74 Customer experience and government services with Clare Martorana, Mina Hsiang, and Jodi Leo
We are joined by Federal Chief Information Officer Clare Martorana (https://www.linkedin.com/in/claremartorana/), United States Digital Services Administrator Mina Hsiang (https://www.linkedin.com/in/minahsiang/), and Nava Chief Delivery Officer Jodi Leo (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodi-leo-7a21777/). We dive into a conversation about the importance of effective government services delivery and how an executive order focused on customer experience may impact that space.<br><br>Join us on Discord (https://discord.gg/hECzBJh)<br><br>Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/12/13/executive-order-on-transforming-federal-customer-experience-and-service-delivery-to-rebuild-trust-in-government/<br>- https://www.usajobs.gov/<br>- https://www.usds.gov/apply<br>- https://www.navapbc.com/careers/
Top Keywords
- claire 0.018
- mina 0.012
- customer 0.011
- government 0.010
- work 0.009
- customer experience 0.008
- nava 0.008
- jody 0.007
- experience 0.006
- claire mina 0.005
- agencies 0.005
- need 0.005
Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a show that looks at the way technology, politics, and policy impacts the world around us. The tools we use, the way services are delivered, and how we talk about and set policy all shape our society. We'll gather around and have a chat about these things together and more. Before we get started, I do wanna let you all know that we've started a Discord for the podcast. There will be a link with an invite down in the episode description. Do feel free to go check that out. It's a small community right now, but hoping to grow it. It's a great way to reach out to me and let me know things that you might want us to cover or to just hang out and talk about civic tech. Anyway, let's go ahead and start the show. Mina, Claire, Jody, thank you all for joining us here on Civic Tech Chat. Could each of you introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about what you do? Sure. I'll jump in first. Hi. My name is Claire Mortirana,
and I am the, federal CIO. And I'll turn it over to Mina.
Hello. I'm Mina Sheung, and I am the administrator of the US Digital Service, which is sort of a centralized technology strategy and implementation arm for for the general government, and we're based out of the White House.
Hi, everybody. I'm Jody Liu. My pronouns are she, her, and I'm the chief delivery officer at Nava. Nava builds government services that are simple, effective, and accessible to all, and I get to work with dedicated public servants like Nina and Claire to deliver service experiences that are simple, fast, equitable, and accessible for all users, program outcomes that are effective for the beneficiary populations and agency and tech operations that are adaptable and resilient in a changing world.
For each of you, what would you say is your personal why? That thing that drives you to get out of bed each morning and do what you do.
Yeah. Sure. So I shared two traits with Claire and Mina, which get at my purpose. First, I'm drawn to solving intractable problems that cause struggle or strife because when you begin to simplify and clear my brush, that's where breakthroughs begin to happen for the people you're serving and even for yourself. Second, I believe that we can move faster and with greater momentum on the problems we're trying to solve when we take an iterative approach and take time to honor the experience of the people who have been working in the space, like the dedicated public servants we work with daily and the humans who are on the receiving ends of the government services and policies that we're developing. So, you know, I've been drawn to computers since I was a child. There's a spark of magic and technology and the problem space of how we get digital systems, as human centered as possible has been at the core of my twenty year career and never runs dry for me. And so that, you know, the last thing I'll say is that, in 2038, I shifted from fifteen years in the private sector to the public sector because I believe deeply, that our public institutions need to have digital experiences that lead to better outcomes and more responsive agencies, and I've really found a home here at Nava.
Thank you so much. And thanks for the question. So, you know, I I grew up, in a family where government service was sort of part of what you did and where everyone everyone was very focused on leaving the world, better than you found it. And I grew up with those values and, you know, became an engineer because those are my skills and my interests. It's it's what I love to do. And, you know, working in the private sector and also the public sector, I saw how critical government is to shape public sector, I saw how critical government is to shape everything that exists across the country and people's experience, and to really be an opportunity engine, but also to shape how business and and industry work. And so, when the opportunity arose to come and work in government in a way that was high leverage and where I could really feel every day like I was solving real problems for, normal Americans, I mean, there's nothing more motivating than going to a place where your skills are incredibly useful and you can be fixing problems for people. And so that is incredibly motivating for me every day. And now in a leadership role, the opportunity to create opportunities for other people to also contribute in that way is just fantastic. So it's an it's an easy choice. And I get to work with Claire.
And in my role as the federal chief information officer, it it's a broad spanning role. We manage the technical planning policy and budget oversight $100,000,000,000 federal IT budget. So what gets me up out of bed every day is curiosity. I get really excited about the work that we are doing and the opportunity to have an impact. I I can relate both to Jody and Mina's, purpose. I I also I grew up, the child of social workers. And my mom and dad, always used to encourage us and say, you know, how would you solve that problem, if we were complaining about something? And always told us if we weren't part of the solution, we were part of the problem. And, it has motivated me to remain, curious and to really try to work with people that are also curious
and wanna try and solve problems. That that that is what gets me up. We're about to hop into a conversation that's gonna dig into this term customer experience. Folks listening to that might have various ideas about what that term is really describing. When we're talking about the context of government services, what do we mean by that term customer experience?
If if if you've ever interacted were probably left feeling like you could make the experience better, especially thinking about your civic tech audience, Ryan. Right, folks that know how to do things with technology and design. And I struggle a tiny bit with the term customer because we're not all consuming things all the time. Right? We're people. We're humans that are trying to, probably, complete a task, get information. So in this context, customer experience is really helping us in the federal government put the person that we're trying to serve at the center of the experience and start all of our research and design, around that customer trying to meet them where they are and, be kind in the process of, meeting them where they are.
I I completely agree with what Claire said, especially that struggling with the customer part, but it is language that helps us center appropriately as you just described, you know, the people we're trying to serve, putting them at the center. And customer experience in the context of government services is simple, effective, and accessible, not just because that's what we've come to expect with consumer technology, but because it's the equitable and right thing to do. Shalanda Young, the acting director of the office of OMB, wrote recently wrote that, burdens that seem minor when designing and implementing a program can have substantial negative effects for individuals already facing scarcity. And for Nava and many other organizations and people who work to make government programs more accessible, this report's findings are deeply affirming. And if there's anyone out there listening to this podcast who is curious about whether or not to enter the space if if working on some of these problems, is that all interesting to you? Like, I just wanna put put it out there that you should strongly think about joining us here.
I think the other thing about customer experience is, like, in the private sector, companies are competing with each other, and they have to please the customer in order to retain the customer. And while that is not always true in the public sector, we should still strive to provide that level of service. And this is really about your your and projecting where you're gonna go, but this is really about creating forces that balance the needs of the user and the experience of the customer against all sorts of other aspects of government programs that also come into play and that agencies have to contend with as they're figuring out how they're gonna build these programs. So it's really trying to match that urgency and and that, customer centricity and and perspective on the user.
Mid December of last year, president Biden put an executive order forward that focused on well, I I guess I'll quote from the title, on transforming federal customer experience and service delivery to rebuild trust in government. For folks listening that might not be familiar with that, what is it really trying to do at a high level? Well, this administration
believes that all Americans deserve a simple, seamless, and secure experience when interacting with the government. So this executive order puts the user, the customer, the public at the center of mission delivery and focuses on some of our life experiences, like renewing a passport or getting help after a disaster or when you wanna start a small business. So it also gets agencies to think about the customer journey. Right? The way a a a customer might move, from one agency to the next agency. And it really helps, organizations, sometimes in in government to some of what Mina was touching on a minute ago. We think about our mission and, the way that we are charged, with executing policy and the way that we are organized. So it is more internal thinking about the organization, like, from the org chart down. And this customer experience executive order is about the person first, the customer first, that user, that might be interacting to try and get one service or complete one task or might be moving from agency to agency. And how do we do that in a seamless and secure way?
You know, it's it's an articulation of our principles and our priorities. Think of it as, you know, a c a CEO asserting this is really important to me, and I really want you to focus on it. It's frequently the case that when building services and programs, you know, it's easy to the customer experience isn't frequently specified. It's not something that congress says and thou shalt have, you know, this response time on your call center, and we wouldn't want them to because frankly, you have to iteratively figure out what people really need. At the same time, you can really get into a compliance mindset or get really focused on a bunch of minutiae or things that matter to the agency. And so this is basically saying, I get it. You have many constraints. We're gonna help you navigate those constraints. And, also, it is a priority that we focus on the outcomes for the user. We're going to measure that and evaluate it and tell the public about how we're doing, and we're gonna do it regardless of, like, I'm a normal person. I don't care how many agencies I have to interact with to do a thing. I just care about my problem. Like, we're gonna do it in a way that meets people where they are. They don't need to learn a lot about the government in order to accomplish
things. And it also helps us work with our commercial partners. Right? You have to understand what you're trying to achieve, both internally from your agency. And many of the projects that we work on in government, we work with really talented commercial partners. I know Jody can really speak to this from the NAVA perspective. We have to be able to work effectively with those partners. So we have to be able to articulate what we're trying to accomplish.
I just wanted to talk about restoration for one second here and Claire and Nina respond. Just wanted to register the fact that it's no secret that we've entered a period of high distrust between people and the government that serves them. And it's in these everyday interactions that Claire and Mina are describing or an application guide. It can stand between someone and the government program designed to help them. And I think what they're describing, it makes me wish everyone could hear, hear them speak because this is how trust can be restored. And I just I wanna thank Claire and Mina for, making me reminding me of that, in their responses.
I think that the comment about trust, I think, is a is a keen one. You know, it's it's in the title. I think even the executive order makes a reference to the the Gettysburg Address. It seems really that a lot of this is about that kind of base expectation as a person who is served by this government that I should be able to trust the institutions of it and expect that, you know, services can be delivered effectively. And then my experience with them won't be, you know, horrible. Can can you all talk a bit about that that kind of, like, link between the experience folks have with government services and ultimately, like, the trust level then they have that that government
is serving their best interest? Trust is critical. Right? It is unbelievably important. In federal IT, we're entrusted with a large amount of of information that people share with us. We are entrusted with taxpayer dollars to deliver those services to the public, and it's our responsibility to deliver. So in during the pandemic, as all of us saw, so many of our favorite brands really stepped up. Right? And they met demand. They exceeded people's expectation. They did it fast. And, we really have that same opportunity at this moment under this president. President Biden really emphasizes to us on a constant basis, that we are here to serve the people. Full stop. And we have to continue to build trust, by and I think by delivering exceptional customer services that people don't think twice about, how hard it is to do something. But they interact with the government. And, hey, it works. If if you tried to get a COVID test, you went to a website, you signed up. And guess what? A couple days later, your test arrives in the mail. It was seamless. It was secure. It was really frictionless for the people interacting with it. And we know how to do that in the private sector. Many of us are here from the private sector joining our federal partners. And we know this is all possible. So building that trust is really what we focus on on a daily basis.
I think, you know, government is also something we rely on for so many aspects of life, and I think it functions many times in ways that are behind the scenes so that we don't even realize it anymore. But this is really about those places where we do have to interact, where we do have a touch point. And, you know, the the the reason that some of the digital aspects and some of the tools from the private sector come in into play, if you start off with excellent experience and, frankly, as a component of that trust as, like, a core tenant of what you're trying to achieve, you build things in a different way. Right? You build things iteratively where you listen to people. You understand where they have uncertainty in the process. You give people a confirmation notice on the next page so that they know that their application didn't go into the giant round recycling bin in the sky so that they really understand what exactly is happening. And these are all sort of tools and tips and tricks that organizations across the globe, private and public, have built out, and and these are well understood mechanisms. And just ensuring that we utilize best practices and implement them for all of these programs, is critical for ensuring that in every interaction, we have consistency, and we're constantly helping people understand that we are good stewards of these critical, critical services, and life experiences.
Yeah. I'll just I in complete agreement with Claire and Nina, I would just one thing we, we often talk about at Nava is that, the systems need to be responsive and flexible because technology is increasingly how policy value gets delivered to people, and our government needs to be capable of delivering fairly quickly and transparently. And the the consequences of doing it right, you know, that's one of the things that motivates a lot of people at Nava, myself included. And the consequences of doing it wrong, are not a cost that we can pay as a society. So to me, that that's like the, you know, trust of the big, that's how I would, describe trust in this conversation too.
We've talked a bit about, customer experience in the past here in the podcast, and something that came up as a as a key point of one of those conversations was this idea that that perspective, what about, you know, the customer experience perspective, folks that are involved with digital services delivery, that they have a seat at the table in organization as they're formulating things like strategy, policy, and process. How do you all view the the importance of this, And do things like this executive order give the sort of executive involvement or air cover that's needed to be able to advocate for that?
Yes. Absolutely. This executive order does. I think, you know, one of the things that it it's the twenty first century. We use technology in every part of our lives. And if the technology doesn't work, the policy doesn't work. If the policy doesn't work, the technology's not going to work. So we really have to make sure that we are integrating, you know, great policy expertise with delivery expertise. It's really critical. And that's why the partnership I have with MENA and the US Digital Service, working with great companies like Nava, working with your civic tech community, all of us need to be leaning into these problems to solve them. They are not going to be solved, through the normal channels in which the federal government operates. We need this civic tech mindset of people wanting to come and join the mission. Or be in your local communities and participate in that in that way. But all of us need to lean into this. I think that is really one of the most critical parts of this, Ryan.
Detailed realities of what's actually happening on the ground, both from a technology and from a user perspective, need to be core inputs into how you define the next steps of your strategy and your long term strategy. And the only way to do that in a context call center and a a text line, in collaboration and in conjunction with the vaccines.gov launch, you know, it was not the case that we had we were used to having tons of data on, like, what questions people were texting in about how to get a vaccine and other questions. And all of a sudden, we have this rich data source and Google Analytics from the site where we can say where people are coming from and what they're asking. And none of that are things that policymakers are used to asking about. But we sit at the table and we say, look at all this evidence that we have about what questions people have, what they're uncertain about. It gives you a whole host of new tools, that you didn't have and a new perspective about how to have a conversation with the public that doesn't literally just have to be polling or something like that. I guess and and it can be real time. Right? It doesn't just have to be based on research that was peer reviewed seven years ago. And so, you know, it just gives you a much more nimble way. The other thing I would add is frequently, when we think about policy, we just keep adding new things. Like, we build a new program. We build a new system for the new program. Like, nobody wants to interact with so many systems and so many different programs. If they're all targeting the same person, we need to figure out how to incorporate what already exists into our policy objectives for the future. And the only way that that typically works is if you actually bring the people who are responsible for administering and who understand deeply those systems, and it comes up in the user research. So there's a lot of just, like, consolidation, pulling things together, and also making sure that you're constantly iterative iterating and listening to what normal people and users actually are experiencing and need.
I again, I'm gonna completely agree with Claire and Mina and particularly, you know, saying the type of air cover or action that I would really like to see from the EO is exactly what Claire said, which is more collaboration between policymakers and delivery teams. It's, it's often only when we need to move mountains that we see this type of collaboration, and I'm curious about how we can make it more of a standard practice. And to Mina's points, you know, big believer in getting involved early with the teams that are gonna have a direct, impact on your authority to operate, but it's very rare to see that type of collaboration. And I wanted to share an example of how I saw this working in some recent work that we did at NAVA, at the state level, where we were implementing the paid family or we are implementing a paid family and medical leave program and learned through the user research that people wanted to, and this will not surprise you, apply for parental leave before their baby was born or adopted. The designers and engineers worked with the policy team to identify a compliance solution that would allow parents to apply in advance without adding significant technical or administrative scope. And in doing so, parents can apply for parental leave and get the peace of mind that they need before the baby arrives. So there's an example of an excellent team of not just designers, researchers, product folks, but policymakers and regulators and legal folks who are like, yes. We want to to do a better job of this. Yes, let's work together.
I think we could dig more into this, like, idea of this, like, partnership conversation because whether we're talking about, you know, in India, there's, like, a number of different asks, right, like a director for online passport renewal processing, testing the use of WIC online for purchases, a bunch of things for, you know, veterans online with va.gov. I mean, really reading the list is, a good way to appreciate just how much work there is to do. But but also a lot of these things will probably mean, significant change at those agencies, whether it's, like, how they're going about things, internal policies, processes, things that maybe cross between multiple groups. Could we dig in a bit like, like, what how would you all hope to partner with organizations as they're trying to navigate, what is, I guess, effectively transformational change?
Well, I think each of us has a slightly different role to play in this, and it varies widely. You know, those changes come from the agencies. So when we were putting together the list of commitments, it was not a top down directive. It was we are making space for you to identify what key changes you know you need to make for your customer base. What where do you wanna go? And we will help you and choose some ambitious but first steps for that transformation as you outlined. And so from our perspective on the federal side, you know, it's critical that we support them in accomplishing those changes. And so Claire and I have a good partnership. You know, she she works on a lot of the centralized capabilities. What do we need to be able to do in terms of helping them navigate data sharing agreements, etcetera? I have teams of technology experts who we deploy to go work with the agencies and to sort of be alongside shoulder to shoulder with agencies as they're doing implementation. And by the way, what that also means is working shoulder to shoulder and in collaboration with the contractors because all of these programs, all of the techno not all. The vast majority of the technology is built and managed by contractors. And so all of this is a activity of helping agencies learn how to drive these programs and manage them in a different way using different technology than they might already currently have. And so we try and bring that expertise, but also teach them through doing it together so that, you know, we will not be there forever, but they will have those skills and be able to apply them to the next program and the next program.
It's actually a relay race. Right? We're all handing the baton off to the next group of people who are going to, be supportive. So, this is really about the folks inside the agency. And when they see that this transformation when they participate in the transformation, drive the transformation, and see the success of working differently, they've evolved their service delivery. And they've evolved their service delivery. And that actually creates an enormous amount of momentum. And, I think it is really kind of the magical way that we get to have teams upfront, have teams in the middle, some of us bureaucracy busting around the edges. And then having our private sector partners who are in this with us, actually taking, you know, taking the next handoff and and developing and sustaining these products and services.
And to Mina's point, yeah, we have slightly different goals to play. And I'm gonna say something a little more tactical, which is, well, to start, I I believe that being a trusted partner by understanding the opportunities and constraints and delivering value quickly and iteratively is something we're all talking about. And one of the things I'd love to point out is the, you know, being showing versus telling using rapid prototyping as a tool, so that we're able to, partner with agencies and deliver value quickly. It allows us to see how products and services meet user needs in the field quickly and iterate accordingly. And I'm so glad you brought up va.gov because, that is, I was able to work on va.gov with Claire at, in 2018 and with one of the outstanding USDS teams that work, with the VA. And we were able to, do user research at medical facilities using rapid prototypes and talk to veterans, talk to caregivers, make sure, that we were the information on the medical facilities pages were accurate or what they needed. And eventually, at the end of the program, we had reduced the word count and site pages by 87%. We moved conflicting information that confused veterans and caregivers and developed an information architecture that informed the VA's multi year product road map. So, you know, what we're talking about here is building trust to change how people work together and, both with users, with, and with each other. So, yeah, that's I could keep you going, so I'll stop myself there.
And I think to build a little bit on what Jody said about the experience at VA, that foundation that was laid at VA, digital service competencies, the US digital service team leading into a VA digital service team with these partners, working shoulder to shoulder led the VA to be COVID ready. Right? At this time when the pandemic hit, all of a sudden, the VA was able to roll out a COVID tracker. They had a tech stack. They knew how to deploy. People didn't need to be in the building, but they knew that these 100 plus medical centers that are the VA footprint were active and available and ready to be partnering with them on getting things out the door quickly. So, this is a seed change. This is change that we need, to continue to develop these competencies and build those capabilities into federal agencies. And many federal agencies are on this journey already. And, you know, what we need is to keep working together collaboratively and also continue to bring people into government that wanna do this work with us, that wanna work on these kinds of really interesting projects and have just this outsized impact on people's lives.
Claire, your comment about bringing folks into government, I think, is a, a good segue to a a question here we have, kind of for the toward the tail end of our conversation, which was that I I imagine that there's, people out there listening right now. They're hearing all of this great stuff y'all have been sharing, and they're thinking, man, I'd really like to get involved in this work. How should folks out there looking to join and and get involved in government work like this seek to get involved? And if so, what sort of folks are you trying to attract? And I I imagine all three of you might have some different perspectives on this.
Come, come, come. We we will all have different websites that we tell you to apply at, but we will all say the same thing, which is to say that there is so much to do here, that it is satisfying and gratifying and exciting, and and that there is a ton of, impetus behind it now and a ton of motivation and top cover and, executive support, and it is an incredible time to come. So please, I think I speak for all of us in saying that we are looking for engineers and product managers and designers and government procurement experts and hiring manager hire, folks recruiters who help us get the the continue the flywheel moving. For USDS and some of our partner organizations, you know, we have usds.gov slash apply. We have a really simple application. It's straightforward. We partner with some other organizations. There's also the US Digital Corps and the Tech Transformation Service, at GSA, and both of those are incredible places to get involved. And I'll hand it to Claire for the the additional policy and other expert roles that she is looking for. But but it's an exciting time to come in and partner, and you'll get to work with amazing folks like Claire and Jody and her team. And, it's a great time to join.
Claire? Yep. And in addition to, USDS, we're hiring all across the government at different stages of people's tech career, so you don't have to be a senior level person. As Mina mentioned, the US Digital Corps are people starting in their career in government. We have presidential innovation fellows, at our sister agency, GSA, as Nina Mina mentioned. There are lots of positions that are available on usajobs.gov. They it still is a bit governmental, and it is still a little bit challenging, to kind of, find the right projects. But we are continue to work on modernizing, the way that people are coming into government. And, you know, we have the momentum. We have the money. We have the mandate with this customer experience order and all of the cybersecurity work we're doing. What we need is people to come and join us do this work.
At Nava, we have a Slack channel called Why We Do This. And I wish I could just open that up to everyone to see because it, as Claire said, working in this space allows you to have an outsized impact. And, we are looking for people who are comfortable with complexity, people who understand that progress can take work and be slow. You have to be in it for the long haul. But, you know, don't you have to be in it for the long haul, developing software for humans? I mean, it's a it's not an easy thing, but it's a there's a little more complexity here, but I'm still really welcoming people. Come, come, come, like Nina said. Claire mentioned recently when we were all speaking that she, you used a metaphor pushing a boulder up a hill, And, yes, it is like that. And sometimes it rolls back a little, and you gotta push a little harder, but then you make it further. And there really is this cumulative effect that's just so gratifying, and sometimes you get to do a small thing that is actually pretty big, like making it possible for new parents to apply for paid leave before the baby arrives. And, you're trying to function on no sleep. So, yeah, it's, it's it's a welcoming space. It's a gratifying space. And, if you're interested in anything at Nava, it's navapbc.com/careers. But also we'll fully endorse the the websites that, Claire and Mina described because true. If you get to work with either of them, you're very lucky.
And I will just say, you know, we say this all the time, but this is the hardest job that you will ever love. This is my fourth time in government. You will keep coming back, because you feel like you have tremendous and outsized impact. And I can genuinely say that in every program and meeting that I've been involved in, the outcome is different because I was here, and I know that. And my staff would say the same, and, you know, where where else do you get to go and do that on behalf of the public?
Claire, Mina, Jody, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on to Civic Tech Chat today and having this conversation. I I have no doubt at all that folks out there listening are gonna find all kinds of stuff to learn from what you've shared with us today. So, again, thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Ryan. Thanks for having us, Ryan. And thanks, Jody and Nina.
You too, Claire.
You can follow us on Twitter using the handle at civic tech chat. Visit us on the web at civictech.chat, or subscribe to us for content updates wherever it is you download your podcasts.
