The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) unveiled its latest President’s Management Agenda (PMA) quarterly updates today, highlighting the successes under the second priority of the PMA: delivering excellent, equitable, and secure Federal services and customer experience.
This quarter, OMB shared that Federal agencies are making significant progress towards improving customer experience (CX) through two vehicles: High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) and Life Experience Projects.
High Impact Service Providers
HISPs are the 35 Federal agencies with significant interactions with the American people. Think of the IRS or the Transportation Security Administration – these agencies interact face-to-face with millions of Americans every day.
“As of today, 26 of 35 HISPs are now publicly reporting data on their interactions with the public to increase accountability,” OMB said in a blog post posted to Performance.gov today. “Back in February of 2023, each HISP conducted a CX Capacity Assessment that provided them with an opportunity to self-report their capacity and maturity levels on key components of CX: talent, service management, digital capabilities, and leadership buy-in, among others.”
According to OMB, some HISPs have already made big progress, such as the Social Security Administration (SSA).
SSA launched a new website last year, complete with a new design to improve customer experience. The new design was based on feedback from customer interviews, and also includes new interactive tools, such as the benefit eligibility screener.
Additionally, OMB pointed to the Department of Health and Human Services, which used customer feedback to improve Medicare.gov. The revamp includes a redesigned Medicare Plan Finder summary and an in-network pharmacy finder.
The OMB CX team met with each HISP for “Deep Dive” meetings in March 2023, in which OMB and HISP teams collaborated to come up with more than 250 tangible action items.
Life Experience Projects
As for the second vehicle, Life Experience Projects, OMB said it selected five common life experiences last year in which Americans typically interact with the government: approaching retirement, recovering from a natural disaster, transitioning from the military to civilian life, having a child and early childhood, and facing an unexpected financial shock.
After hundreds of customer interviews, OMB developed 11 human-centered design projects to fix common pain points for Americans. The agency announced the original nine pilot projects in March, and it announced the additional two in the May PMA quarterly update.
These projects leverage technology to help streamline service delivery by the Federal government at some of the most critical moments in people’s lives.
“In today’s updates, we share milestones for two new Life Experience projects announced last quarter, and provide further updates on the nine original projects announced earlier this year,” OMB said.
“One project with significant updates is the ‘Prototyping integrated transition planning support for Service members’ project, under the ‘Navigating Transition to Civilian Life’ life experience,” it continued. “In this project, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is building prototypes and minimum viable products for a single piece of shared software for former service members to help them access their earned benefits, replacing a confusing and burdensome network of sometimes-overlapping services.”
Additionally, OMB highlighted that for the “having a child and early childhood” life experience the agency is piloting text message notifications with families. Newborn Supply Kits have also been launched in Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico, with a hospital partner in each state and additional community-based distribution partners.
“By breaking down silos and encouraging cross-agency cooperation, the PMA is enabling revolutionary improvements in the way we deliver our services to the American people,” OMB said. “From what we’ve seen, the future of delivering a great customer experience looks bright – and there’s more to come.”
