GSA Seeking Ideas on How to Improve Customer Experience at Government Agencies

The General Services Administration is seeking new ideas to improve government agencies’ customer experience. Feedback provided by federal employees will be used as the basis for new shared services. The information-gathering drive is part of the GSA’s 10x program.

Nico Papafil, director of the GSA’s 10x program, said during a GovernmentCIO webinar on Thursday that there will be additional funding for new ideas in fiscal year 2022. He added that some of the things the program wants to know are how to improve digital services and how to improve services provided to underserved and underrepresented communities. Organizations can also submit ideas on how the public can improve its engagement with government agencies. The deadline for submissions is Nov. 16, Federal News Network reported.

One of the ideas that the 10x program is working on is the Benefits Eligibility Awareness Recognition Service. According to Papafil, the BEARS solution was created to apply human-centric designs to federal benefits services, which are currently siloed by agency.

Papafil said BEARS is an example of how the information-gathering program would help agencies improve their services. The official stated that GSA wants to look at more holistic solutions that can be applied across an entire agency. Papafil also highlighted the need to engage with the customer base to ensure that modernization efforts would benefit clients.

The Department of Veterans Affairs also took on a similar approach in improving their public-facing offerings in 2017. Barbara Morton, deputy chief veterans experience officer at the VA, said it talked to its customers to determine the most common issue and determined that Veterans do not know what the agency’s digital front door is. Thanks to customer feedback, Morton said the organization modernized VA .gov and made it so that the website will be the agency’s digital front door.