Ep 7: The DoD is Accomplishing Monumental Feats by Aligning IT Modernization with Customer Experience

Ep 7: The DoD is Accomplishing Monumental Feats by Aligning IT Modernization with Customer Experience

Author: Government Technology Insider December 17, 2024 Duration: 26:46

The Department of Defense is used to accomplishing monumental feats. From protecting the national interest to managing a workforce of nearly 3 million people, nothing happens on a small scale. This is clearly evident in both the IT modernization goals for the agency and its customer experience (CX) improvement plans to align with the December 2021 Executive Order on Transforming Customer Experience and Rebuilding Trust in Government.

While it would be easy to treat these two major projects as separate entities, what the Department of Defense has learned is that when CX is put at the center of IT modernization the impact drives innovation forward more quickly and enables service members to receive the exemplary service they deserve.

But what does this look like in practical terms?

Hillary Fredrick, host of the Clickthrough podcast, sat down with Donna Settle, Vice President for the Federal Defense Market at Maximus and Chris Doty, Senior Practice Manager for the Department of the Air Force at AWS to learn more about how the United States Air Force and the United States Space Force have approached this vital work.

Settle shared during the post that “cloud adoption and AI implementation alone don't necessarily solve a lot of the day-to-day experience problems. It's about empowering those customers and stakeholders to perform their mission more effectively. We do know that cloud adoption enables faster access to the mission critical data from anywhere and that as long as there's access, whether airmen are in a deployed environment or at a home station. We also look at AI from an implementation point to eliminate those boring, repetitive tasks. The goal overall is to free up the time of the airmen so that they can focus more strategically.”


Ever wonder what happens behind the scenes when you interact with a government website or call a federal helpline? Clickthrough: A Total User Experience Podcast, presented by the Government Technology Insider, digs into the human stories and technical challenges of making public services actually work for people. This isn't about dry policy debates; it's a grounded conversation with the practitioners-Maximus experts and other seasoned guests-who are in the trenches redesigning processes and implementing new technologies. Each episode unpacks real-world attempts to streamline complex systems, focusing on the tangible goal of improving how citizens receive support. You'll hear frank discussions about what fails, what succeeds, and the ongoing effort to bridge the gap between bureaucratic structure and public need. Tune into this podcast for a clearer picture of the future of citizen experience, where empathy and innovation meet the scale of government.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 22

Clickthrough: A Total User Experience Podcast
Podcast Episodes
Pathways to Modernizing Citizen Engagement: The Role of AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:08
Federal government agencies have found themselves in the middle of a service delivery revolution driven by generational change and fueled by the power of AI-enabled technology. Long gone are the days when citizens were c…
Digital Transformation for the Defense Community: Part 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:56
The Defense community has always been on the cutting edge of technology adoption and deployment. From Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) role in laying the groundwork for the Internet, to the investments…