Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Greg Barbaccia said Friday that the federal government is at a major “inflection point” for service delivery, arguing that agencies must move beyond incremental fixes and overhaul how they serve the public.
Speaking at ACT-IAC’s CX Summit in Reston, Va., Barbaccia pointed to rapidly advancing technology – and new accountability requirements under the Government Service Delivery Improvement (GSDI) Act – as an opportunity to “fundamentally change how government operates and how it serves.”
“This moment demands more than incremental change,” Barbaccia said. “It demands that we address the root causes that allow these [service] failures to persist in the first place.”
Barbaccia will serve as the federal government’s service delivery lead under the GSDI Act, which also directs agencies to designate their own service delivery leads. He said the law marks a shift toward clearer responsibility for improving services.
“When you take a step back and look at service delivery and why it struggled historically, two things stand out,” he said. “First, there hasn’t been clear, consistent accountability… [and] the people closest to the customer and the service haven’t always been empowered to fix what they see every day.”
Barbaccia said he will work very closely with agency-level leads once they are named.
“This matters because improvement doesn’t happen by consensus,” the federal CIO said. “It happens when ownership is clear.”
Jonathan Finch, the digital experience director in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said that the Trump administration is very close to publicly announcing the agency service delivery leads.
“We started with kind of a focus on the bigger CFO Act agencies. We’re close to wrapping that up,” Finch said, adding, “As soon as we do, we will have a place where folks can publicly see who has been designated.”
Speaking to MeriTalk after his remarks, Barbaccia said that his first priority with the newly designated service delivery leads will be ensuring agencies choose people committed to real change.
“I will gladly take a more junior, motivated person than somebody who’s … a senior advisor that is really just going to do this as a compliance thing,” he said.
Barbaccia added that he plans to ask each service delivery lead to identify one major improvement effort they want to drive at their agency.
“This moment matters. The public is ready to feel a difference,” Barbaccia said. “They’re ready for government services that are clear, responsive, and worthy of their trust. Now is the time for true customer service delivery to come out of the United States government.”