Reflecting on Six Years of High Impact Service Providers

Since the designation of the first cohort of High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) in 2018, agencies across government have worked to raise the standard of service delivery for the American public through their commitment to building organizations that are of, by, and for the people. These six years of work across the federal CX community mean that agencies are now better equipped – with the necessary data, tools, and talent – to listen to and meet the needs of the customers they serve. Across 17 agencies, the 38 active HISPs continue to bring customer voices into the design and delivery of services, and into leadership decision-making processes, so that agencies are accountable to the voices and needs of their customers as they provide simple, seamless, and secure customer experiences.

TAKEAWAYS FROM 2024 ACTIVITIES

In 2024, HISPs continued to put the customer first in their core operations, embedding human-centered design and embracing customer feedback to deliver for the people they serve. Such practices improve mission delivery, whether making it easier for farmers to access loans, improving veterans’ healthcare experiences, enabling safe travel, or providing assistance after a natural disaster. Building on the efforts of the last five years, agencies strengthened their ability to conduct customer experience research on needs, collect customer feedback on services, and use customer inputs to make service delivery more efficient and effective. HISPs also increasingly relied tools like journey maps that make it easier to see and understand the customer view, and help anchor their work in the experience of the people they serve. Agencies also implemented approaches like user observation and iterative testing to learn how their customers interact with the forms and digital tools they deploy so they can regularly improve them. Altogether, the growth of these CX best practices demonstrates a meaningful shift towards becoming a government that reduces burdens, meets needs, and builds trust.

Every year, HISPs reflect on progress made, strengths, and opportunities for improvement through the capacity assessment process. The 2024 Capacity Assessment highlighted HISP strengths related to culture, customer data, and digital services, including:

• Nearly three quarters of HISPs now provide training on CX practices and skills to their employees
• Two thirds of HISPs incorporate CX measures into performance plans for SES and/or GS staff, so that employees more consistently share a focus on customer experience
• Nearly all HISPs stated they have a dedicated person who can help them use their agency’s OMB Circular A-11 section 280 umbrella clearance to conduct customer research, which makes it easier for agencies to ask their customers for feedback and insights
• Three quarters of HISPs are keeping track of customer and employee pain points, and are using this data to prioritize service delivery improvements
• More than 80% of HISPs stated they regularly review web analytics to better understand how customers use digital channels

The capacity assessment results also revealed opportunities for improvement, primarily connected to addressing talent needs and expanding the use of data for decision-making. Nearly all HISPs expressed a need for additional staff with core service delivery improvement skillsets like CX strategists, user experience (UX) designers, and data scientists, among others. Only a quarter of HISPs stated they have a process in place to present feedback data alongside operational data for leadership, which would make it easier to make connections between how well a service is working and the feedback customers provide.

These insights, along with goals set last year (see below), informed how the OMB CX team prioritized efforts to meet HISP needs through strategic initiatives, technical assistance, and community support.

Progress in 2024

The list below outlines goals (set at the end of FY2023) for what the CX team wanted to be true for all HISPs at the end of FY2024, and shares updates on progress made towards those goals.

By the end of FY2024, all HISPs should have:

• Clearly defined, well-scoped, and meaningful service designations publicly available on performance.gov/cx
  • End of FY2024 Update: Meaningful, clearly defined, and well-scoped service designations can be found on performance.gov/cx/hisps/ for all active HISPs.
• Baseline service blueprints/journey maps that identify customer pain points and opportunities to collect feedback
  • End of FY2024 Update: As of February 2024, 60% of services (up from 50% in 2023) state they have a service blueprint and/or journey map. To support progress on this goal, the CX team offered a free training series for HISPs, led by experts at the Lab at OPM. This series was designed to equip HISP staff with the foundational knowledge and tools to build and use a journey map as a key tool for service delivery improvement. Around 150 staff from ~30 agencies attended trainings in this series.
• The ability to collect and submit data to OMB from at least one survey with a trust question that meets data quality measures, for each designated service
  • End of FY2024 Update: 63 of 71 designated services have launched at least one post-transaction customer feedback survey that includes an approved trust question. 49 of 71 services are currently reporting customer feedback data from these surveys to OMB for inclusion in the newly-redesigned Trust in Major Government Service Providers dashboard on performance.gov, which allows the public to view and compare survey-, service-, and agency-level customer feedback data across the HISP community.
• Access to a toolkit that provides guides and templates for customer research and community engagement
  • End of FY2024 Update: The CX team developed standardized guides, resources, and templates for HISPs to use to conduct customer research and utilize the A-11 280 umbrella clearances, including best practices for navigating the Paperwork Reduction Act. Additionally, the CX team published and will continue to develop, through public input, a toolkit for agencies to use to incorporate more public participation and community engagement into their work.
• An umbrella A-11 280 clearance in place at their respective agency, and maintain this clearance to continue to support CX work
  • End of FY2024 Update: All 17 agencies with active HISPs continue to have A-11 280 umbrella clearances in place to support CX work, which will continue to provide agencies with the ability to conduct customer experience research.
• Access to an initial service scorecard that outlines core elements and success measures to assess and improve their services in line with 21st Century IDEA and customer expectations of simple, seamless, and secure experiences
  • End of FY2024 Update: The CX team piloted an initial list of core metrics in the 2024 CX Capacity Assessment related to effective service management and digital best practices.
• Access to certified potential hires to fill critical CX positions resulting from a third government-wide CX SME-QA hiring effort
  • End of FY2024 Update: In partnership with the Hiring Experience (HX) team at the Office of Personnel Management, the CX team facilitated a SME-QA hiring effort to recruit CX Strategists into the federal government. To-date, more than a dozen candidates have been selected to join federal service from the list of highly-qualified candidates, with six months still remaining for additional CX Strategists to join government via this hiring effort.
• The opportunity to benefit from an organizational design cohort focused on standing up CX offices in a way that supports CX success, to support enacting proposals in the FY24 President’s Budget
  • End of FY2024 Update: By collaborating with the Partnership for Public Service and the General Services Administration, the OMB CX team offered HISPs the opportunity to participate in the CX Organization Design Roundtable, a six-month learning series and peer-to-peer learning program focused on the core elements of CX capacity and maturity including culture, hiring, funding, and governance.
• The opportunity to be trained in agile, CX-informed procurement processes, and capabilities to improve HISP contracting
  • End of FY2024 Update: The General Services Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) developed a CX Service Evaluation and Buying Guide for human-centered design and service design services.
• The opportunity to learn more about and make progress on establishing and improving consistent Voice of the Customer programs, systems, and practices to enable a holistic approach to customer feedback
  • End of FY2024 Update: USDA developed a Voice of the Customer regulation that is available to agencies.

Service Delivery Improvement and Capacity Building Commitments

In addition to these accomplishments in support of the broader federal CX community, HISPs are in the process of delivering on the more than 100 commitments they made in 2023 Action Plans to improve service delivery and build organizational capacity in 2024.

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WHAT’S AHEAD FOR CX AND HISPS IN 2025

Expanding and Supporting the HISP Community

With the start of FY2025, the HISP community welcomed the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services. As a new HISP, ACF will join the community of agencies selected due to the scale and critical nature of their services.

To support the maturity and capacity growth of all HISPs, the CX team will continue to convene agencies working on similar efforts, provide technical assistance, establish partnerships, develop resources outlining leading practices, and amplify agency success stories. Informed by agency strengths and needs, and building on lessons learned and successes from previous years, the CX team plans to prioritize strengthening how agencies:

• Meet Customer Needs through Service Delivery: Improve how agencies and their leadership continue to expand their ability to use customer feedback data, along with operational metrics, to more effectively and efficiently deliver for the American people.
• Build Organizational Capacity: Through hiring, training, and procurement, strengthen how agencies sustain their ability to conduct human-centered design and service delivery improvement work to meet customer needs.
• Embrace Digital Delivery and Innovation: Where aligned with customer needs, support ongoing and new efforts to innovate across digital channels and align with digital service delivery best practices, as outlined in OMB M-23-22 and the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act.

Service Delivery Improvement and Capacity Building Commitments

As a part of the annual cycle, HISP delivery commitments for 2025 were recently published (as the 2024 Action Plan) on each HISP’s page on performance.gov. We invite you to explore what HISPs have outlined as their service delivery improvement and capacity building priorities for the upcoming year.