Smith: Appreciate it.

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