Delivering Excellent, Equitable, and Secure Federal Services and Customer Experience
Progress
The Customer Experience Priority Area has made progress in each of the three strategies aiming to collectively transform Federal benefits, services, and programs through improved service delivery and customer experience. Further, since President Biden signed Executive Order 14058, the OMB Customer Experience (CX) Team has provided quarterly updates on progress on the CX Blog.
More detail
- Improve the service design, digital products, and customer-experience management of Federal High-Impact Service Providers by reducing customer burden, addressing inequities, and streamlining processes.
- Design, build, and manage Government service delivery for key life experiences that cut across Federal agencies.
- Identify and prioritize the development of Federal shared products, services, and standards that enable simple, seamless, and secure customer experiences across High Impact Service Providers.
PRIORITY AREA LEADERS
Dr. Jewel Bronaugh
Deputy Secretary
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Robin Carnahan
Administrator
General Services Administration
Donald Remy
Deputy Secretary
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Overview
Challenge
Federal services have not always been designed with the public’s needs and priorities in mind, nor have these services always kept up with these needs. Poorly designed, out of date, and inequitable Government services are a cost to our Nation; it can mean that Veterans don’t get benefits they have earned, small business owners can’t access financing to grow their businesses, new mothers and infants lack critical nutrition supports, and disaster survivors face mountains of paperwork to rebuild their homes.
Opportunity
The Federal Government must deliver a simple, seamless, and secure customer experience, on par with or more effective than leading consumer experiences. Irrespective of people’s age, location, digital savvy, disability, education, or English proficiency, the American people deserve a Government that understands who they are, what they need, and how best to deliver for them. Every interaction between the Government and the public is an opportunity to deliver the services people expect and deserve. Whether during a pivotal life experience such as retiring, or a routine interaction to renew a passport, the Government must build our understanding of our customers and involve them – the people we serve – to improve benefits, services, and programs and enable us to deliver for all Americans.
We can get there by using technology to power outstanding experiences; engaging with private-sector and nonprofit organizations; partnering with State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments; collaborating with other partners to reduce administrative burden of interaction with the Federal Government, simplifying both public-facing and internal processes to improve efficiency, and empowering the Federal workforce so that they can best deliver for the American people. Understanding our customers’ needs through gathering feedback, conducting research, sharing insights, and testing new approaches will ensure we are designing with our customers in mind every step of the way and enable us to deliver for all.
Priority-level success metrics
Increasing experience quality to be on par with the best consumer experiences, or other appropriate comparison
- Target: Move from last into top 10 on Forrester industry ranking.1
Reducing burden for Government’s customers
- Measurement: Focus on designated High Impact Service Providers (HISP) services (near term).
- Measurement: Focus on designated cross-agency life experiences (long term).
- Target: Establish Government-wide Service Level Agreement targets for customer contact centers (forthcoming).
Improving trust in Government
- Target: Achieve 75 percent or higher post-transaction trust in High Impact Service Providers.
1 The Forrester Customer Experience Index (2021) rates industries' customer experiences on a scale of 1 to 100, using results from a nationally representative survey.
Strategies
1
Improve the service design, digital products, and customer-experience management of Federal High-Impact Service Providers by reducing customer burden, addressing inequities, and streamlining processes.
Goal 1.1
By 2024, all HISPs will publicly report trust, satisfaction, and other service performance data on performance.gov/cx for all of their designated high impact services.
Success metrics
- Reporting on performance.gov/cx.
Goal 1.2
By 2024, all HISPs will have the talent required to gather ongoing qualitative customer feedback, conduct user testing for all communications, digital products and other service components, and apply human-centered design research methods.
Success metrics
- Capacity measured in annual CX Capacity Assessment; by 2024 all HISPs will share their score in this area in their annual CX Action Plan.
Goal 1.1
By 2024, all HISPs will publicly report trust, satisfaction, and other service performance data on performance.gov/cx for all of their designated high impact services.
Update
INITIAL MILESTONES
35 of 35 High Impact Service Providers shared their designated priority services on performance.gov/cx
23 of 35 High Impact Service Providers currently collect customer feedback
10 newly designated High Impact Service Providers to begin reporting customer feedback by FY23 Q1
In FY23 Q1, all High Impact Service Providers to shift to reporting feedback in the context of their designated services
Goal 1.2
By 2024, all HISPs will have the talent required to gather ongoing qualitative customer feedback, conduct user testing for all communications, digital products and other service components, and apply human-centered design research methods.
Update
INITIAL MILESTONES
35 of 35 High Impact Service Providers conducted their 2022 CX Capacity Assessment
35 of 35 High Impact Service Providers conducted an annual Deep Dive with OMB to identify priority areas of improvement to inform the FY24 budget process
Agencies to develop CX Action Plans (Drafts FY22 Q3; Final FY22 Q4)
35 of 35 High Impact Service Providers to share capacity update following 2023 Deep Dive on performance.gov/cx
LEADERSHIP
Pam Coleman
Associate Director for Performance and Personnel Management
Office of Management and Budget
2
Design, build, and manage Government service delivery for key life experiences that cut across Federal agencies.
Goal Statement and Success Metrics
Collectively, more than 10 agencies across Government have formed interagency teams to improve the public’s experience during the following moments in people’s lives:
- Approaching retirement
- Recovering from a disaster
- Navigating the transition to civilian life following military service
- Birth and early childhood for low-income women and their children
- Facing a financial shock and becoming newly eligible for critical supports
In the coming months, teams will develop success measures that will be used to demonstrate improvement of service delivery during these designated life experiences. These life experiences were selected through an interagency review process following E.O. 14058, which directed the selection of life experiences within 90 days.
Collectively, more than 10 agencies across Government have formed interagency teams to improve the public’s experience during the following moments in people’s lives:
- Approaching retirement
- Recovering from a disaster
- Navigating the transition to civilian life following military service
- Birth and early childhood for low-income women and their children
- Facing a financial shock and becoming newly eligible for critical supports
In the coming months, teams will develop success measures that will be used to demonstrate improvement of service delivery during these designated life experiences. These life experiences were selected through an interagency review process following E.O. 14058, which directed the selection of life experiences within 90 days.
Learn more about the life experiences work
Update
INITIAL MILESTONES
The President’s Management Council (PMC) designated five Life Experiences to prioritize for Government-wide action
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and PMC publicly released Project Charters for all five Life Experiences
OMB and PMC launched Life Experiences Discovery Sprints, including first-person human-centered design research with members of the public
OMB and PMC submitted 6-month update on the status of all five Life Experiences Discovery Sprints per Executive Order 14058 (June 2022)
Life Experience teams to recommend improvements to make measurable improvements, grounded in addressing priority customer pain points (FY23 Q1)
OMB and PMC to share selected projects for implementation; report on progress (FY23 Q2)
LEADERSHIP
The President’s Management Council is responsible for forming interagency teams to tackle cross-agency life experiences, pursuant to E.O. 14058, Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery To Rebuild Trust in Government, of December 13, 2021
3
Identify and prioritize the development of Federal shared products, services, and standards that enable simple, seamless, and secure customer experiences across High Impact Service Providers.
Goal 3.1
Create modular, common building blocks to support Government digital services, including public-facing systems, to reduce the delay between identifying the public need and meeting that need at the expected delivery satisfaction level, as one of the major drivers of good customer experience with digital services is the ability to build and update those digital services quickly to meet the speed of need and customer expectation.
Success metrics
- Adoption of modular, common building blocks for digital services, including public-facing systems, across Government, which may take the form of digital infrastructure, products, services, or channels, and which may be implemented singly or in combination.
- Speed of iterative development to a web application (e.g., how often code is deployed) and success the rate of those changes (e.g., how often is a rollback during deployment necessary, and if there is a rollback, how long does it take to fix the deployment) in key public-facing digital services across Government.
Goal 3.1
Create modular, common building blocks to support Government digital services, including public-facing systems, to reduce the delay between identifying the public need and meeting that need at the expected delivery satisfaction level, as one of the major drivers of good customer experience with digital services is the ability to build and update those digital services quickly to meet the speed of need and customer expectation.
Update
GSA is providing modular, common building blocks to support Government digital services, including public-facing systems, to reduce the delay between identifying the public need and meeting that need at the expected delivery satisfaction level, as one of the major drivers of good customer experience with digital services is the ability to build and update those digital services quickly to meet the speed of need and customer expectation. In accordance with EO 14058, GSA will be transmitting to OMB in June a roadmap for a redesigned USA.gov website that aims to serve as a centralized, digital Federal “front door” and a report for prioritized common services and standards, platforms, and digital products.
INITIAL MILESTONES
ARP funds have been allocated through Federal Citizen Services Fund to position USA.gov as the digital Federal front door
GSA to develop individual roadmaps for shared digital products, services, platforms, and standards in order to track progress and measure delivery outcomes (Drafts FY22 Q2; Finals FY22 Q3-Q4)
OMB and GSA to engage HISPs and Life Experiences teams to identify opportunities for new shared products and services that support cross-agency delivery (FY22 Q3-Q4)
LEADERSHIP
Dave Zvenyach
Director of the Technology Transformation Services
General Services Administration
Featured insights
INSIGHT
The Federal Government lags behind all other industries in customer experience quality
According to the Forrester Customer Experience Index (CX Index™), which measures customer experience quality across industries, customers of Federal services consistently report a worse experience in terms of service quality, ease of use, and other factors in comparison to other industries.
