Delivering Excellent, Equitable, and Secure Federal Services and Customer Experience

November 2024

This September, hundreds of customer experience champions across High Impact Service Providers (HISPs), Life Experience teams, and federal agencies were recognized with Service to the Citizen Awards for their continuous efforts to improve services and deliver tangible results for the public. As we approach the end of 2024 and the President’s Management Agenda, customer experience teams remain steadfast in their belief in simple, seamless, and secure government services for all Americans – and making it reality. The successful launches of Online Passport Renewal and Direct File enabled the State Department and IRS to expand these critical services to more travelers and taxpayers into 2025. Agencies are Tackling the Time Tax and reducing administrative burden across government by adopting electronic signatures on the Social Security Administration’s most commonly used forms, piloting offline reporting templates for Tribal members in remote areas, and centralizing applications in portals like MySBA and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Center. Life Experience teams are on track to train over 300 FEMA frontline staff in trauma-informed practices, deliver 10,000 Newborn Supply Kits to mothers and families across 10 states, and automatically renew Medicaid coverage for over 5 million Americans. 

In addition to delivering on commitments, customer experience teams continue to share learnings and best practices with peers across agencies, levels of government, and sectors. The “Recovering from a Disaster” team finalized a Holistic Burden Assessment toolkit that draws on inputs and feedback from five federal agencies, so that any customer-facing team can use it to identify, measure, and develop plans to reduce burden in their processes. After hosting a series of consultations and technical assistance workshops with state administrators, the “Facing a Financial Shock” team incorporated IT procurement and vendor management insights to enhance the publicly available De-Risking Government Technology Guide. In September, the “Approaching Retirement” interagency team, led by the Administration for Community Living, hosted the third and final Federal Forum on Serving Older Adults. Over the course of the pilot, more than 380 staff from community-based organizations participated in peer-to-peer networking and conversations with federal officials, with 97% of respondents agreeing that participating increased their access to materials and tools that will help the older adults they serve make informed retirement decisions.

Looking forward, customer experience teams continue to chart the course for future improvements. Explore Life Experience evaluation plans in the portfolio pages, and HISP 2024 CX Action Plans here.

Highlights

July 2024

A June Government Accountability Report touted the progress High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) and Life Experience teams have made to improve customer experience and service delivery through goals, dedicated resources, and data. This past quarter, customer experience teams have made additional strides to showcase customer feedback data, and improve and increase access to customer-centered resources.

Since Customer Experience was named a priority of the President’s Management Agenda, OMB and HISPs have aimed to build accountability and trust by publicly reporting customer feedback data. The newly launched Trust in Major Government Service Providers dashboard furthers that aim, providing visualizations and tools to view which services meet the target trust benchmark, explore drivers of trust, and compare trust measures between services within the same agency or service category. This dashboard enables external stakeholders and government customer experience teams to draw insights and inform service improvements. To learn more, read the dashboard explainer.

With respect to Strategy 2, Life Experience teams are continuing to pilot and iterate on solutions for the public. The Navigating Transition to Civilian Life team soft launched an application on VA.gov for transitioning service members, veterans, families, and caregivers that it will refine through design sprints and customer feedback. The Facing a Financial Shock team is testing a consent-based verification prototype that allows applicants to securely share payroll data with state agencies for Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits determination. Finally, the Recovering from a Disaster team invited leaders from national nonprofits, state and local governments, and community-based organizations to participate in and provide feedback on the Trauma-Informed Disaster Response course and is working with agencies to improve the burden assessment toolkit.

Additionally, Life Experience teams are expanding the reach of piloted resources. The Administration for Community Living created a dedicated webpage for the Federal Decision Support Guide so individuals approaching retirement and their caregivers can easily find support and modules on healthcare, housing, and more. The recently published Alumni Peer Navigator Services playbook and pilot recap blog outline how Healthy Start sites can prepare former participants to serve as a resource to identify federal support for new mothers and support enrollment. The Having a Child and Early Childhood team presented on the playbook and other efforts to the Government of Canada’s Secretariat on Early Learning and Child Care as part of a follow-up visit from a March plenary.

Highlights

April 2024

Across the Customer Experience Priority Area activities, agency teams spent the last quarter sharing and demonstrating at a variety of events and forums the tangible improvements they are making to deliver simple, seamless, and secure services. On March 5, CX representatives from more than 17 agencies shared information about their innovative approaches, tangible impact, and customer stories with federal colleagues, Congressional staffers, and public attendees as part of a “Digital Delivery Demonstration Day,” hosted by Congress.

In addition to participating in the Digital Delivery Demonstration Day, Life Experience project teams hosted and participated in several convenings. The “Having a Child and Early Childhood” Life Experience team and partners from the Office of the Vice President, the General Service Administration (GSA) Performance.gov team, and nonprofit partners, led an interdisciplinary workshop to consider a range ideas for supporting young families. The gathering, coinciding with the United Nations Women’s Commission on the Status of Women conference, enabled over 40 maternal and childhood advocates, funders, innovators, and community organization representatives to share individual ideas inspired by international models. Members from the “Approaching Retirement” Life Experience team working on the “Increasing Access to Decision-Making Support for Older Adults” project hosted the first Federal Forum for Older Adults for more than 200 attendees from inside and outside of government. The Forum included plenary presentations and breakout discussions led by federal agency partners on topics such as programs made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act and the expanded eligibility for the “Extra Help” program that helps Medicare beneficiaries with low income pay for prescription drug coverage. Finally, the “Recovering from a Disaster” Life Experience team hosted a webinar featuring updates on pilot projects and milestones, which can be viewed here.

As part of the routines designed to assess and improve how high impact parts of government can better serve the public, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is partnering with agencies for the third annual “Deep Dive” meetings. This follows a FY24 CX Capacity Assessment. These sessions allow diverse stakeholders from across OMB to gain a deeper understanding of gaps and opportunities identified in their Capacity Assessments and collaborate with agencies to begin exploring possibilities for FY26 Action Plan commitments. Lastly, the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2025 directs funds for expertise and tools necessary to ensure excellent service delivery and customer experience across the Federal Government. To learn more, read the FY25 CX White House Fact Sheet here.

Highlights

February 2024

The CX team continues to empower agencies to deliver an increasingly simple, seamless, and secure customer experience across government. In September 2023, the OMB CX team surveyed HISPs about training needs, drawing on insights from the 2023 Capacity Assessment, Deep Dives, and agency conversations. Over the past several months, HISPs have begun engaging in collaborative efforts to build their capacity in journey map development, organizational design, digital experience, talent models and much more, learning through workshops as a cohort across government. Simultaneously, the OMB CX team provided “Office Hours” to assist HISPs in transitioning their surveys to updated A-11 280 guidelines, streamlining and simplifying the response process and aligning with best practices in customer experience management. For the latest updates on HISP customer feedback data, see the CX Trust Dashboard for HISP Trust Scores and the Customer Feedback Data Dashboard for drivers of customer experience. 

Across the five Life Experiences, collaborating agency PMC members and OMB agreed on plans for 12 projects for design and pilot phase work in FY24. Individual project teams have provided detailed updates on their progress in implementing and scaling their pilots, as well as outlining additional milestones and next steps through updates in the Strategy 2 tables and the dedicated Life Experience project pages. Finally, the Strategy 3 teams continue to build out shared resources and tools to support implementation of recent OMB guidance on Digital Experience and Digital Accessibility. Digital.gov ​​has been reimagined and reorganized to serve as the central hub for information on these resources and features over 50 topic pages on the various aspects that contribute to digital experience delivery. 

Highlights

December 2023

Agency High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) participated in CX Action Plan “Pitch” meetings throughout summer 2023. HISP teams discussed and shared their respective HISP’s deliverables for 2023 and commitments for delivery in 2024 based on expected realities, which can be found in each HISP’s 2023 CX Action Plan, and their potential priorities for FY 2025 based on opportunities and gaps identified throughout FY 2023’s CX Capacity Assessments and “Deep Dive” conversations. HISP teams also discussed the possibility of new service designations for FY 2024 and making adjustments to existing designations. For more information on the agency HISPs, a list of HISP services and 2023 CX Action Plans, please visit the HISP web page in the CX section of performance.gov (last revised December 7, 2023). In addition, the Life Experience teams completed an initial design phase for their project milestones announced in January 2023. Each of the project teams presented summaries of their progress to the President’s Management Council in October, which are now in the sidebar of each Life Experience page here. Moving forward, Life Experience teams will shift focus towards the development phase of their projects to refine, scale, and implement their findings. Moving forward, Life Experience teams will shift focus towards the development phase of their projects to refine, scale, and implement their findings; each Life Experience page includes more information about each project. Lastly, following the release of OMB guidance on Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience in September 2023, the team working under Strategy 3 has developed additional milestones aligned to key actions specified in the guidance. These additions build on existing in-progress commitments to provide agencies with the shared standards and services they need to continually enhance digital experiences for the public and fully implement the requirements of the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act. To learn more about the guidance and available resources for agencies, read the White House Fact Sheet or visit the Digital.gov resource page.

Highlights

August 2023

The 35 High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) worked diligently to assess their own customer experience (CX) capabilities as they continue to design improvements that address pain points of their customers. In February of 2023, all 35 HISPs completed their CX Capacity Assessment. This activity provided HISPs with an opportunity to self-report their capacity and maturity levels on components of CX including: talent, service management, digital capabilities, and leadership buy-in. The OMB CX team analyzed the Capacity Assessment submissions to prepare for Deep Dive meetings with each HISP in March 2023, in which the team discussed results and explored further opportunities to build a comprehensive understanding of HISP organizational maturity, capacity to deliver, barriers to success, and catalysts for improvements. The Life Experience portfolios and projects are working to meet milestones and produce deliverables for this fiscal year and beyond. Teams are traveling nationwide, leading workshops, testing prototypes, providing technical assistance, and continuing to learn from members of the public. For the Facing a financial shock portfolio, state prototypes are underway to enable automated ex parte renewals (determining eligibility with data already available). Newborn Supply Kits (Birth to early childhood) have been launched in Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico, with a hospital partner in each state and additional community-based organizational distribution partners. This quarter’s milestone report also includes accomplishments and progress in the Approaching retirement, Recovering from a disaster, and Transition to civilian life portfolios. Lastly, Strategy 3 now includes new deliverables in support of the implementation of 21st Century IDEA.

Highlights

May 2023

The Customer Experience Priority Area has continued to deliver on its commitment to a simple, seamless, and secure customer experience across federal government services and platforms. The team has produced a new data visualization of post-transaction trust data reported by High Impact Service Providers in support of the Priority Area’s success measure. Across the five Life Experiences, project teams have provided detailed updates on their progress toward completing their goals, along with planned milestones and next steps. Additionally, leaders are taking strides towards their goal of designing and developing resources to empower agencies to deliver better federal websites and digital services, in addition to releasing new planned milestones for Strategy 3.

Highlights

March 2023

The Customer Experience Priority Area continued to make progress to transform federal benefits, services, and programs through improved service delivery and customer experience. Updates for individual High Impact Service Providers commitments to make their services more simple, seamless, and secure are now available at performance.gov/cx/executive-order. Notably, each of the five Life Experiences teams have publicly shared their discovery sprint findings, including detailed customer journey maps and stories, and have identified initial projects for implementation in 2023 to address priority pain points at performance.gov/cx/projects.

Highlights

November 2022

The Customer Experience Priority Area has made progress translating the President’s historic Executive Order 14058 on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government into action. In addition to individual agencies acting to improve their customer experience, the five priority Life Experiences projects announced this Spring are developing opportunity areas for agency and government-wide action based on their discovery sprints. OMB and GSA also recently announced that the Technology Modernization Fund will allocate $100 million to improve customer experiences with the federal government. Finally, the 35 federal High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) continue to make progress promoting ongoing accountability for federal service delivery. See additional details and updates on progress on the CX Blog.

Highlights

July 2022

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.

Highlights