Harnessing_Life_Events_Action_Guide_0

Harnessing Life Events Action Guide
ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation
Date Released: December, 2015
SYNOPSIS
Increasingly, governments—federal, state, local and tribal—are focused on
designing citizen-centered services that deliver value to customers and meet or
exceed expectations. In support of these efforts, ACT-IAC’s Institute for Innovation
sponsored this project to help agencies become more citizen-centric by leveraging
a life event framework to transform customer service, advance service delivery and
exceed customer expectations. In this Action Guide, we specify actions people can
take to:
 Implement customer-centered perspectives within service design;
 Improve information-sharing to and service delivery; and
 Deliver meaningful and measurable value to the public.

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American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC)
3040 Williams Drive, Suite 500, Fairfax, VA 22031
www.actiac.org ● (p) (703) 208.4800 (f) ● (703) 208.4805
Advancing Government Through Collaboration, Education and Action Page 1
About This Guide
This guide serves as a quick reference for innovators who seek to improve how they connect
citizens to high-value services. The actionable recommendations presented here are drawn
from a companion document published by the ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation: Harnessing Life
Events to Connect Citizens and Services: An Innovator’s Guide. The Innovator’s Guide presents
the rationale for harnessing life events to improve how government serves the public and the
tools available to implement those improvements. For those looking to effect lasting change, it is
important to understand the concepts and recommendations presented within the Innovator’s
Guide as you implement the actions presented in this document.
This guide provides role-based actions that organizations can take to:
 better understand your customers;
 implement customer-centered service alignment and design;
 guide executives that seek to effect lasting change;
 support managers to implement customer-centered services;
 empower staffs that directly support customers; and
 establish performance standards and measure service success.
This guide is intended to serve executives, managers, and program staffs that seek to improve
how government serves the public. The actions presented here can be used to plan for service
improvements, to establish new programs, and to advance government-wide initiatives such as
the Digital Government Strategy1, the National Strategy for Information Sharing and
Safeguarding2, and the Accountable Government Initiative3.
1
https://cio.gov/worldclassdigitalservices/digital-strategy/
2
https://www.ise.gov/resources/2012-national-strategy
3
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/14/presidential-memorandum-accountable-
government-initiative

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Overview of Key Perspectives
Harnessing Life Events to Connect Citizens and Services: An Innovator’s Guide addresses
three perspectives of government service delivery:
 how government delivers service – an “inside out” perspective;
 what customers want and how they feel about a service – an “outside in” perspective;
and
 Defining success and measuring performance – a “metrics” perspective.
When all three perspectives are considered together, organizations can more effectively design,
deliver, and improve customer service and the experiences that citizens have when they interact
with their government. Technology supports the implementation of solutions in all three spaces.
From an inside out perspective, agencies can form digital communities that collaborate to serve
citizens more efficiently as they conduct their customer journey. From a customer’s perspective,
their wants, needs, expectations about, and experiences with a service are captured using
online and in-branch technologies that used to inform better service design. Finally, from a
metrics perspective, performance standards and measures can be used to improve service at
organizational, community, and interagency levels. The sections that follow present actions
executives, managers, and staff can take to address and improve customer service and the
customers’ experiences.

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Actions to Better Understand Your Customers
Objective Executives Managers Staff
Develop a
customer-centric
view
 Develop strategies and plans
to foster customer-centered
culture change;
 Provide resources to
innovate and improve
customer experience.
 Support and reward
employees who take a
customer-centric view
and include it as a factor
in an employee’s annual
performance evaluation
 Support employees who
attempt to overcome
barriers to taking a life
events perspective
 Hire workers that want to
help customers,
overcome service
barriers, and innovate
 Exhibit customer-centric
behaviors
 Look for opportunities to
overcome barriers to taking
a life events perspective
 Look for opportunities to
continually improve
customer experience
 Stay current on voice of the
customer data
Design positive
customer
experiences
 Charter a working group
(cross organization within
agency, or cross agency)
and develop a shared vision
and plan for integrating life
events focus into your
agency’s service offerings
 Provide support for
implementing ideas to
realize the vision
 Actively participate in
working group and
support shared vision
and plan
 Communicate vision and
plan with all staff
 Demonstrate
commitment to share
vision and plan
 Actively implement and
support plan for a positive
customer experience and a
life-events focus
Consider the
customer journey
 Use the same working group
to identify customers across
programs and their needs
 Provide the resources to
collect ongoing input and
feedback from customers to
capture their evolving needs.
 Engage in communities
of service across
agencies
working group to identify
customers’ needs across
programs (map the
customer journey)
 Leverage the voice of
the customer and
operational data to
identify and prioritize
integration efforts
 Engage in communities of
service across agencies.
working group to identify
customers’ needs across
programs (map the
customer journey)
 Identify opportunities to
streamline service support.
 Help collect customer
feedback

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Actions to Change How You Serve Customers
Objective Executives Managers Staff
Understand the
public needs you
satisfy
 Establish strategic priority for
Life Events in support of the
customer experience
framework.
 Advocate an enterprise
perspective by
establishing a plan with
an approach to support
the delivery of citizen
services via a Life
Events lens
 Document customer journey
maps to define shared
service opportunities
 Assess challenges and
constraints – legal, policy,
security, technology
Identify the life
events that create
customer needs
 Sponsor customer centric
initiatives with Life Events
orientation to drive change
 Facilitate resource allocation
to support life events
orientation
 Identify transactions for
high impact services to
citizens
 Enable roadmap to
define the action plan to
prioritize program and
process change
 Designate Product
Managers that would
focus on life events
services as products
 Establish catalog of life
events services
 Develop standards for
services and continually
evaluate to improve
effectiveness
 Associate programs and
services to life events
 Adopt a “product”
management focus
 Utilize technology to
improve service delivery
making it easier and faster
to interact with government
Connect your
capabilities within
a community of
service
 Establish shared life events
priorities across government
ecosystem
 Sponsor/drive change efforts
 Create teams to
design/establish service
integration
 Identify use cases for LE
pilots
 Ensure technology,
processes and data are
ready for shared service
delivery
 Identify workforce
education needs
 Develop rules of
engagement
 Align to governance
structures and architectures
 Map data to be shared to
support life events focus
and document data sharing
agreements
 Update processes,
leveraging integration to
enable a unified approach
 Create virtual service
platforms to drive value and
quality of service
 Understand how / when to
find and communicate
related services

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Actions to Measure Citizen-Centered Service
Measurement
Goal
Inside an Organization Across Organizations Within a Community of
Service
Identify Customer
Success Metrics
and Performance
Indicators
 Ask customers what service
experiences, impacts and
outcomes they expect: what
contributes to satisfaction
 Identify program and process
metrics that must be achieved
per policy or law
 Assess how existing metrics
address customer-centered
performance. Identify gaps.
 Identify cost and compliance
performance requirements
 Identify ways to incorporate
findings into CQI cycles
 Ensure metrics cover all critical
performance dimensions
 Map user pathways and
connectedness of data
and resources
 Identify community
behaviors that drive
customer satisfaction
 Identify information
sharing and service
integration opportunities
and associated service
level requirements
 identify metrics gaps, and
prioritize analysis needs
and use cases
 Share performance data
upstream and
downstream
 Establish performance
monitoring standards and
a common vocabulary
 Define community metrics
or index that characterize
customer-oriented
performance
 Establish performance
standards for communities
and individual
organizations
 Collaborate with
advocates to focus on
success
Use Operational
Data to Improve
Service
Management
 Establish electronic logs and
monitors to measure digital
quality of service
 Prompt customers to provide
transaction-level feedback
 Use surveys and other media
to capture customer feedback
 Establish routine performance
reviews and use data to target
and implement performance
improvements
 Align resource performance
goals to staff annual goals
 Ensure that staff rewards and
recognition support customer
success goals
 Conduct feasibility /
alternative solution
analysis to address
integration issues
 Measure information
exchanges associated
with customer journeys
(i.e., cross-agency
responses to life events)
 Monitor and measure
service level
conformance
 Establish routine
performance reviews to
identify areas for
improvement
 Collect government-wide
performance data
 Leverage Chief
Performance Officer
Council to address
performance deficiencies
 Provide a collaborative
space to incubate and test
both alternative
approaches to and
improvements of existing
integrated service delivery
practices
Openly
Communicate
Performance
 Develop communications
plans that include sharing of
customer experience data
internally and publicly
 Communicate performance
online and through routine
performance reporting
channels
 Celebrate successes as
achieved
 Provide a forum to learn from
fail points
 Establish
communications to
highlight the efficacy of
collaborative, shared
responses to life events
 Educate customers about
what they can expect
from integrated services
 Report progress of
remediation activities
 Communicate advances
in shared services and
collaboration through
Performance.gov
 Conduct reviews that
explore the degree to
which agencies advance
citizen-centered
collaboration
 Establish and use a
repository for lessons
learned across agencies

Harnessing_Life_Events_Action_Guide_0

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