Simplifying Government — by Focusing on Customer Needs
What’s the goal of newly passed digital government legislation called the 21st Century Integrated Digital Services Act (IDEA)?
As I discussed recently on Government Matters, the goal of the 21st Century IDEA is to ensure the American people have modern websites and digital services that meet their needs. It sets an ambitious vision for simple, easy-to-to use, secure, and personalized digital services — whether you are renewing a passport, applying for health care at the VA, or seeking federal student aid.
It’s encouraging to see bipartisan agreement on the importance of digital services focused on the end-user. Representative Ro Khanna (D) was the primary author, and Senator Portman (R) and Representative Ratcliffe (R) were important Republican co-sponsors. Additionally, Matt Lira, Special Assistant to the President, in the Office of American Innovation, deserves a lot of credit for shepherding the legislation and building bipartisan and industry support for the legislation.
I’ve talked with CIOs, CTOs, and other senior federal executives about the 21st Century IDEA.
Some are excited by the ambitious vision it sets that gives them additional air cover as they continue to do great work. Congress and the Administration will look for wins — and they can use that to their advantage to modernize faster.
Other government executives I’ve talked with are more cautious. The law doesn’t fund new efforts, it doesn’t address structural reforms in areas like the Paperwork Reduction Act, hiring, or procurement, and it creates additional reporting requirements. That said, I’m also guilty of helping create unfunded mandates myself, when I was in the White House, such as President Obama’s Open Data Executive Order and OMB Management Memo 13–13 — which have been recently codified into law.
I fall somewhere between the excited and cautious executives. I think 21st Century IDEA is a good first step, and it codifies some of the great work agencies and digital services teams are already doing. It also can be useful to point to a mandate, funded or not, to get work done in government.
While a good first step, I think the legislation could have addressed the reality that not all Americans visit government websites when they are looking for information and services. Americans are increasingly finding information about — and engaging with — government on social media. For consumer brands, responding to customers on Twitter or Facebook is commonplace. The federal government needs to include social media — where many Americans spend hours per day — in its push to improve customer experiences with government.
The legislation also doesn’t address what Aneesh Chopra and I have called “wholesale digital government” — i.e. open data and APIs to extend the reach of government information and transactions. We need to think about how search, apps, maps, and even voice services like Alexa and Siri can serve the America people — before, and even instead of, visiting a government website.
Implementing 21st Century IDEA
Now that 21st Century IDEA is the law of the land, what should agencies do now? I suggest three things:
First, agencies should to align their digital services and customer experience groups, give them the proper funding, and make them enterprise-wide functions. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is an example of an agency that has brought these functions together into a single directorate; other agencies, like the VA, have them in separate groups but have them working closely together. In addition to coordinating closely with IT and digital services, a customer experience office should be fully integrated across the mission and business areas of an agency, working across online, phone, and in-person customer experiences.
Regardless of the organizational structure, Congress should properly fund Customer Experience (CX) offices and digital service teams across government. The U.S. Digital Service — including the headquarters inside OMB and agency teams inside VA, HHS, DHS, and DoD — also needs to be properly funded and supported. Despite a strong track record of success, the Trump Administration has unfortunately proposed to cut the USDS budget in fiscal year 2020.
Second, we need to make sure we continue to recruit and upskill great technologists, product managers, and designers. Modernizing government services without addressing hiring and upskilling is a recipe in futility. It is encouraging though to see the current Presidential Management Agenda focused in part on workforce issues, and OPM is making it easier to directly hire technologists in federal government.
And third, we need to make sure we are buying great technology and using modern tools, rather than trying to custom build everything from scratch. New authorities and offices — from Other Transactional Authority to the Defense Innovation Unit — can help agencies try and buy technology faster. But we also need product managers inside of government that can research, buy, and use technology that is winning in the marketplace.
As an example, here are a few category-leading companies in the Insight Venture Partners portfolio that can help:
- Qualtrics — the most widely used and secure experience management platform across the public sector. President Obama recently spoke at their annual X4 conference recently — see a great recap here.
- Hootsuite — the leading provider of enterprise social media management.
- Yext — the leading provider of integrations to search, apps, maps, and voice for public-facing data, so Americans can find the government information they are looking for.
- Alteryx — the leading self-serve data analytics platform.
- Pluralsight — the leading technology learning and skills assessment platform.
The VA.gov Story
As I said on Government Matters, the new VA.gov — what I call the overnight 6-year success — is a great example of why focusing on Veterans needs, using modern technology, and teamwork across VA is yielding results.
In the few months since the new VA.gov has launched, the VA has seen a 16% rise in customer satisfaction on redesigned webpages. They’ve also seen a double digit increase in online applications for educational benefits, and over 80% percent increase in online applications for health care.
The VA is doing good work serving all Veterans online, and I’m excited to see what they continue to deliver for Veterans.
Let’s build on the VA’s momentum and the passage of 21st Century IDEA to make government simple, secure, and personalized.
