During the Workday Federal Forum, GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan teased that the agency is working on an open-source tool called “Gov CX Analyzer,” which uses artificial intelligence features to see how individuals are interacting with government websites.

“This is a way to go from a few thousand people filling out a survey, to actually knowing and seeing how people are interacting with your site,” Carnahan said. “It just completely unlocks the potential to know how you can better serve your customers, where the friction points are and how you can improve it.” 

Carnahan pointed to the U.S. Web Design System — an open-source tool that is free for agencies to use — as a shared system and tool that “makes a huge difference.” 

Similar efforts include an announcement from the Office of Management and Budget last year that detailed an analytics tool to track customer experience performance across agency sites. OMB reported leveraging the GSA’s site scanner program to use performance indicators in the tracking of agencies’ site developments.

The post GSA teases new open-source customer experience tool appeared first on FedScoop.

TMF investments to the Departments of Education, Commerce and State total just under $50 million. 

The State Department received two investments: $18.2 million to increase diplomacy through generative AI and $13.1 million to transition its identity and access management systems to a zero-trust architecture model.

The AI investment is intended to “empower its widely dispersed team members to work more efficiently and improve access to enhanced information resources,” including diplomatic cables, media summaries and reports. On the zero trust investment, State said it is planning to expedite the creation of a comprehensive consolidated identity trust system, as well as centralizing workflows for the onboarding and offboarding process.

Clare Martorana, the federal CIO and TMF board chair, said in a statement that she’s “thrilled to see our catalytic funding stream powering the use of AI and improving security at the State Department.” 

State recently announced a chatbot for internal uses and revised its public AI use case inventory to remove nine items from the agency website. Additionally, the agency has started to encourage its workforce to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT. 

The Department of Education, meanwhile, is using a $5.9 million allocation to assist the Federal Student Aid office on a new StudentAid.gov feature called “My Activity” to centralize documents and data to track activities and status updates. The FSA is anticipating “a reduction in wait times and the need for customer care inquiries,” per the GSA release. 

Education also recently announced an RFI for cloud computing capabilities for the FSA office, a follow-on contract for its Next Generation Cloud. 

Finally, the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will put its $12 million TMF investment toward modernizing weather.gov through a redesign to “enhance information accessibility” and “establish a sustainable, mobile-first infrastructure.” NOAA reported plans to integrate translation capabilities for underserved communities’ benefit. 

The release noted that NOAA’s associated application programming interface “faces challenges, causing disruptions in accessing dependable weather information for the American public.”

Martorana said she was “equally excited about the TMF’s two other critical investments — with students getting more modern access to manage their education journeys and the public gaining access to life-saving weather information in an accessible manner for all.”

These investments come after a second appropriations package to fund the government for fiscal year 2024 threatened to claw back $100 million from the TMF. Both the GSA and the Office of Management and Budget have faced challenges in convincing lawmakers to meet funding levels proposed by the Biden administration.

Martorana recently called on Congress to fund the TMF, pointing to the funding vehicle as a way to improve service delivery for the public across the government.

The post New TMF investments boost agency projects in generative AI, digital service delivery, accessibility appeared first on FedScoop.

In addition to work on the action plan, which centers on transparency and public access to information and research pertaining to the federal government, the committee will advise the GSA’s administrator on open government issues, challenges and opportunities that emerge in order to support the agency’s open government secretariat. 

“The OG FAC will allow GSA to tackle emerging open government issues, challenges, and opportunities through expert advice from these stakeholders,” Krystal Brumfield, GSA’s associate administrator for government-wide policy, said in a press release. “We look forward to receiving innovative suggestions on the development of the sixth Open Government National Action Plan as well as other efforts to strengthen open government policy and public engagement.”

The committee, as outlined in a Federal Register post, will consist of between 10 and 20  federal and non-federal members that possess “strong background and expertise” in open government and improving government delivery services. Outside of federal agency officials, the committee is open to nominees from state and local government, industry and academia. 

The post lists background themes to include anti-corruption, digital governance, gender and inclusion, media freedom, public participation and more. 

The GSA said the OG FAC will meet “at least four times per year” and the convenings will be open to the public unless otherwise determined by appropriate authorities. 

Additionally, the agency’s open government secretariat is set to host a public session in May to field questions regarding the selection process and timeline.

The post GSA welcomes nominations for advisory committee focused on federal transparency efforts appeared first on FedScoop.

Bonamici, one of 12 Democrats appointed to the 24-member House AI task force announced last week by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in an interview with FedScoop that her focus will be on the ethical use of AI, pointing to a need to address bias, lack of consent, discrimination and privacy issues.

The congresswoman also revealed that she is working on a piece of legislation that mirrors the Senate’s “No Robot Bosses Act of 2024.” The House version, which is set to be introduced in a matter of weeks, addresses the risks of job displacement as AI is implemented in practical applications across industry, according to an email shared with FedScoop. 

Bonamici spoke with FedScoop about her legislative priorities with the task force, why it’s important that AI regulation is a bipartisan effort and her concerns about the technology.

Editor’s note: The transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

FedScoop: I know that AI has remained nonpartisan, and I wanted to know, where do you see the biggest difference between Democrats and Republicans on AI regulation and AI work?

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici: I have, in my dozen years of Congress, always tried to find common ground, and I’m convinced that we’ll be able to do that on the task force. … I think we are there as a bipartisan task force to actually address the issues that our constituents are asking about [such as] responsible use and ethical development of artificial intelligence, which has been something that I’ve been talking about for years, and then let’s figure out the regulatory structure. Those are two issues that I’ve been asking about in more informal settings, and I look forward to working on them in the task force. 

FS: How worried are you about AI-generated content this election season?

SB: Oh, I’m very worried — and we all should be. We have already seen examples of problems, whether it be deepfakes or theft of someone’s identity and making it sound like a candidate sending a message. So I’m hopeful that there are enough people out there looking at this and monitoring it and calling it out. I just don’t [know] what the remedy is going to be. And in the long term, I am very supportive of education and media literacy — to help people recognize when content is AI-generated. I just heard a story the other day about how even young kids, they think there’s a little person in an [Amazon] Alexa, they draw it with the face of a person. Early on, age-appropriate education so people know what to look for. 

FS: Is that the AI issue that worries you most? The ethical dilemmas and the threats that those pose regarding AI?

SB: Depending on how you’re defining ethical dilemmas, which is what I’ve been asking. Sometimes in these briefings, you come out with more questions than answers, but people have different definitions of what ethical AI means. I know that there’s tremendous potential, but I also know there are risks. I mentioned the privacy concerns, algorithmic bias, job displacement — lots of questions about that — and then, of course, all the nefarious uses we were seeing with deepfakes. I’m interested in the energy use and the vast amount of energy that this takes. In fact, I had a meeting [insert day of the week] about some work that’s being done to make running these models more energy-efficient. 

FS: What are some lessons learned, perhaps from social media and data privacy, that you are keeping in mind when it comes to placing guardrails for artificial intelligence?

SB: I want to start by saying that whenever we regulate around technology, we have to do it in a way that provides the needed protections but does not stifle innovation, because we don’t want to hold back the good potential, which is challenging. But I think that’s one of the reasons why the bipartisan task force was set up by the Leader and the Speaker, because they realized that this is urgent. And we know with social media, now people are saying [that] this is dangerous to some and we really have to look at the experts and what is best for especially young people, and keep that in mind. … I don’t think we can have 50 different systems; I think it needs to be done at the federal level.

FS: We’ve seen a lot of voluntary commitments from companies where AI is concerned, and I know that you are advocating for fair competition across the private sector. How can Congress ensure that smaller tech companies can compete with big tech companies?

SB: Obviously look at anti-competitive behavior and [we] have [the Federal Trade Commission] and [the Department of Justice] to do that, and they are working on those and I’m sure that anti-competitive behavior that falls under existing antitrust laws is important to look at. Expanding opportunities for small industries is going to be really important. I’m out here in Northwest Oregon, which is known as Silicon Forest, where we have a lot of big but also small semiconductor companies and all the ancillary businesses that go with them. So we are really working hard out here to develop a workforce. I was just hearing about a partnership [insert day] with one of the tech hubs and some of our research universities but also smaller colleges and universities and workforce boards. I think there are many ways that we can look to not only increase opportunities but also increase diversity, which is really critical in the workforce. 

FS: Of course, as you’re well aware, digital literacy and the broadband gap remain a major problem. How worried are you about AI and AI-generated content exacerbating those digital inequities?

SB: It’s a possibility, but we’ve been working hard with filling the gaps. It was exacerbated … by the pandemic when all of a sudden, students have to learn online and there’s a lot of places [that] didn’t have connectivity or devices. So we’ve been working on closing those gaps and I think we’ve made some progress with that and expanding connectivity.

The post As House task force work begins, Rep. Bonamici is ‘very worried’ about AI — ‘and we all should be’ appeared first on FedScoop.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., released the letter to DOT in response to a request for comment that the department posted in November, advising the agency to make the online form more accessible to users. 

These recommendations included the offering of a web-based form, removing “redundant and threatening” legal warnings from the existing form, removing duplicative fields and allowing passengers to opt-in to using previously filed paperwork so travelers do not have to resubmit for each flight. Wyden and Duckworth also recommended a helpline for those who have issues with DOT’s forms.  

“The first step is to see if DOT listens to Sens. Wyden and Duckworth and folks who represent disabled Americans [or] listen to disabled Americans about their needs and if they listen to that feedback and incorporate it,” a Wyden aide said in an interview with FedScoop. “If not, then it really depends on what the Transportation Department does as far as what Wyden’s next steps are.”

In the letter, Wyden and Duckworth cite the burdens placed on those who need to travel with their service animals, such as currently offering the required form in a PDF format, one that the legislators call “particularly difficult to access and interact with when using mobile devices or screen readers and other assistive technology.” Currently, the department only encourages airlines to use accessible web formats, like HTML, for the form.

The document cites the agency’s noncompliance with the Office of Management and Budget’s requirements of the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act, which requires government websites to be accessible for those with “diverse abilities,” and warns against publishing content in a PDF format.

“There are a lot of laws already on the books mandating use of accessible technology, but just looking at this form as an example, those rules and those policies aren’t always followed,” the Wyden aide said. “So trying to make sure that agencies are able to follow that guidance and able to make things accessible to folks who need them is really important, and it’s something I think Congress in general and the government in general needs to focus on.”

Issues with DOT’s service animal form for commercial flying is “amplified” since the agency allows airlines to require travelers to complete and resubmit a new copy of the paperwork before every trip, regardless of whether the information has changed in between flights, according to the letter. 

The agency previously cited privacy implications in the final rule as a reason for allowing new copies to be required before every trip, stating that this would mean storing and maintaining an individual’s service-animal information on their travel profile “without the passenger’s consent.”

To remedy this, Wyden and Duckworth suggested that requiring stored information about a traveler’s animal-service attestation be optional, and only stored for a year in a database. The lawmakers point to American Airlines, which provides a yearlong, unique service animal number so that passengers do not have to resubmit the form for every trip. 

The Wyden aide said that the senator is interested in pursuing accessible, digital services further, but that it was too early to make any other announcements. 

“It’s a little too soon to talk about other services or other agencies, but I think if you talk to folks in the disability advocacy community, they’ll tell you that this is not limited to one form at the Transportation Department,” the Wyden aide said. “It’s really widespread, government websites, government services. There definitely is an interest to continue to do oversight on this issue.”

The post Democratic senators call for digital update to Department of Transportation’s service animal flight form appeared first on FedScoop.

The digital service program will enable the over 153 million workers, retirees and families covered by “private employment retirement plans, group health plans and other welfare benefit plans” to search for savings and benefits that may still be owed to them through their retirement plans.

Lisa Gomez, assistant secretary for the Employee Benefits Security Administration, said in a statement that “ensuring workers can obtain the benefits they are entitled to is one of EBSA’s most important missions. We are excited to have the opportunity to connect millions of America’s workers and other plan beneficiaries with their lost retirement benefits by putting this tool at their fingertips.”

EBSA’s existing missing participant program, a service that connects people to forgotten retirement benefits, has recovered more than $4.2 billion since 2021 for “missing” participants, according to the release.

The upcoming online registry is required by the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement [SECURE] Act 2.0 of 2022, which the fund’s investment is helping the department establish. 

Earlier this month, Federal CIO Clare Martorana pointed to the TMF as a way for federal agencies to find funding for actions that follow the 2021 executive order for digital service delivery and customer experience. The fund created an allocation for customer-centered projects to be prioritized, and Martorano, who also serves as the TMF board chair, told FedScoop that the allocation is intended to “streamline the opportunity for agencies to interact with us.”

“One of the best parts of my job is to leverage the power of technology to make government interactions better for the American people–especially those most in need,” Martorana said in the press release. “Our TMF investment in DOL will change the lives of people searching for unclaimed retirement benefits–those they’ve worked hard to earn and deserve to enjoy.”

The post Labor Department receives $3.5M TMF award to establish online missing benefits registry appeared first on FedScoop.

Speaking at FedScoop’s annual FedTalks event, Mendes proposed that the U.S. should have “federal, state and local government portals that allow you to navigate through the thing in your app, on your mobile phone, and get access to every system that you need to.”

“And that is possible — built around the persona, the citizen and not the government, toward 100%, navigable self-service,” he added.

Mendes pointed to Estonia as an example of a nation that is already doing this. And to get to that point, he said, the U.S. must “shed all of our legacy modus operandi,” calling the way that many federal agencies create IT strategies independent of the commercial market and overly customize commercial software “an amazing waste of money and time.”

“We cannot continue doing the same thing that we’ve been doing and expect to get to a radically different place as fast as we need to by doing so,” Mendes said. “It is impossible, we must shed the way that we do all business.”

Mendes noted also how most of the information hosted on agency websites is extremely old.

“Information is often outdated, inaccurate and late,” Mendes said. “I mean, you can go into a website for a government agency and you will find an unbelievable amount of obsolete information. I don’t care which agency it is.”

To drive this transformation, Mendes said government agencies should rely only on technology that commercial organizations have developed with minimal to no customization rather than building their own. 

“Almost every online presence must be replaced,” Mendes said. “You’re talking about literally millions upon millions of web pages that must go. So this is an enormous task.”

In his keynote, Mendes gave recommendations on what current CIOs should do to encourage and support the move towards more modernized, commercial digital services. 

“Aggressively extract commodity, you cannot afford to be running systems in your shop,” Mendes said, among other suggestions. “You cannot, you should not be doing this…. You should be designing and modernizing applications, aggressively consolidate applications and operations.”

Since the commercial sector has moved toward apps on mobile devices that go through near-constant updates, Mendes said that CIOs must embrace that change and be bold in reflecting it. 

“Rededicate your career to momentous change,” Mendes said. “Just go out there and knock it out of the park.”

The post “An amazing waste of money and time.” Commerce CIO calls for digital services reformulation appeared first on FedScoop.

According to presentation slides of USDS Administrator Mina Hsiang’s strategic priorities for 2024 obtained by this publication, the agency will work with OMB on the budgeting process to support agency resourcing, increase USDS’s investment in organizational and talent operations, and better emphasize stories that humanize its work and impact in addition to highlighting important data points.

Although some of the language within the strategic priorities presentation is broad, it does not include specific mention of the agency’s self described top three objectives highlighted on its “our mission” page on the agency website: “1. Transform critical, public-facing services, 2. Expand the use of common platforms, services, and tools, 3. Rethink how the government buys digital services.”

However, the presentation does include an entire slide addressing their forth objective of the agency which is to “bring top technical talent into civic service.”

One of the key USDS’ strategic priorities for 2024 includes “clearly and collaboratively establishing near and long term objectives for our work and holding ourselves and agencies accountable to them,” the slides said. They were part of a presentation to shared with staff during a meeting last week led by Hsiang, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Furthermore, the agency plans to focus on “piloting new types of projects and approaches to expand our capabilities and learn what works,” according to the slides obtained.

Speaking with FedScoop, Administrator Hsiang confirmed details of the updated strategy, and said the priorities include: continuing to work directly with agencies like HHS and SSA to deliver better digital outcomes, helping to create stronger tech organizations within agencies to improve operations, and supporting agencies in building their capacity to hire more employees with tech expertise.

“Since earlier this year we’ve been partnering with the Social Security Administration, and we help them rebuild their entire public facing website. So if you look at SSA.gov now, as compared to what it was like in January of this year, it’s materially different,” Hsiang told FedScoop during a virtual interview from her home in Boston. 

“So the overall completion rate of tasks on SSA has increased by more than 10%. We’ve seen pretty significant improvements at SSA, on how the public is able to access services via their website based on that partnership that we’ve had with them,” Hsiang added.

Hsiang is the third administrator at USDS, which was launched in 2014 by the White House to provide consultation services to federal agencies on IT and technology issues as well as work to improve and simplify digital services including improving federal websites in particular.

According to Hsiang, website redesign is only one of several ways USDS works with federal agencies to improve digital experiences for citizens. It also often focuses on reengineering business processes and integrating technical services that are necessary for enhancing customer support and experience, she said.

In the presentation slides, the agency also stated that one of its strategic priorities is “partnering more effectively with other technology organizations across the gov like TTS, TMF and the OFCIO to ensure the best allocation of resources against end objectives.” 

Technology Transformation Services is a division of the General Services Administration (GSA), which is responsible for leading the digital transformation of government agencies. The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) received a $1 billion infusion under the American Rescue Plan, and is focused on providing extra funding to agency technology projects with governmentwide implications.

The Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer (OFCIO) provides overall strategic direction for improving IT practices across government and sits within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

When asked about how specifically Hsiang planned to work more effectively with other tech entities in the federal government to transform the digital experience of Americans, Hsiang said there were no major improvements needed at the moment.

“We have an extremely close relationship at this point. I know at various points in time that hasn’t always been true,” the USDS administrator said.  

“We share full information about what we’re working on, how things are going, and ensure that we’re not duplicating and that we can be additive and are well coordinated across the organizations,” she added.

The post USDS to pilot new types of projects and set fresh objectives as part of 2024 strategy appeared first on FedScoop.

The survey sought out public sentiment and ranked 11 sectors across both commercial and public sector organizations, including grocery, non-grocery retail, financial services, healthcare, telecoms, logistics, utilities, public sector and others.

The results showed that the public sector ranked 6.36 in the weighted sentiment ranking, falling well below the U.S. average ranking of 7.68.

The findings were based on interviews with more than 7,700 U.S. consumers who reported on 237 U.S. organizations.

Respondents were asked to score their perceptions of each organization’s reputation in three main areas:

• Advocacy: how likely they were to recommend each to a friend or colleague
• Loyalty: how likely they were to continue using each in the future
• Customer experience across six pillars: empathy, personalization, time and effort, expectations, resolution and integrity

Though the study focused largely on the commercial side, there are several lessons that public sector leaders can take away from the successes of “breakout” companies — organizations that made a dramatic improvement in their Customer Experience Excellence score year over year.

The eight capabilities or factors that these breakout companies share, according to the report, include:

• Insight-driven strategies and actions
• Innovative products and services
• Experience centricity by design
• Seamless interactions and commerce
• Aligned and empowered workforce
• Digitally enabled technology architecture
• Responsive operations and supply chain
• Integrated partner and alliance ecosystem

The report cites examples from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Medicare as two large federal organizations that have started reframing their outcomes in a more customer-centric way. That includes revamping aging websites or reorganizing departments with the customer in mind.

And these agencies have found success by working with partners, like KPMG, to integrate methodologies tailored to help them overcome their unique challenges and to improve their customers’ experiences to empower their constituents to make more informed decisions, says the report.

Learn more about the findings from the report, “Improving the Citizen Experience.”

This article was produced by Scoop News Group, for FedScoop, and sponsored by KPMG.

The post U.S. public sentiment ranks public sector organizations low on customer experience measures appeared first on FedScoop.

Zarek joins the agency later this month and will support USDS Administrator Mina Hsiang, who was appointed to lead the organization in September last year.

“I’m proud to share that later this month I will be returning to public service to support the people and teams working to deliver services to people across our country as the Deputy Administrator of the United States Digital Service (USDS),” Cori Zarek said in a blog post. 

“USDS is an eight-year-old unit of the White House whose mission is to use design and technology to deliver better services to the American people,” she added.

Zarek is currently the executive director of the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation and a professor of the practice at Georgetown University. 

Before joining Georgetown, Zarek served as deputy U.S. CTO during the Obama administration. 

While previously serving in the White House, she led work to establish digital and collaborative government initiatives including the U.S. Digital Service, 18F, and the Presidential Innovation Fellows. 

From 2009 to 2013, Zarek was also a founding member of the Office of Government Information Services.

She was a Mozilla Foundation fellow in technology policy and earlier in her career practiced First Amendment law. 

The post White House picks Cori Zarek as US Digital Service deputy administrator appeared first on FedScoop.