“Early last year, top White House officials embarked on a fact-finding mission with technical leaders inside government agencies. They wanted to know the answer to a specific question: If there was anything federal agencies could do to improve the average American’s experience interacting with the government, what would it be?…”
“’COVID really shined a light on the fact that there were some interactions people had with the government that needed to be improved, full stop,’ said Clare Martorana, chief information officer of the United States, who was among the officials involved in these conversations.
Throughout last year, Martorana, agency officials and others narrowed that wish list to the realm of the possible. And last month, President Biden codified it in an executive order which requires 17 agencies to make 36 specific upgrades that will ideally make Americans’ experience dealing with the government suck less. That list includes creating a fully digital passport renewal process and an online system for applying for disaster assistance, among other changes that revolve around major life events. All of it, the White House said when the order was announced, is on track for completion within a year…”
“At least some of that work will fall to Mina Hsiang, the new administrator of the United States Digital Service, who was part of the team that famously swooped in to save Healthcare.gov’s calamitous launch in 2013. That digital response team later gave birth to the U.S. Digital Service, where Hsiang spent a two-year stint before founding a spinoff digital team inside the Department of Health and Human Services.
Hsiang left government to work in the health care sector in late 2017, but returned to the White House last year to find that a lot has changed since those early years. ‘In my first term, if I walked into an agency to work on a program, there were no user researchers — like nobody,’ she said. ‘Now, you always walk in and there are many things still for us to do, but most programs have a user researcher and understand the concept of user experience.’…”
“’If you have a terrible process, and then you codify it in technology, it will be terrible technology,’ said Hsiang. ‘A lot of this is much more about setting a tone. At any fork in the road where there are two options, choose the thing that’s better for the user.’…” Read the full article here.
Source: Biden promised to digitize the government. Getting it done won’t be easy. – By Issie Lapowsky, January 19, 2022. Protocol.
