“The public deserves competent, efficient, and responsive service from the Federal Government.”  This opening line from Executive Order 13571, cited on a number of occasions during the Digital Government Institute’s recent Government Customer Service Conference and Expo, perfectly illustrates the paradigm shift in government we are witnessing.

It was refreshing to be in the same room with many of the same people who are on the forefront of this change and also to listen to their stories. Did you know that until not that long ago government agencies did not actually have the concept of a ‘customer’ or ‘customer service’?  So from this revelation to the mantra of a ‘future-ready’ government defined by ‘anyone on any device at any time anywhere’, government sure has come a long way.

“The times they are a-changin,”as the old song goes. Government today has to catch up with the digital revolution taking place in mobile, social and the cloud and meet the expectation of its changing demographics. Here are just a few of the compelling factors driving that change: 

• Government is going through a massive overhaul aimed in reducing wasteful spending in IT. At present, there are over 10,000 government web sites with unprecedented level of overlap, oftentimes leaving the public confused and frustrated.
• Significant uptake in interactions with constituents. The gateway to government USA.gov had more than 270 million touch points with citizens last year alone, and this number is only expected to rise.
• Baby boomers are retiring en masse and they are driving up the demand for government services – social security payouts, Medicare, Medicaid and other benefits delivery case management, to name a few.
• The ‘millennials’ are expected to make up 50% of the workforce (including government) by 2018. This latest generation is fully mobile and social. It is highly collaborative, with a strong sense of community and convenience. They have little patience and care more about peer opinions and the expediency of self-help than looking for service in silos of information. They are used to apps, not stacks. The ‘activity stream’ on Facebook, communities, IM, etc. reflects their ‘stream of consciousness’ - succinct, mobile, social.

So how is government trying to address these challenges?  It is finally taking a more confident step into the social media arena.  It is evaluating mobility in light of growing security requirements – the expectation is that in two years the federal government will allow employees to connect to the secure knowledge repositories on a mobile device. It is taking the cloud seriously – The Office of Management and Budget just posted a new memo laying out a new administration’s initiative for cloud computing security. Known as FedRAMP – Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program – this is a government-wide program that will provide a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services, supplementing several major cloud initiatives launched just this year. 

The Future is almost here – let’s only hope our government really has the foresight to embrace it.