For citizens, interacting with the government, particularly online, can be frustrating. Those interactions can also be challenging for the agency professionals ...
While the news in late December 2021 was focused on the Log4j zero day vulnerability, something else of major significance happened more quietly: the White House issued the Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government. For citizens, interacting with the government, particularly online, can be frustrating. Those interactions can also be challenging for the agency professionals who rely on IT to do their jobs of serving the public. The Biden Administration is now ordering a refocus of agency priorities to improve customer experience across the board, and that must include the digital domain.
Addressing current expectations
With the advent of the digital age, citizen expectations have changed. In the past, taking a few weeks to receive, for example, a government-issued document, was the accepted norm. Now the type of online transaction that provides immediate or short-term results sets a different standard. Citizens’ discontent with waiting for the wheels of a government agency to turn only mounts.
Part of the challenge lies in the online experience itself. Tracking detailed metrics around digital customer service is critical to making that service experience better. If agencies are not correctly tracking such metrics, they can’t know what that customer service even looks like to users, let alone how to improve it. For example, slow performance may indicate a problem in the data center or the cloud. But it could also stem from a user desktop challenge or network bandwidth issues in a citizen’s home. Users won’t and shouldn’t be expected to know the difference.
A poor online experience can also result in citizens reverting to call centers or office visits, increasing burden on agency staff and increasing taxpayer expense. Instead, the onus (and the focus of the EO) is on agency IT teams to overcome digital obstacles as much as possible. Doing that requires the right solutions to help teams understand the root of the issues in the first place, and more importantly, how to effectively optimize online interactions at scale.
The other side of the equation is the federal workforce. Digital transformation is not typically top of mind for a government worker. Yet well-meaning public servants have their own frustrations when technical roadblocks prevent them from successfully doing their jobs.
With an aging federal workforce and a global talent shortage, recruiting and retaining younger workers used to a robust digital environment in their private lives will be increasingly challenging. People entering the government workforce must be empowered to succeed, or they will look elsewhere for a career environment where that opportunity exists.
Of course, there is still a need to engage incumbent federal workers and help shift the mindset about citizens as customers. While dissatisfied citizens may not be able to switch to a different agency as they could with an unsatisfactory commercial provider, that is all the more reason for them to have the best encounter possible. Providing an effective and helpful user experience must be at the heart of every agency’s mission because serving citizens is the fundamental reason all agencies exist.
Despite good intentions, federal workers often don’t have accurate, data-driven insight into what citizen end users are confronting. Arming them with solutions that provide full-stack observability and AI-powered insights into the user’s reality will help them do their jobs better.
Observability provides a solution
Agency teams can start improving government customers’ digital experience by applying technology to understand that experience through observability. Obtaining an anonymized and secure view into what end users are doing will clearly reveal what is working and what potential roadblocks they are facing that may be rooted in system performance or a problematic interface.
That observability must always begin with the end user and work inwards. For example, having observability to the back end of a transactional application that shows processes are working smoothly does no good in gaining a meaningful understanding of problems the user may be having on the front end. However, observability across the environment will help teams pinpoint and resolve potential issues, and more importantly, enable them to optimize the entire digital experience.
The reality is that customers’ government interactions and technology cannot be separated. IT drives every service agencies now provide. Accurate insight derived from deep observability is an assured way to advance the aims of the new executive order and introduce a long-overdue and positive shift in the government-citizen dynamic.
Willie Hicks is chief technology officer for public sector at Dynatrace.
Improving digital government experience
For citizens, interacting with the government, particularly online, can be frustrating. Those interactions can also be challenging for the agency professionals ...
While the news in late December 2021 was focused on the Log4j zero day vulnerability, something else of major significance happened more quietly: the White House issued the Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government. For citizens, interacting with the government, particularly online, can be frustrating. Those interactions can also be challenging for the agency professionals who rely on IT to do their jobs of serving the public. The Biden Administration is now ordering a refocus of agency priorities to improve customer experience across the board, and that must include the digital domain.
Addressing current expectations
With the advent of the digital age, citizen expectations have changed. In the past, taking a few weeks to receive, for example, a government-issued document, was the accepted norm. Now the type of online transaction that provides immediate or short-term results sets a different standard. Citizens’ discontent with waiting for the wheels of a government agency to turn only mounts.
Part of the challenge lies in the online experience itself. Tracking detailed metrics around digital customer service is critical to making that service experience better. If agencies are not correctly tracking such metrics, they can’t know what that customer service even looks like to users, let alone how to improve it. For example, slow performance may indicate a problem in the data center or the cloud. But it could also stem from a user desktop challenge or network bandwidth issues in a citizen’s home. Users won’t and shouldn’t be expected to know the difference.
A poor online experience can also result in citizens reverting to call centers or office visits, increasing burden on agency staff and increasing taxpayer expense. Instead, the onus (and the focus of the EO) is on agency IT teams to overcome digital obstacles as much as possible. Doing that requires the right solutions to help teams understand the root of the issues in the first place, and more importantly, how to effectively optimize online interactions at scale.
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Empowering government workers
The other side of the equation is the federal workforce. Digital transformation is not typically top of mind for a government worker. Yet well-meaning public servants have their own frustrations when technical roadblocks prevent them from successfully doing their jobs.
With an aging federal workforce and a global talent shortage, recruiting and retaining younger workers used to a robust digital environment in their private lives will be increasingly challenging. People entering the government workforce must be empowered to succeed, or they will look elsewhere for a career environment where that opportunity exists.
Of course, there is still a need to engage incumbent federal workers and help shift the mindset about citizens as customers. While dissatisfied citizens may not be able to switch to a different agency as they could with an unsatisfactory commercial provider, that is all the more reason for them to have the best encounter possible. Providing an effective and helpful user experience must be at the heart of every agency’s mission because serving citizens is the fundamental reason all agencies exist.
Despite good intentions, federal workers often don’t have accurate, data-driven insight into what citizen end users are confronting. Arming them with solutions that provide full-stack observability and AI-powered insights into the user’s reality will help them do their jobs better.
Observability provides a solution
Agency teams can start improving government customers’ digital experience by applying technology to understand that experience through observability. Obtaining an anonymized and secure view into what end users are doing will clearly reveal what is working and what potential roadblocks they are facing that may be rooted in system performance or a problematic interface.
That observability must always begin with the end user and work inwards. For example, having observability to the back end of a transactional application that shows processes are working smoothly does no good in gaining a meaningful understanding of problems the user may be having on the front end. However, observability across the environment will help teams pinpoint and resolve potential issues, and more importantly, enable them to optimize the entire digital experience.
The reality is that customers’ government interactions and technology cannot be separated. IT drives every service agencies now provide. Accurate insight derived from deep observability is an assured way to advance the aims of the new executive order and introduce a long-overdue and positive shift in the government-citizen dynamic.
Willie Hicks is chief technology officer for public sector at Dynatrace.
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