Tag Archives: Customer Experience

Connecting to Data and People for Improved Citizen Service

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The Executive Order, Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government (CX EO) put a governmentwide priority on accelerating modernization efforts that impact how the government serves its citizens. A key focus of the CX EO was reducing the "time tax" by simplifying processes for applying for federal aid - particularly in areas where there was already high stress like disaster assistance, financial shock, or adding children to a family. The programs that have emerged as early solutions have focused on two key areas - understanding the journey and experience of the customer and enabling better data sharing across organizations.

Meeting Customers Where They Are

Citizens expect mobile access with personalized service when interacting with nearly any commercial entity. That expectation extends to the government and agencies working to deliver service via apps and streamlined digital portals. Continue reading →

Rebuilding Trust in Government Through Service

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A survey released in April 2021 showed only 24 percent of the American public had trust in the Federal Government. This was up from 21 percent in 2020 but still near a historic low. Knowing this reality, the Biden Administration made improving customer service a cornerstone of the President's Management Agenda (PMA) Vision with a goal of "delivering excellent, equitable, and secure Federal services and customer experience." This was followed by the Executive Order, Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government, directing government leaders to account for the experiences of the public in seeking government services.

This Executive Order includes 36 customer experience (CX) improvement commitments across 17 Federal agencies, all of which aim to improve people's lives and the delivery of Government services. Services supporting the following focus areas were called out for immediate attention and improvement: Continue reading →

A Short History of Shared Services…and What’s Next.

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Shared Services in government is nothing new. The idea began in the 1980s with the consolidation of payroll and some other administrative functions. In the '90s the focus was on creating entities that could provide common business functions across government and, in that effort, become a cost center.

The 2000s saw the rise of the term 'Line of Business' that looked at common business functions across government to identify opportunities to transform, streamline and share. The Obama Administration looked specifically to IT as a shared service, releasing the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy that provided federal agency chief information officers and key stakeholders guidance. This guidance focused on the implementation of shared IT services as a key principle of their efforts to eliminate waste and duplication, with the intention to reinvest in innovative mission systems.

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Renewing the Focus on Citizen Experience

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Citizen Experience (CX) has been an important focus for many government agencies, as well as a key tenant of the President's Management Agenda. Now with considerably more people depending on government support for everything from general public health information to loans to keep small businesses running to unemployment benefits, CX is more important than ever.

While government still scores poorly on customer satisfaction surveys when compared with commercial organizations, there have been a number of bright success stories in the federal market. Looking at what has worked, there are several themes that every agency should keep in mind when designing customer experience improvements.

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Easy as RPA

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Robotic Process Automation (RPA). It may sound like a premise to a movie where robots take over the world, but it's very real and it's helping organizations realize modernization goals. Despite the name, RPA has nothing to do with robots. It is about software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automate high-volume, repetitive tasks. This can include queries, calculations, and maintenance of records and transactions.

In government, RPA is already being implemented in a wide variety of applications.

  • Inspections - As agencies look to modernize the way they perform inspections of the water we drink, the roads we travel, and the buildings we travel to, they are using RPA to move off paper-dependent processes.
  • Claims review -- RPA is built into an intake tool used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid that ingests records, automating the process and identifying potential problems.
  • Procurement - RPA is being used to automate and streamline the close-out process of government contracts, freeing up staff to work on actual programs, rather than spending time documenting that work.
  • IT asset management - Managing IT assets is a combination of automated and manual tasks. The introduction of RPA greatly reduces the need for manual intervention when it comes to enforcing governance and process, freeing up staff to work on mission-focused projects rather than tracking the technology used on those projects.

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