Since 2016, Gundeep Ahluwalia has served as the chief information officer (CIO) at the Department of Labor. After eight years of transforming the agency’s technology and customer experience, he is ready for his next chapter.
Ahluwalia left the Federal service on Aug. 16, joining NuAxis Innovations on Monday as the company’s executive vice president and chief innovation officer.
In an exclusive exit interview, Ahluwalia spoke with MeriTalk about his time as DoL CIO and what’s next for him in the private sector. He also discussed the secret to success when it comes to the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) and offered advice for other Federal CIOs. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MeriTalk: Thank you so much for your long service at the Department of Labor and in the Federal government. I’m very curious to hear what is next for you?
Ahluwalia: Once you have a taste of public service, I think it is very hard to walk away from it. The kind of impact you make on Americans – the employers – it’s very hard. My Federal service was broken into two large pieces. One was at the Food and Drug Administration. And then I went to Labor, and that was a totally different ballgame because what is most important for us is human beings. It’s us. With the Department of Labor, everything it does is connecting to that worker in one way, shape, or form.
I have had this deep commitment to continue doing public service, but I also wanted the next opportunity. So, I was looking for this new place, and NuAxis Innovations is a small company that is in the Federal space. We work for Interior, for Agriculture, Labor, and a lot of the government agencies. So, this was an opportunity for me to retain some of that public service motive, but also come at it from the private sector perspective. I could have gone for a large, medium, or small kind of company, but I thought this was the place that would give me a lot of flexibility to innovate.
Therefore, my title is the executive vice president and chief innovation officer at NuAxis at this point in time. This company is very focused on customer experience and the digital experience that the government provides. I mean, almost 400 million Americans make use of government services on an annual basis, and you cannot have digital experiences that are not at par with when you go on Amazon and buy something or you order a cab through Uber, right? So, that’s the digital experience that we need and that’s why customer experience – which usually the government is treating as an afterthought – is the place that I want to focus on. I focused on it in Labor, but now it’s going to be a renewed focus from the other side.
MeriTalk: During your time at the Department of Labor, what is a project or program that you are really proud to look back on?
Ahluwalia: There are a lot of things that we did over eight years. I think the biggest thing that I’m so proud of is the leadership factory that we have created inside the OCIO [Office of the Chief Information Officer]. It is the people. How do you keep the digital infrastructure for the Department of Labor current, healthy, and providing the mission support that is needed? It’s to first invest in the people that you have. Creating a culture of ‘I am not an IT specialist,’ I am the one who makes sure that when a labor certification comes in, it’s received in a timely fashion and adjudicated. So, those are the connections and the culture that we built, and I’m very proud of it.
A few statistics that actually tell some of that story of progress are: we were 22 percent women when I joined, and we were 48 percent women when I left. Seventy-five percent of the women are in GS-13 and above, which are leadership positions. That means whether I’m there or not, that focus on creating a pipeline that is diverse enough will continue to flourish after I have gone. Several women of color were appointed to the Senior Executive Service during my tenure. Twenty-seven percent veterans in the workforce. Thirty-eight percent minorities.
And here’s one thing that I have always, always wanted: we have hired for competence. We have not hired because somebody’s a woman, somebody’s a minority – we’ve never done that. But competence is an equal opportunity offender. It’s found in every demographic, in every gender classification, however we slice and dice the human race. And that’s why now we are in a place where this leadership team is competent, skilled, it’s diverse, and it does not indulge in group thinks. They can debate, they can innovate, and they can deliver. Hence, time for me to look for another job, right? So, that is something that I’m so proud of, and will leave the department very healthy.
MeriTalk: How about on the customer experience side of things?
Ahluwalia: The other area that I’m very proud of is the digital transformation, the velocity, and the changes in customer experience that we have brought about. I’ll talk a little bit about being a generation zero immigrant who came to the United States with $700 in his pocket and landed in August of 2000 at Dulles Airport. I am particularly proud to have reformed the [Permanent Labor Certification Program].
That first step is a labor certificate that would be printed on currency-like paper and sent to the applicant. We would all attach it, staple it to our application, and send it to USCIS [United States Citizenship and Immigration Services] for the next step in the process. So, everybody knew where that paper was going. We were still importing currency paper, we were still operating a printing operation in Chicago and Atlanta, we were sending it through snail mail to people, and then all of that paper landed up at USCIS, who was then spending money to shred it. That was the government experience around that service.
Today, you get your labor certificate like a boarding pass, like United Airlines sends you your boarding pass. Please proceed to the gate. Please proceed to USCIS. We have already sent a copy of it. You don’t need to do anything. We have eliminated the snail mail. We have shut down our printing centers. We don’t import any of the currency-like paper. And guess what? All of that money on an annual basis is now available to the program to do different things. So, that is what in my mind, is what truly changing the customer experience needs to be. What we are used to and expect from our government is the same experiences that United Airlines or American Airlines gives to us when we are boarding a plane, right? So, that was one area that I was very, very proud of.
Another area was doing the unemployment insurance during the pandemic. There was a lot of unemployment during the pandemic. A lot of the system was overwhelmed. Many of the states, to combat the fraud that was rampant at that time, said we will implement ID verification services – which means now not only am I unemployed, looking for a job, there’s a pandemic outside, but now I have to go 50 miles, 100 miles from my home to go show my ID in order to get my $600 check or $500 check, $300 check, right? And that was just such a hardship at that time.
I remember I was sitting in my backyard playing cribbage with my neighbor who’s a letter carrier, and he said, ‘You know what, USPS has not missed a day of delivering mail during the pandemic. All the post offices are open, and the entire U.S. population, guess what? They have a post office within a couple of miles of their home. Why don’t you use the United States Postal Service?’ And that was the first creation of the National ID Verification Offering that we rolled out three years later. Today, that service has been adopted by 15 states across the United States, and 375,000 claimants have used it.
MeriTalk: You were also recognized earlier this year at MeriTalk’s FITARA Awards ceremony where DoL won a “Most Improved” FITARA Award. What is the secret to your success on the FITARA scorecard?
Ahluwalia: First of all, I want to congratulate MeriTalk for creating the FITARA Dashboard, which demystifies the FITARA scorecard, and people are able to see the trend. Otherwise, it was so hard in that old chart that came out of the Government Accountability Office that folks never decipher.
I think the first step is visibility. So, what do these various categories mean, right? How are they actually indicative of the digital health of a department? Just like the State of the Union, it’s almost like the state of the digital health of a particular department. So, just the ability to explain to them how this scorecard is made up.
My mantra to success has been that I have taken all my C-level counterparts and every quarter, I do a ‘State of IT’ where I display the FITARA Scorecard, [share] what we are doing in our digital infrastructure, and then [explain how] that is tied to the agency management calls or what the mission goals are.
That gives the visibility and there is a connection between the FITARA score – which nobody understood in the past – to ‘Aha, that is how it connects to my mine safety goal of reducing my mining deaths.’ And that connection is very powerful. Then you get the buy-in from the program offices to go like, ‘Okay, we’ll do X, Y, and Z, or we will invest in a certain part of cybersecurity because it makes good business sense for us. It helps reach our goal, and it improves the FITARA Scorecard.’
Whereas, if you flip that coin, and just keep talking about only FITARA, it sort of doesn’t work. And that’s where I think your dashboarding has helped a lot as well to show them and demystify what it means.
MeriTalk: What is one key lesson or takeaway you’ve learned during your time as DoL’s CIO?
Ahluwalia: My biggest advice to people is: it is people first and mission always. If you invest in people – in your own people, in others that the department serves – understanding the unemployment insurance person in rural Arkansas and what they are going through when this life event has happened to them, and tying it back to the state workforce agency in Arkansas that’s trying to serve them, and then tying it back to the Department of Labor who’s providing this national ID service, and my folks who are actually building those services, is extremely important.
That value stream has to be understood, and it’s all people. And then connecting that work to the mission is extremely important. If you’re able to do those two things effectively, the rest is easy. The laptops will fall in place. The technology will work as it’s supposed to, etc. Otherwise, if you don’t put yourself in the shoes of a person in rural Arkansas, you will never be able to create a non-digital pathway for them. Because why? Sitting in D.C., you think everybody has an iPhone 13, right? At the end of the day, it is just about people and then delivering what they need.
MeriTalk: Final question – what do you enjoy doing in “real life” that doesn’t have anything to do with technology?
Ahluwalia: I am a trained EMT, and I am a volunteer EMT on Sunday nights. I try to pick up as many shifts as my schedule will allow me. So, I am a part of the Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad in Sterling, Virginia, so if on a Sunday night you happen to be in the area, and, God forbid, have to call 911, you will be subjected to my medical care. Both my daughters are EMTs, and my older one is a firefighter as well. So, that’s what I really enjoy doing is helping people who, for some reason, are in distress. Whether it’s a vehicle accident or a heart attack or a stroke or something as simple as a broken leg. That’s what keeps me going.
