Reacting to the Federal CIO DX Announcement

In this episode, Aaron and Ana react to Federal CIO Gregory Barbaccia’s announcement regarding the management of federal digital properties, ie, websites. This is exactly what Aaron and Ana used to do in the government, sooooo, we have some notes. Here are the highlights:

1. The biggest issue with digital management is not the technical side, it’s the management side.

2. If an org’s digital offerings have gone a bit wild, that’s often a sign of CX success. It means employees want and do respond to customer needs and don’t perceive a meaningful cost barrier when it comes to website builds. So you need to encourage the former and educate on the latter, not go in with a chainsaw and start hacking away.

3. There are lots of people who are working on this issue in the federal government, because many of Greg’s demands are part of the 21st Century IDEA legislation, signed by President Trump in 2018. Agencies have been working on this for years, so Greg would find the most efficiencies if he found out who these teams are and asked them what their wins, blockers, and scalable processes are.

4. It’s tough to wrangle a digital ecosystem, but it’s not impossible. Three signs you’re starting to get your arms around it are:

   1. When you see people start to collaborate to bring digital properties together.

   2. When you see management chains moving quickly to reassign digital management when posts go empty.

   3. When you see people coming to enterprise digital experience teams organically to discuss whether or not they need a website.

Overall, we’re happy to see that DX continues to be a priority for the federal government. We’re excited to share the things we did to bring the practice forward, and we hope that all our friends and former colleagues keep moving forward to bring federal DX to its next level of efficiency and support for services to the American public.