Abstract

Beginning in the Obama administration and continuing into Trump II, the Office of Management and Budget developed the Federal Customer Experience (CX) framework. The Federal CX framework employs Human-Centered Design (HCD) principles to orient government service delivery (e.g. passport renewal, farm loan applications, veterans benefits) around people and their life experiences. The General Services Administration defines HCD broadly as “an interdisciplinary methodology of putting people, including those who will use or be impacted by what one creates, at the center of any process to solve challenging problems”. Notably, President Biden’s Executive Order 14058 directed the federal government to organize its efforts around a Life Experience Framework, whereby different agencies collaborated to create synergistic service offerings via HCD for particular life events (e.g. a public-private partnership led by HHS to provide newborn supply kits for mothers having a child). Our lab is investigating the application of this federal initiative to the municipal level of government in order to assist mayors with improving outcomes for families. This summer, we are applying HCD to craft a “CX for Cities” technical-assistance program, an eight-month engagement for mayoral teams that will train them in Federal CX processes (e.g. service definition, customer segmentation, service mapping, pain-point analysis). Our specific city partners are forthcoming, but we anticipate that the cities who complete the inaugural offering will emerge with ready-to-deliver plans for driving measurable improvements in residents’ experience with a priority service area. Future research may study the outcome differential in service-delivery between city alumni of the CX for Cities program and non-alumni cities