Product and project management

Why Invest in a Content Management System? Does it take too long to update and post digital content? Do you lack consistent branding across your website(s)? Is outdated, redundant content leading to a poor customer experience? Does your agency website show up too far down in search results? Are you

Every year, one of our office’s biggest projects is to prepare the Information Sharing Environment Annual Report to the Congress. This report examines the progress of Congress’s mandate in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to develop a better environment of terrorism-related information sharing.

Security, consolidation, cloud services and enterprise portfolio management top the list of critical state CIO priorities in 2014, according to state information technology leaders surveyed by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO). The prioritized rankings of strategies and technologies reflect voting by state CIOs and are

While we think about the audience, we don’t often map out the experience we want them to have when using our services. This is critical information for the design. In other cases, we may not have the data to analyze existing customers’

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” — Mark Twain It’s simple—you’re the technical expert; you know the topic inside out, so of course you can easily explain it to a captive audience. Right? Not always. Communicators in every industry know that message

Are you involved in a collaborative project where you need to share information? Whether it is within an organization across units or external to an organization – across agencies, or levels of government – sharing of information can be fraught with challenges. The Center for Technology in Government, (CTG) University at Albany, New York has released

Contact centers operated and managed by federal agencies have to follow certain laws, regulations, policies, and other directives. Unless specifically noted, contact centers operated and managed by states or local governments do not have to comply with these same requirements. Access for People with Disabilities (Section 508) Federal contact centers must comply with Section 508

Analyzing your visitors’ search terms can help you better understand their needs. It can provide valuable data about the content and organization of the content on your site. Create a Semi-Automated Report of Terms Here’s how to create a semi-automated report for analyzing large amounts of search data on a regular basis. A human still

Cloud Computing enables convenient, on-demand access to, and rapid deployment of, shared computing resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services. Plan What is the Cloud? Is Cloud Computing for you? What types of services does Cloud Computing support? Types of Cloud environments Implement Learn steps to acquire, manage, and secure your agency

A Twitter town hall, or Twitter chat, is an event where agencies invite public engagement for a scheduled time period during which users can ask questions or find out more information about a topic via Twitter, much like a webinar. The questions are tagged

In our very first customer experience (CX) blog post about GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies’ (OCSIT) Customer Experience Program, we published our principles and values. Our core principles say that all staff will: Take responsibility for providing an experience greater than customer expectations. Engage, listen and resolve. Design business from the outside

A sure way to annoy employees is to never share what executives discuss or decide until a new mandate lands on the organization’s collective head. While senior leaders should expect some privacy in decision-making and debate, they should also expect to openly hold themselves accountable and to make sure their employees know where the

Guest post by Brenda Wensil, Chief Customer Experience Officer for Federal Student Aid (FSA). Established in late 2010, FSA’s Customer Experience Office is responsible for identifying, measuring and reporting customer expectations and satisfaction with the financial aid services and products offered at Federal Student Aid. The launch of StudentAid.gov in July 2012,

What’s one of the most important factors in delivering a good customer experience? When I first began learning about customer experience, one of the biggest surprises was the importance of culture. Organizational culture can be defined as the values and behavior that contribute to the unique and psychological environment of an organization.It’s based on shared

Do you know who your customers are? And what they expect from your organization? One of the most critical components of a successful customer experience program is to understand your customer. The first step is knowing who your customers are. Are they veterans, students, senior citizens or other federal workers? In some cases your customers

In my last post I talked about how we’re kicking off our Customer Experience program in the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCSIT) at GSA. There are many paths to creating a customer experience program, from starting with cultural issues like employee

The vision for my office, the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCSIT) at GSA, is simple: Deliver a world-class experience to the public when accessing government information and services – anytime, anywhere – through the delivery channel they choose. We create and leverage products, services and

Instagram is the latest mobile and social media tool available to federal, state and local governments to better engage with the public, with a newly negotiated government-compatible Terms of Service (TOS) agreement. GSA collaborated with Instagram to negotiate the amended terms, which brings the total number of

Can you imagine how frustrating and confusing it would be to find several variations of the same agency name on different sites or even different pages or documents on the same site? This is what happens everyday to Spanish-speaking customers accessing the Spanish names of

Everyone wants to know how to provide outstanding customer experience in government. It can be difficult, because everyday our customers are also doing business with companies like Starbucks, Zappos, and Virgin America, that excel in customer service.