Hariharan Murthy, Deloitte’s Health and Human Services Leader for Michigan, is a 2025 Service to the Citizen Award winner in Category 4: Using Innovative Technologies to Deliver Simple, Seamless, and Secure Services.

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With over 13 years of dedicated service, Hariharan Murthy has played a transformative role in modernizing public assistance delivery for the State of Michigan. In close partnership with the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), he has led the implementation of innovative digital tools that have dramatically improved the speed, transparency, and accessibility of critical benefits for millions of residents.

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Under his leadership, the MI Bridges platform was launched in 2018 as an integrated, multilingual self-service portal, now used by 4.6 million residents to apply for benefits, manage renewals, and connect to over 30,000 community resources. To support the state’s response during the unwind from the Public Health Emergency, he helped deliver an application tracker powered by OCR and Google Cloud, enabling real-time status updates for residents and easing operational burdens on overwhelmed staff.

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Hari also pioneered a no-touch auto-registration system that processed over 750,000 applications in a single year, saving more than 85,000 hours of staff time and allowing frontline workers to focus on direct customer service.

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His visionary leadership has made Michigan a model of digital service delivery, where residents can access the support they need faster, more efficiently, and with greater confidence.