Page 67 - FCW, October 2017

PERSPECTIVES
PARTICIPANTS Matt Bailey
Digital Services Expert, Office of Management and Budget
Julia Begley
Senior Advisor, Consumer Engagement and Education, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Stephen Buckner
Assistant Director for Communications, Census Bureau
Bill Davis
Partner, Public Sector Digital Strategy and Design, IBM Global Business Services
Nora Dempsey
Senior Advisor for Innovation, Department of State
Larry Gillick
Acting Director of Digital Strategy, Department of the Interior
Andre Goodfriend
Director, Office of eDiplomacy, Department of State
Jamie Hammond
Director, Online Engagement, Operations and Media, Internal Revenue Service
Stephen Holden
Associate CIO for IT Policy and Oversight, Department of Transportation
Marcy Jacobs
Executive Director, VA Digital Service, Department of Veterans Affairs
Rosetta Lue
Senior Advisor, Department of Veterans Affairs
Mariela Melero
Associate Director, Customer Service and Public Engagement Directorate, Citizenship and Immigration Services
Julie Meloni
Director, Product Management and Strategy/Operations Community of Practice, U.S. Digital Service
Melanie Pustay
Director, Office of Information Policy, Department of Justice
Bridget Roddy
Virtual Student Foreign Service Coordinator, Department of State
Susan Thares
Digital Engagement Lead, Department of Education
Susan E.Wedge
Vice President and Partner, IBM Global Business Services
Note: FCW Editor-in-ChiefTroy K. Schneider led the roundtable discussion.The Sept. 13 gathering was underwritten by IBM, but both the substance of the discussion and the recap on these pages are strictly editorial products. Neither IBM nor any of the roundtable participants had input beyond their Sept. 13 comments.
a nontechnical, very difficult, extremely valuable com- ponent of making digital services succeed.”
Remember: Technology is the easy part
Almost to a person, the roundtable participants agreed that culture and change management, not technology and digital strategy, are the true hurdles.
“The business rules and the intricacies of the agency work that we do really has to be sort of constrained and \[reexamined\] to really deliver those experiences down the road because you can’t solve those unless you really tackle the underbelly of it,” one official said.
A participant who has worked at multiple agencies said another key challenge comes back budgeting. “There are different offices that own different touchpoints,” she said. “One office owns one interaction, and they are all building their own thing. That one touchpoint may be fine, but in the context of the whole experience, maybe we’re asking the same question 15 times. If you’re think- ing in silos, you’re never going to get to that true digital strategy.”
And although the Trump administration has praised the power of digital transformation, several participants said tangible support has been harder to find. They bemoaned the many vacancies, from federal CIO down to agency digital director posts, and said thousands of broken links to Obama-era documents had damaged the credibility and utility of sites governmentwide.
“We’ve been in some of the conversations with the Office of American Innovation,” one official said, “and we’ve seen focus, at least in words, around human-cen- tered design and improving citizen services. But when it comes down to people in roles to do the things, I think that’s where it gets hard.”
Another official voiced concerns that customer experi- ence efforts are less valued now. “I see that dissolving, and that saddens me,” the official said. “I think we can build all the great digital stuff in the world, but if it’s not what our customer needs, we’ve failed.”
Yet another participant, however, saw a silver lining in the changes. “There was a lot of centralization” in the Obama White House, he said, and “a lot of positive energy, particularly around digital services, coming out of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, U.S. Digital Service and so forth.” But without that center of gravity, others “are relearning how to create networks, communi- ties of practice, in a decentralized fashion. I’m watching agencies remember that they can get each other on the phone and that they can host events directly themselves that don’t require that logo from the White House at the bottom of the agenda. That’s actually a really positive thing.” n
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