sorted out uh hello and welcome to hrx webinar series atarc is the advanced technology academic research center and is a non-profit that facilitates collaboration between government industry and academia in order to accelerate technology and modernization initiatives they provide ongoing opportunities for cross-agency collaboration through on-site interaction learning and market research today's session is on the executive order the president's management agenda and customer experience our topic experts joining us here today will share strategies that agencies can implement to meet mission objectives my name is justin brooks i'm a director here at servicenow responsible for customer and industry workflows at federal i have the pleasure of moderating today's panel so welcome to all attendees a special thanks to connie coleman alicia puccio and the rest of the servicenow team today we're going to hear from our panelists followed by a q a session we'll pop up a few poll questions and then answer yours before we begin i just want to uh encourage the audience to submit questions of your own in the q a section and also answer the poll questions that'll be coming up throughout the session today uh to kick things off we wanted to set the stage to talk about the president's management agenda that was released back in october of 2021 and in that management agenda there was three core priorities that were identified the strengthening and powering of the federal workforce uh delivery of excellent equitable and secure federal services and customer experience and the management of business government to build back better the president then promptly followed up with the executive order and in that executive order he called on agencies to put the citizen and the customer at the focus of everything that we collectively do as the government in the contractor community as part of the executive order the president identified 36 specific customer improvement areas across 17 federal agencies and identified the specific them as specific high impact service centers but the eeo is just not limited to those hisps but all agencies are delivering services to customers whether those be citizens veterans service members of their families or industry so now i would like to introduce our panelists if you would like to give a wave when i call your name and please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background your current position anything else you'd like our audience to know about your department or agency mr mike palmer let's go ahead and start with you all right hi um my name is michael palmer i'm with the bureau of industry and security at the department of commerce um i am the chief experience officer and associate cio for bis and just to give you a little bit of background on what bis does whenever a company or entity that could be an individual wants to export a technology outside of the united states they need a license and so half of what bis does is that licensing process and the other half of what bis does is investigate cases of people trying to get around that licensing process and so that's bis in a nutshell great thank you mr palmer um mr johnny dickes jd hi mr dicas from the department of energy i'm the program manager for the data center optimization initiative as well as sustainability some other hats i wear is the 21st century idea act program manager and the customer experience for the agency so that's uh what i'm doing i manage a lot of stuff with innovation and emerging technologies as well in the cio's office thank you okay thank you mr dykus uh miss barbara morton over to you hello everybody great to be with you all today so i am barbara morton i am va's deputy chief veterans experienced officer i am a public servant a proud public servant of about 16 years here at va and joined the veterans experience office about five and a half years ago and essentially what we are charged with doing is really infusing the voice of the veteran to strategy operations and decision making and we do that through a number of capabilities human-centered design real-time surveys the ability to translate that information into tangible tools to empower employees to deliver better experiences technology and engagement as well and looking forward to diving into this topic area together thanks all right thank you miss morton uh mr gary washington hi um i'm gary washington and thank you for having me today i am the usda chief information officer i've been a chief information officer a little over four years i've been in usda for about 11 years i work really closely with uh office of customer experience and they applied to improve the customer experience for all of our citizens and employees and we're really focused on really improving the customer experience and improving um service delivery as well and i'm very excited to be talking about uh the two important uh parts of the pma to me uh the workforce and the customer experience absolutely thank you mr washington and uh we'll close out with miss caroline simmons hi everybody i'm caroline simmons i'm a senior strategist on a very small customer experience team over at the cyber security and infrastructure security agency i'm fairly new to government service transitioning from the private sector in the last year and although i've been working in this space for the past decade i have had the privilege of developing a particular expertise in building new programs and services within the government so excited to be here today all right thank you miss simmons um and thank you to all of our panelists for joining us here today at the opening i talk through the president's management agenda and the executive order so inclusive of you know those directives why does the federal government need to re-prioritize the customer experience um mike was that some place you'd like to start sure um some people choose to engage with the government and others are forced to because of uh because of what they need to do and so you think about the multitude of experiences and i think i was really exposed to this a lot during my time with the us digital service and learned from the design community there that people shouldn't be forced to go through a poor experience just because they have to engage with the government and so i think this executive order hits at the heart of that and makes it a priority for us so um for coming into coming into my gig my new gig here at bis about six six seven months ago um within the organization i think one of the one of the key things for our customer experience is just to have those customers at a foundational level because some organizations maybe not be at the maturity of even listening to their customers which if their customers aren't even uh feeling listened to then how can you really start to build build a trust between you and the people that you're serving so i think that's one thing that we've been focusing on is just the fact that we're hearing what's needed from our communities that we serve um internal and external so i'll just stop right there that's kind of what we've focused on initially is is listening a basic skill so it's funny i yeah so i'll cut it right there can i add one one thing something that mike said i really resonated with me that like just because you have to use government doesn't mean you should be forced to go through a bad experience i mean that to me is such a great encapsulation of it and it really kind of grounds us in getting back to basics of why are we all here we're here to serve the people the people first not the bureaucracy first right and so i just think that is it's some of the some of the most important things are so foundationally simple and i think mike you just did a great job of describing that yeah no thank you mike uh thank you barbara so you know you mike was just talking about you know foundationally and barbara you're talking about the other people um you know to transition you know there's also the um the culture and the folks that are currently with an organization um so you know how does an agency you know work through their culture and the people factor in creating an environment where cx modernization can thrive yeah so so i can kind of speak from a va perspective i mean it's really interesting so having the drivers that you mentioned these levers in government like an eo which is really kind of the pinnacle of a driver for us in the executive branch right to sort of um abide by and sort of you know make make sure we're kind of fulfilling that intent i mean it's it really those things really help us but to kind of seep deeply into the culture i think you really have to connect the so what for for your people right and for us it's really interesting in va so we have multiple business lines one of our largest business lines is medical care as you probably are all familiar and so early on in our office formation back in 2016 or so time frame we knew we wanted to prove the concept of the value of experience and we partnered early on with the veterans health administration it was a very easy connection for for that team to make with why experience is so important because they are caring for literally caring for veterans and their families and so i think there wasn't a large cultural leap um in in that respect and we were able to sort of over time tie it to our core values as an organization so everybody sees the connectivity of let's say respect and advocacy which are two of our core values to how we treat not only our customers veterans and their families but also each other and so i think being able to tie it to something a common language if you will across an organization has been something that's been really useful in the va space absolutely caroline from my organization partnerships with our stakeholders and customers ultimately make us more effective at our mission right if they mike talked about trust if they trust us they're more likely to report an incident or provide us data that makes us have better more effective decisions with that said it's a fairly new organization and it's a very technical one and i'd be lying to say that you know cx is not an uphill battle to incorporate into the fabric of our culture but what we're asking them to do is not a natural muscle movement and the acknowledgement that that is not a natural muscle movement but ultimately it comes back to what barbara just talked about it's the human at the other end what is their experience what do they think and people aren't necessarily used to that concept and so you know barbara you said it a little differently but we at scissors say what's what's in it for me right how can you help program staff understand that incorporating these principles and fundamentally a different way of doing business help them be more effective at their jobs help them create better products you know it's great to have executive top cover and the eo certainly helps expedite that but the support really comes by demonstrating on the ground what this work actually looks like and how it can benefit on a day-to-day basis program staff and i you know that's been really effective for thank you us this is mr dyke i like to say something recently with the vaccine effort right working on both sides working on the side of the customer on the inside and when we're developing a digital service right as well as them understanding the customer outside that's got to come in and use that service so as we're developing our requirements and having technical staff that's very key so they can understand the dynamics of what we're trying to capture why we're trying to capture so we can report to omb for example as well as trying to make it easy for the customer to come in do the reporting that they need to do and have that good exam that experience so that's just an example of recently what we've been trying to do in the department of energy to make a good customer experience and then leveraging that as a template for future development of digital services you jd uh mike were you gonna comment well i used to work at sissa like five six years ago and totally i i hear what you're saying about their that not being woven into their culture i am so intrigued on how cis is going to going to tackle cx especially with the cyber security community and and the other folks that are plugged in you know private sector partners very interested in hearing about that over the coming months weeks years yeah it's interesting my background is actually i was at target when they had their data breached several years ago and much to the dismay of my colleagues it says now i was not actually part of the data remediation as part of the cultural shift that happened after that and you know customers were angry and frustrated and totally had lost trust in us as a company and you know we had to change the way that we did business after that large-scale event to build back that trust and on the ground like what i was talking about at sizza you literally had to work with people who they had a specific task or a responsibility that they had previously been responsible for and you were adding that and and now you are responsible for thinking about the experience of the customer and the role that you personally play in that you know if you've been to target and you've had someone say like can i help you find something that was part of the cultural shift and it was a grind at the like lowest level to teach people that that was now part of their new job and i think you're seeing that now in government and certainly at sizza about there's an intentionality behind designing that experience that's happening with or without us actually thinking about it and so you know whether you're talking about agency to agency like it is at sizzo which is is unique to you know some of you guys who are talking about agency to the american public but there's an intentionality in how we're building trust and transparency about why we're doing something what we're doing and then how it benefits them and getting people on the ground level just like i had to do at target to see how they play a role and i think barbara you guys have been really successful at that at the va of this is the role that you play throughout this journey and this is how you are personally responsible for being a part of that that happens at the ground level and i you know it's gonna take a lot of time so i know it's been five years since you've been at sizza but we're still grinding um no thank you everyone you know i'd like to come back to the foundational um you know aspects of setting the stage to to deliver on um you know experiences um you know there's a you know an entire industry built around feedback right you have to look at yelp and things like that that the today's customer is open and willing to provide that feedback and to that end they're also become accustomed to many different modern experiences in their daily life right they want to know why they when they interact with government they can't um you know have some of those similar experiences mr washington you were talking about the two things in the pma that were of the most interest to you right and that was um you know the employees and then the customer experience what is it that you see from you know what citizens expect and then also your employees and the technology that they're able to use in their personal life and what uh what they're able to use to deliver on on services within their professional life as well i think if you think about it when we go through our daily lives outside the federal government i mean we have an expectation that um you know things go uh seamlessly online um we can get anything anywhere anytime um service delivery uh is important to everyone you know whether you go into a restaurant you go to a bank or anywhere else so i think that expectation exists with um the employees and the people we serve so you know why shouldn't we provide that to them i mean that's how things are done in the uh 21st century you know um so i i think you know as we go through this journey because it's not going to happen overnight but as we go through this journey i think you know people will find that they will be you not only will you make your customers happy and as a government we'll get more positive feedback in terms of how we're doing but there will be other uh monumental benefits as well um you know as we you know focus on the customer truly deliver services that are important to them in a way that they want to see them delivered and the things that they need absolutely and um hey kim if we could let's post a poll question i'd like to hear from the audience on what they feel is the biggest inhibitor to their customer experience goals um mr uh dice uh you know yesterday when we were speaking we talked a little bit about you know the infrastructure that needs to be in place uh to support you know the uh the aspirations of agencies to deliver customer service would you uh like to talk a little bit about what you're seeing from your organization absolutely so there's all these challenges of trying to integrate the different technologies and just for example in this recent vaccine effort we use five different cloud environments to make that all work trying to integrate all that and to make it a good customer experience so when they come in when they're logging in through login.gov for example making that a good experience totally authenticate make sure that they can understand why we are having to do these extra steps for security to protect their data for personal information right some of the things we're thinking about too from emerging technologies is the conversational ai right so many people are getting used to like hey siri hey alexa right and getting to the information or the service that they're looking for very quickly and i know it will take a while for government to get to that point but that's the type of expectation that the public is getting used to right you know they're turning on their lights by using an app so as we develop our digital services we need to take a look at some of these technologies right to make it a better experience for them to interact with the federal government thank you [Music] what i'm finding is that like using prototyping and just quick trying new things out it's fitting very well into the customer experience world um and involving users and customers in those experiences with the kinds of technologies that uh that mr ducas was talking about yeah absolutely i i'm not sure if you guys saw the poll when it popped up but over 50 percent of the respondents said legacy technology is the biggest inhibitor to you know the the goals of modernization and creating the new experiences um caroline we also have a question i think it's a very good one that came through in the q a specific for you what are good ways to sustain energy during the grind to get people to realize that everyone is responsible for cx it's funny the what's in it for me applies not only when you're talking externally and you're you know to the point made earlier like when you're pitching it to the end user like this is why we're doing it this is the benefit but it really comes down to that internal pieces way like how we're communicating communication was in english but how we communicate like manage expectations clarify what everybody's role is that applies whether you're talking about your customers or silos um you know it's about finding champions across the different programs at different levels so you know we've identified some executive champions we've identified some program staff you know we've been working really closely with people who on a day-to-day basis their job is interacting with other agencies whether that's sltt partners or industry or other agencies but how can we start to win people over slowly and demonstrate the value in the approach that we are taking you know we're not doing this to you we're not doing this for you we're doing this with you and i mentioned like i'm part of a very small team and so eventually we get pulled off certain projects and so how can we make sure that the residual value that we're providing is that they know we they can come back to us as a resource and that they know what questions to ask um and so that they they understand that it's the approach that we're pitching and that whatever we've interacted with is ultimately better because we were involved because we asked the right questions and i i'll be honest you know we're still working through what what are those right questions you know do we understand the customer demand is that a service or product that we should even be pursuing um are we positioned to provide unique value to customers the answer to that question is not always yes and many of my colleagues you know often jump into a customer engagement and they just ask well what do you want from us and you know that's not exactly the right question because a lot of people don't actually know what they want and it's it's about intentionally designing not just the product or service but the experience in which you gather feedback so that you are designing that service or product to meet the actual underlying need um i hope that's helpful it is kieran that's a good segue to uh a couple more questions that came in very good questions from the audience two of them are uh very similarly uh related um first question comes from gary williams and he asked why do you or how do you measure the success of a cx initiative and that was followed up by michael uh marona and he said you know commercial companies like target can measure their roi by revenue sales customer retention so how does government measure that or why i don't imagine there's things like customer feedback and um you know slas um barbara i see you not in your head you have some thoughts here yeah i mean so this is such a great question and if i can just rewind in history a little bit so back when our office was established in 2015 2016 there was a lot of debate about this very issue like how do you measure impact here right and so for us we were sort of born our office and capability was born out of this out of a crisis really the phoenix va medical center wait time crisis in 2014 and so for us we knew that we had lost trust you heard michael and caroline talk about trust and that's sort of our north star that's our currency so the way we measure our impact at a high level is literally asking veterans and other users do you trust the department to fulfill its commitment to veterans that is our sort of bellwether measure of success and since we launched our capability we started with a level of trust at like you know 55 agreement or strong agreement with that statement right that's like a d like not a great not a great not a great place to start in 2016 but fast forward to today where we have really again proven the concept through healthcare also the digital space as well va.gov and our mobile app we are now at a level of trust where 79 of those surveyed either say they agree or strongly agree with that exact same simple question and so i think what we have to do in government is is sort of open our minds to thinking about measures of success can be operational measures right additional enrollees you know more people who engage with us but a co-equal measure of our success and impact has to be those very simple questions about do you trust this agency was it easy to get what you wanted was it effective do you feel like a valued customer so elevating those experience measures as co-equal performance measures as other traditional operational measures is really how we va have done it and you know we think that it can also apply of course across other agencies and indeed you have the omb a11 circular which asks us as executive branch agencies to measure in this common language in these common domains so i think that's kind of how we're tackling it at va and across government funny we stopped using the word feedback and we call it customer data and to barbara's point she listed off sort of the non-traditional measures of success and you know in a technical organization we have a lot of data on agencies we have a lot of data on our customer that's very operational it's very technical and and pushing at the executive level that there is also value in having this you know i don't want to say feelings because that's never going to go over well in my organization but this other set of metrics that will improve their ability to make decisions and prioritize stuff and it is do they trust us how many people are using it if they were using and they're no longer using it why are they no longer using it and that that set of data is just as valuable as the technical data and that's that's a cultural shift in from an executive perspective that we've been pushing i'd like to chime in on that i agree with the geek in me for example the performance metrics on everything always constantly looking at that and trying to shift the cultural and behavioral of others to the customer experience right you know transactions per second and how long it took someone to fill out a form that's that's one thing but looking at how easy was it to use and then like you said instead of saying feedback what was your customer experience what was your experience and asking them to get some feedback on there so we can make those products and services even better you're right caroline absolutely absolutely so you know we just talked about you know what the um you know the administration is doing right from from a departmental level what you guys are doing at an agency level we've got the executive branch to put out you know the pma and the executive order we had another question that came in from eric johnson many times these executive orders come out and there's a directive and there's no budget that's assigned to it right um so you know from you all's perspective you know the legislative branch what is your expectation from them from a budgetary standpoint what would you like to see to bring those three legs of the stool together well i'll i'll chime in quickly i i we struggle with resources just as it is with meeting our mission you know we do it effectively but we do it on a as as my boss says uh on an rc cola budget you know not a pepsi budget so um i think with a with a sh with attempting to more effectively meet customer needs i think simple resources is a thing to talk about the other thing that comes to mind is the ability to do user research and any potential policies laws that limit that i think is fundamentally going to prevent or discourage effective customer experience work um i also think there's some interesting things that could be done in terms of like um going back to gary with the workforce uh to to to potentially offer some some unique ways to bring on uh a customer experience workforce and really grow that because it's just not there um right now i think to the degree that it needs to be to to to fulfill the executive order um easily so i i think that those couple of things just pop into my mind yeah i think i think in um you know you can ask for more resources and i and i think you know if if you talk to all the agencies they'll say that this area needs to be a better resource because it is a priority for this administration but in usda we have been um very creative about getting everybody involved including our component agencies and i think you can use that as a step towards showing them the so what or what that means for them because it's a partnership you know and quite frankly i think uh customer experience is everybody's responsibility and we should be thinking about the customer moving forward so you know we our deputy secretary is is very focused on this and i work very closely with our customer experience officer and so that we can work together to make sure not just from a business perspective we capture the metrics and and we know what the high impact service providers are doing but we actually have a plan to improve from in the end what the customer experience really is absolutely um thank you mr washington so you know we were just talking about funding right now that funny can go a lot of different places for different resources um you know there was a question that just came in um around you know how can the government be more efficient in delivering um you know their services so when you think about it things from a from a technology perspective and earlier we were just talking about uh the technologies that folks have become accustomed to in their personal life they are exposed to things like virtual agents chat self-serve service and a knowledge database you know a lot of folks don't want to pick up a phone and make a call they want to have everything at their fingertips the information that they need and make a clear submission and then see where things are um in the process um so you know to that end right knowledge base and and the technologies i just spoke of are the things that uh you all are looking at for your agencies that you're looking for modernization in those areas um where do you stand it's mr dyches i like to talk to like that because the transparency is so important right things going into a black hole you submit something you have no idea where it's at along the way right and so there may be approvals and so forth to have to go through and different reviews especially you know people are coming to the department of agency for example for loans and grants for different things for cleaning energy and so forth and so they'd like to know where things said right and so adding transparency where along the stage a particular request is for like a loan or grant really helps the customer know where they're at so that transparency good and i like to go back on that on the funding issue really quickly you know they put money toward the 21st century right not that very first year but the following year they did provide some funding to help us get off and get running up and running and that was beneficial right so it's really putting your money where you think that importance the importance is right and what you want to be successful at so i think if uh congress can actually look at this because we just got you know the federal agency customer experience act right i i i didn't see any dollars yet but you know so hopefully we'll get some dollars to go to go with that right as we try to do these initiatives i think that's very important some people have small teams and we really try to to do what we can with those and try to get out some new technologies and that's why like for example we use you know the agile stuff so we can get a little bit out there get some feedback and put some more out there and then try to build because sometimes you know we can't we can't wait and do waterfall like we take a year and a half to get some our customers experience quick responsive right and so we need to quickly get something out there and get feedback and continue to make things better and slightly show that thanks mr dyches and i talked a little bit about um how we're focusing on data that is at the core of trying to trying to paint the picture of what's going on um with your with your various customers and um providing and the services you're providing to them so i think part modernizing our data infrastructure along with our underlying infrastructure under that as well as thinking about modernizing the actual applications and digital services that folks are interacting with but the data piece i think there's that that community within the federal government is still maturing you know um so yeah my great goes back to we talked about in the question about the legacy applications that are out there right you know there's a lot of old stove pipe legacy applications that are providing certain services to our customers and you know there's been a lot of [Music] legislation on trying to improve and get rid of that legacy so we need from a cyber security perspective right we need to get those things upgraded i know within our last efforts with vaccine is trying to pull all the necessary information together we have three different data sets that we're dealing with for example right so data is very important and having good people to understand that data and bring it together and also make sure it's secure so thanks right if i can just add one additional comment and i love this question i mean for me the shortest way to greater efficiencies is through design thinking right to me there's no better way to get to that great end state for your customer than applying human-centered design right up front so you want to feed people what they're hungry for and not what you think they might be hungry for right so i think design is is sort of the key methodology to us collective us and government getting there and helping people understand that that upfront investment will pay off years from now instead of rebuilding something that people maybe didn't want or didn't quite hit the mark and the idea that being the initial investment is worth it and i that culture comes back to culture yeah i i i agree with everybody here you know scalable roi that uh you know is going to provide you know benefit year over year um and that you know could continue to be modernized and revised coming back to continuous process improvement and those kinds of things are are incredibly um you know important um if we could kim let's go and post the the question and hear from the audience i'd like to know what kind of technology solutions best support their agencies cx goals um you know another component of you know delivering these services is is you know there's a lot of folks on this call here today from um you know the system integrator and partner community um so there's you know an access to additional thought leadership um how do you all call upon you know your on-site contractors to you know help and and you know get in the boat just to say right to help you know this this modernization initiative well uh i'll i'll say we we um in terms of our contractors we make sure whether it be through our strategic planning or um you know conversations that we have or you know policy decisions we make that they understand where we're going um as a as an agency and um you know and i work with the procurement officer to ensure that you know that it's put into you know our procurement i.t procurement's moving forward so i i think it's important i mean the way we feel you know whatever contractor supports usda is a strategic partner of ours and you know they really have to be on board with helping us implement our future you know and using the methodologies that we put in place to get towards that future which you know like barbara said uh human center design you know i'm i'm a serious believer in that and you know that's a that's a very that's a great way to get input from your customers you know and that's important in providing them what they need what they need and that what we think they need as barbara uh barbara stated so you know i i think you know dude strategic planning and and policy decisions and through procurement process you know you can you can drive them towards implementing uh where you're trying implementing your goals as an agency thank you mr washington i'm not sure if you guys saw the poll come up uh not surprisingly 90 percent of the folks were split down the half down the middle 45 45 on self-service and automation was not surprised to see that only five percent was uh on on telephony um i was surprised so we see that it was only five percent on machine learning and ai which is you know a a you know a um you know evolving kind of market you're gonna start seeing that more and you know people's commercialized but you know predicting um you know motions and and requests that are coming in for proactive um have any of you all um you know done any investigation or looked at uh ai tactics and and implementation that can take place as you're going out there and in in in delivering these services and that could include right things like social listening so you can be proactive uh for you know twitter and and other things that are taking place out on the broader web the only thing that we've been looking at and not speaking about vendors anything but was losing the machine learning and ai for when they're filling out a form seeing how long it took down you know it took them five minutes to fill out this form and where were the areas that were difficult for them to fill out right you know did it take them two minutes to do this one little thing was did we ask the right question did we give enough information for them to so having that type of data helps us to go back right and go back and see what we can do better about making it a better experience for the customer so that's how we're using the technologies and tools that we have to hopefully make a better uh experience absolutely um we talked a lot about uh you know the um you know what folks are becoming accustomed in their in their in their commercial lives um are there sites that are out there in industry that you guys are looking to to emulate that you say that's that's an experience that we can learn from um you know what are some of those companies that you know i think you're most relevant to what you all are delivering so i can i can kind of speak from a va perspective so i think there are you know there are many different companies that um we would sort of want to learn from but one of the ones that we continually sort of see a natural alignment to because we have this very similar customer base is usaa right so we know usaa provides you know incredible experiences and from my understanding a lot of that is because they have this sort of back end data integration so they know their customers they can see them in the round they can proactively reach out and connect with any of their customers on any number of services so that's an area um i think for for us to to learn from and a company to learn from that's a great example mike i mean just recently we've been talking about dominoes and and the transfer you want to talk about transparency you see who is making your pizza and where it's at and then you are psyched to walk in and hand them your money i mean and that having that apply to licenses um that would be amazing um so i i've just been thinking about amazing experiences out there that that we're taking into account as we're designing new services that's just an example of one in the private sector that just blows customers away and that i feel like is what we should be aiming for as a government experience mike i was on stage last week for a uh presentation and i was surprised how many people actually uh stood up and you know mentioned domino's that that one's getting a lot of focus um i i i guess we all need to go out and order some dominoes and and see what that experience is like um jd i saw you came come off of mute did you have a comment no i was just going to agree it was funny that mike mentioned that because i did it one time work at dominoes and everything he knew exactly where things were at with you know from the time they pick up the phone to the time that pizza was delivered they got everything down real customer experience so it's ironic that i brought you've never wanted that little red bar to move faster ever right like you kind of hit refresh like come on i know it's on the next step but the ironic thing is that's capturing like the younger generation that is what they're running into and expecting and if that's what we start to provide as a government organization i i think that's that would be amazing so they do they crave the transparency that is so true okay excellent so um i wanted to ask one more question of you all and then we can go directly to the q a and read some of the remaining questions that are there but um you know the mission is delivering services to the customer whomever they may be is customer experience uh directly increa and into what level of criticality uh imperative to success of delivering on the mission of each of your agencies absolutely i actually think there are national security implications to not doing this or not doing it well um ultimately if our customers don't trust us and don't know what we're doing and why we're doing it and why we're asking for certain things they're less likely to work with us and i think the partnership aspect of is critical to our long-term mission success and and building that foundation that we are credible and knowledgeable and and here to help um and and shifting from that compliance kind of big brother reputation into that we are here to partner and you know it's it's a collective effort and and i if i can just add you know something that gary mentioned about you know you think about public servants and public service and the opportunity we have to energize an entirely next a new generation of public servants by having things like human-centered design design thinking co-design you know just this creative space to get back to sort of that human connection because ultimately i think we're all pretty simple we crave that human connection i see this as a very important recruitment tool now and in the future for government to retain and attract the right type of talent okay and i think as we try um as we go through this journey to improve our services um i i think absolutely there's a tie to mission delivery because you want people to positively respond to how you're delivering your services and um you know right now there are a lot of um you know complaints questions what have you comments about you know at different agencies things being manual or taking too long or they're not being enough transparency so you know i i think going through this journey and applying this government-wide would do nothing but improve customer satisfaction you know our ability to recruit and retain that next workforce you know and so i i just i just think there is there is a there is a uh relationship and it's going to do nothing but make things better for everybody i can't get over what barbara said and gary what you just said about retention and igniting a passion and you know mike you were talking about dominos right if you are selling that you have the opportunity to to create something like that in the government that you know people do have misconceptions that this is biotic you're bureaucratic and justin you asked us a question earlier about silos right when i think of government i inherently think about bureaucracy and silos and like everyone kind of doing their own thing and that's not the case like this is igniting at the highest levels and the lowest levels a focus of how do we all work together so that the thing that we are creating is ultimately better not just better for us as an agency but better for the people who are using it and i you know as an agency with 11 000 openings i think was the latest number you know we are seeking the next round of great talent and infusing this kind of creativity and excitement behind you could do cool things in the government that's such a such a good point gary and barbara i'm i'm excited one of the last comments i'd like to make is like i had this vision and i think i mentioned it the other day that a portal single sign on to come to the government right i i'm an older gentleman right irs social security i'm a veteran 20 years air force right i'd like to go to one place enter the portal with my single sign-on and use my conversational ai to get to the service i need right i can see that happening and i can see as long as we have people in the government that can see that and have that vision and get the buy-in from them the next generation coming in they have that desire to use that app on their phone to get to that stuff and i think as you try to uh change the culture the behavior of people we'll get there it's this big ship we're trying to turn but i think that we'll get there thank you so you know the uh the the takeaway on on that on that parting question right so i i think you'd be fair to say that mission success is with exceptional citizen and customer experience um um miss morton barbara uh there is a comment uh you know in the in the um in the chat i'd like to draw your attention to it but uh it was from uh one of the members of the audience and was talking about uh um a veteran that passed away and and um really you know talking through and calling out the excellent experience and healthcare that was provided to to her family so please uh thank you for sharing that means a lot shared passion shared purpose of my va brothers and sisters so thank you for sharing that absolutely and as a veteran myself i'm truly appreciative for everything you do for the veteran community um so uh folks keep coming you're having your questions come in we'll be running through and answering a few of these uh let me read another one here um the customers appreciate having a consistent engagement experience across an agency right for all the different services that are providing both phone internet walk-in how do you ensure that these various channels provide consistent some delivery of of services and customer experience oh no i i feel like that comes from leadership like yes some of our jobs right and just consistent messaging of culture and expectations on a couple of core values um i'll tennis racket to my uh to my colleagues to to run on that mike so for example the 21st century you know we were asked to convert our paper-based forms to digital correct and so we did that but there was also a requirement that we maintain a paper base because there's still an audience out there that may still have to be paper they're not we have example we had four generations within the department of energy think about that four different generations some people are geeks out there and don't have mobile devices and you know laptops and desktops to use to get to this digital services so they still require you know they'll write a letter into the department of energy for a freedom of information act question if they're looking for an answer so we got to provide the forms still provide that capability in a paper-based form so having those multiple channels whether they can walk in and i know that was a struggle i think that changed a lot of culture and behavior with the pandemic i mean so much was done over the internet but we still needed to provide that certain services to those people and having those multi-channels still available potentially to service that community [Music] uh if i could add to that i i think um even for a department as large as the department of agriculture you have to have a vision for what you want your agency to look like at a point in time and how you want to deliver those services and i think that message has to be consistent throughout the department in in into the lowest levels other components and there needs to be measurements against obtaining that state you know so i think it does come from leadership as mike said um but there has to be you know a team effort to make sure that that you obtain that i think that's an interesting point i think it requires both that top down and bottom up and you know in my target story when we're i was talking about teaching individual people like this is the role that you play that you are accountable for in this broader experience and you know leadership can mandate a lot of things but if you don't make that culture shift and make everyone understand you know whether they're part of the the paper service or they're part of the digital service that you play a role in this and you need to be thinking about this in everything that you do that's where you'll find success absolutely um yeah i think we've got time for one final question um there's a question from from um martha davis and she asked about the tactics that uh agencies are using to understand what matters to their customers um you know we talked about you know feedback and probably surveys that that can be obtained um but what else allows you to understand what matters to uh to build things that the customers will use and will improve their experiences i mean for us it goes back to human-centered design i know i'm like a broken record and in co-design really i mean bringing the customer closer to you and inside of the tent as you sort of work through you know what problem we're trying to solve and then sort of the tool or implementation so from a technology perspective we partner really closely at va with the chief technology officer who was also a usds uh digital services alum and you know they they've been rolling out va's first ever mobile app and so they're always thinking ahead leaning ahead and they've designed it based on direct feedback and co-design iteration with veterans and so it's like it's really just practicing that being comfortable with that rapid iteration again bringing the customer inside this journey of co-design with you and it's you know wildly popular so i think design again is really the key for us i i totally agree with barbara and i'll give you an example um we've actually gone out to farms and included farmers and showed them through human-centered design you know what their interaction is where they are in the process what the interaction is what their actions are those kinds of things and that's even before you think about technology because you need to get that customer input and feedback and business requirements before you even think about you know what are you going to develop to make this happen if no other uh comments we're going to put up uh one final poll around your cpe credit please fill out if you'd like to receive credit for for this event um i would like to close things out with thanking this very esteemed panel for sharing their experiences how they're leading the way at their agency and across government to continue to evolve and deliver exceptional experiences to you know our most important resource which is the the american people and in our industry um you know if there's uh any comments that the panel would like to make as as as a parting gesture to the audience please feel free to do so now anyone great discussions appreciate the time and attention for everybody awesome all right thank you very much for joining us today we hope to see you again on uh march 24th is going to be the next panel where uh the discussion will be on mapping a zero trust journey to uh for the federal government okay with that uh enjoy the rest of your day and thank you all for your time thanks everybody have a good one thank you you