How Are Agencies Measuring Up To The Digital Government Strategy?

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Federal agencies are finding it difficult to keep up with digital access demand, and the rapid increase in mobile devices is challenging current capabilities.

The Obama Administration launched the Digital Government Strategy in May 2012 in an attempt to keep pace with the emerging technologies, with the goal of providing citizen access to federal services and information anywhere, anytime, on any device. The White House statement accompanying the strategy explains, “New expectations require the Federal Government to be ready to deliver and receive digital information and services anytime, anywhere, and on any device. It must do so safely, securely, and with fewer resources. To build for the future, the Federal Government needs a Digital Strategy that embraces the opportunity to innovate more with less, and enables entrepreneurs to better leverage government data to improve the quality of services to the American people.”

Now, almost three years after the strategy was introduced, performance of federal agencies in achieving the goals of the initiative has been mixed. According to the E-Commerce Times, the federal General Accountability Office (GAO) report issued in December found that, in a sampling of six federal agencies, agency performance was uneven.

This report followed a second Obama initiative, the U.S. Digital Service, which was created in August of 2014 as a resource for federal agencies. The U.S. Digital Service, composed of a small team of digital experts were tasked to work in collaboration with other government agencies to make websites more consumer friendly, to identify and fix problems, and to help upgrade the government’s technology infrastructure. It also released a Digital Services Playbook that lays out best practices for effective digital service delivery and that will serve as a guide for agencies across government.

The GAO report found that all 24 agencies that were required to meet a number of digital strategy goals have accomplished the task of identifying two or more services to be optimized for mobile use, with some 21 agencies already optimizing two or more prioritized services.

However, despite the recorded advances, GAO also found a number of obstacles that remain for federal agencies in terms of meeting the digital demand. These barriers include information overload, with agency websites clogged with unnecessary information that impedes access; navigational issues, including unnecessary screens and functions that frustrate users by requiring three or more clicks to find appropriate information; and issues surrounding open data, content, and application programming interface policies and metadata tagging.

But given the size of the task, some say that the agencies are doing remarkably well. Todd Akers, vice president public sector at Acquia, told the E-Commerce Times, “In the few short years since the Digital Government Strategy was released, agencies have made tremendous strides in both understanding how citizens consume and use information, and adopting new technologies.”