 In this episode, we'll be talking about the current state of design within the US government. We'll talk about the value of design for governmental agencies and finally we'll discuss the challenges that are associated with bringing in a human-centered design approach into government. Here's the guests for this episode. Let the show begin. Hello, I'm Janine Ray and welcome to the Service Design Show. I'm Mark and welcome to the Service Design Show. This show is all about helping you to design services that have a positive impact on people and business. My guest in this episode has a passion for antique sports cars, she loves to mentor young staff and she's currently in a leadership position for the CX practice at Deloitte in Washington. Her name is Janine Ray. In the next 30 minutes or so, Janine and I will be talking about the current state of design within the US government. We'll discuss the value of design for governmental agencies and finally, what are the challenges that are associated with bringing in a human-centered design approach into government. We post new videos every week here on this channel, so if you want to level up your service design skills, make sure you subscribe and don't forget to click that bell icon so you'll be notified when new videos are out. So that's all for the introduction and now let's quickly jump into the interview with Janine. Welcome to the show, Janine. Happy to be here, Mark. It's great to see you. It's so nice to see you again after, I think, eight or nine years when we met in The Hague. It was a long time ago and that was a really great moment for me, lovely to be there. You're right now in Washington, I'm in Utrecht, so it's a pretty big distance. I'm happy that we made this interview happen eventually. Janine, you've been a pioneer in the design field for a very long time and I'm really curious, do you remember the first time you heard about the term service design? Oh gosh. Well, I remember the first time I ever worked on a journey map. That was a very long time ago when we were working. When I worked at IDEO, we worked on the train project and we were doing the customer journey around going through the station and getting on the train and off the train and so forth. That's where I first learned about service design and these kind of tools. I think I've fallen in love ever since. The internet was invented and there was also services, it was clear there was going to be a lot of services associated with the then products, the internet of things could be seen then. I knew it was going to be pretty big and I think I was right on that one. So your days at IDEO, how long has that ago? It's a long time ago now, more than 15 years. I can't remember exactly what, yeah, it's been more than 15 years. So the firm has changed a lot and I've had a lot of opportunities in between but never wavered from loving design, that's for sure. We're going to talk about some really interesting topics. You've sent me three of them, they're all government related so that's going to be the central theme of this episode. I've sent you a few question starters and we're going to improvise or do some interview just like one of the previous guests said. Are you ready, Janine? Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, let's go. Here's topic number one. Drum roll. Topic number one is called the state of design. Do you have a question starter and can you show it to us? Yeah. I mean the question starter is what is the state of design in the government space in the United States right now? So I don't know that I'm a complete expert on this but I'm in the market every day and working with people that are working with government agencies every day both on the federal and the state level and I would give us a report card of maybe we're sort of like a B minus in terms of understanding design and using design. I think we have a long way to go certainly to catch up with some other countries that are more switched on about it but like three years ago you could go to a conference and never hear the word human-centered design and today all executives that are at the podium in the customer experience world that I inhabit are talking about human-centered design as being a key enabler to understand government problems and to be able to solve them. The really really good news is that there's a lot of momentum going on around that. When they talk about design it's not so much around calling it service design. I think we're just trying to understand design and design thinking but the service design tools figure prominently things like you know field research and journey mapping is very big because of course you know end-to-end experiences are very important and people are starting to understand that better. So I think that by looking at the different kinds of people and using personas and then of course being able to come up with ideas and prototype them rapidly and test them is all very popular and being recognized in a big way. I'd say also that a lot of the work in design is going on in digital so within the US government there's the US digital service and there's also a group called Works with government agencies to approve their online experiences. So that's been really a big force in the government in approving services but I'd say they don't really get to the depths that service design does in trying to understand the backstage of the other workings of not just the internet and how those kinds of things are working digital services are working but other services that include you know a lot of people there's a lot of people there's all retail environments there's all kinds of environments within the federal space that are not digital and I think that's one of the things that attracted me most about coming into the federal space and also working for Deloitte because this firm does everything that can be integrated and that's what service design is all about to a large extent for me so whether it's a human capital problem or technology problem strategy problem etc they can all be addressed and I thought I'd be in a quite a nice you know sandbox be able to do a breath of work that has you know that's that's not always the digital component to it but there are other components as well that is really is really something I'm enjoying. I'm really curious do you see you see that you're saying that there's a lot of momentum do you see differences in who's really on the forefront of adopting the human-centered design mindset within a government out of certain areas, buckets? Yeah well I think that the agencies that are doing well have had some experience with it for example the the Veterans Administration here is an enormous agency provides veterans to you know millions and millions tens of millions of veterans a huge sprawling system of health care and benefits and other and other things and a few years ago they did a very notable project that had where the entire system was mapped and they really got to understand what human-centered design was about and service design was about in every single way and they have continued to be a leader and continue now to teach other people what they've what they've learned so it's sort of like get your toe in the water and and learn what it's all about we have those springing up all over the place now because people are have gotten past their first project and now they're seeing how they want to do things and training people internally and so forth to do things and that's what's constituting a lot of a lot of momentum because there's a lot of transformation work going on and with that comes the opportunity to you look at things reframe things and to be able to improve things and there's a very big interest from this administration and getting good at customer service and customer experience and we always here we should not have you know we should have the same level of customer experiences that you would have on the in the commercial sector so that's kind of the North Star and I think people really understand that because consumers expectations are based on their common experiences whether they're dealing with a bank or you know an online service or something like that and I think government leaders know that they've got to be on par with those or sort of they're going to be losing out so it's been there's there's a lot of reason to go there for sure and from the experience that you've had in the past one and a half two years what are the biggest differences that you see in between the adoption of design within the federal government and let's say the commercial sector in the US what are the biggest differences well you know in the in the commercial sector it's all about the competition and and many if look it's you know study after study after study where executives are saying that experience is going to be the main battleground for competition and in the future in the commercial sector in the federal sector in the government sector it's very different the whole idea of competition doesn't exist as much but there is a big interest in being more productive and also very mission focused so to be able to do your job better than you could ever imagine doing it those are the things that are driving an interest in in in design methods and you know we just have to get more and more people on that wavelength because it's in the in the federal and government sectors it seems like it's just not enough to have customer satisfaction we need other stuff to we want to have other benefits from it it does require change management and it it does require some bravery and risk-taking to do us do things differently but I think you know I think we're there and we just sort of need to be able to you know apply it more in more cases for example in the areas where there are new IT systems coming on board you know it used to be people would just get the contract and they'd start coding on day two you know and and today is really go out in the field and understand who are the users that are going to be using this system who are the other stakeholders what do they want and pulling together like the real life stories of people and getting the team that's going to be creating something like that a technology solution to really understand what is the what is the productivity and other things that are trying to drive out of this who are the people that will have it and use the system and then how do those things you know contribute to you know mission effectiveness so there's it's fairly complicated but very exciting at the same time um we talked about transition already in the last 10 minutes quite a lot so let's transition in topic number two okay and that relates to we've been talking so far and that's that's the value of design and then again the question to you do you have a question started that goes along with this topic well I mean I would say this and then say also you know what is the value of design to government agencies and you know I think the first thing is of course putting the user at the center of the equation and so most legacy systems that are out there um you know probably the vast majority of legacy systems have been designed from the inside out rather than the outside in that meaning that it's been optimized around the organizational effectiveness and not necessarily around the people that are going to be using this system so that's a very important big change and a huge amount of value that can be applied to big big systems not necessarily just all computer systems but there are other systems that have lots of moving parts that have you know people that are doing things or training that needs to happen or other things that need to you know that make up a make up a service so that's really important putting the user at the center of things also I think design helps build an integrated view of all the moving parts and all the pieces that you need in order to be optimized to you know what you want it to do so it helps with the visualization of what is it that that we're trying to achieve and then also there's that end-to-end things particularly in the service design world so many times in these big environments like you think about you know just something like paying your taxes you know there there are lots of silos that can happen within that environment and the service design tools help people see what is the end-to-end and where are things you know what's important what's the most important things where are the priorities that go on for people that they couldn't necessarily see in their own silos so I think the whole visualization of things with design is extremely important and something that's you know kind of lack we lack a lot of skill in that here in this kind of environment because you know you have your management consultants and you have your technology people and so forth but not a lot of artists and other people that can draw frameworks and and do catching the thing that you would want to do as a part of the creative process of getting into an answer or just coming up with ideas that's you know that's something that we need to do more of in my opinion because we can make decisions that much faster exactly it helps to make more informed to smarter decisions so you just said that design or customer experience isn't the you know it's not a competitive advantage within the government of course so what is driving this momentum of design is it productivity is it mission is it something what yeah what is driving it well um what's driving is an opportunity to do things differently innovation really I think are are you know we have a lot of new technologies and new thinking and new perspectives and expectations and so I think there's an interest to be able to become relevant to actually you know make citizens happy you know one of the things that is very big in the government and people that I've heard talk about this there's a general distrust of government of the government right now in general I don't care if you're in the state business or the federal business if you're a complimentary person that's on people's mind and so to be able to have a you know a fluid pleasant experience with a government service is really kind of unusual you're used to hang ups you're used to things being a house you know so so I think that's one of the big things that people in power really want to do is help people trust the government more by um them understanding what their needs states are and being able to deliver on that which is not so easy in this very bureaucratic sort of large in large environment it's fairly complicated when it when it gets down to doing things much more complicated than uh than anything I've ever encountered in my career so this this is like a really noble goal in increasing the trust in the government um and I would say that's a really hard sell you know why are people suddenly interested in actually putting money into this well it's because they are putting money into it there's a whole lot of things going on in um in technology modernization that just has to happen it's amazing to meet the much whole ball programming language is still being used in environments and so everything's got to become you know things are going to the cloud things are things are changing those environments are changing and you know you don't want to you you don't want to recreate a bad process and so you know people that are that are managing those things realize that and you know they know that you know that it's important to put the users at the center of the problem and they and that's where they're you know starting to incorporate a lot a lot more of this content into their into their into their projects than ever before so that explains it I think to a certain extent there's you know there's a lot going on and um and a lot of momentum around that but it in in part and also I think people are talking about agile and agile methods and because I think agile methods go together really well um and um you know that's part of it too it's now agile really does expect you to work in a certain way and it's very much you know very much in keeping with how the design thinking philosophy goes with you know trying to do very rapid iterations and put the user in in the middle of the problem and and those kinds of things so that's on people's minds as well so so um what I'm also hearing is that we're sort of in in a few cases biggie begging on the fact that we have legacy systems that are being uh innovated renewed and uh that creates an opportunity to sort of look at these systems from a new perspective right exactly and you know they impact people all over the all over the country um that are trying to get things done every day and um you know sometimes you hear these ridiculous things about certain people having to you know drive four hours to show up at an office to do things when they could actually do it via email or do it via video call or something like that and so there's lots of common sense things that just have to you know come up to uh the current level of technology and people's expectations because you know that kind of thing if you think about somebody having to drive four hours to an office and drive four hours back that's an entire day of time you know that's that's uh you know that's really inconvenient and so I think um there's a very big interest in helping helping alleviate a lot of those situations and also just in general make it a better uh more solid experience dealing with um dealing with government services no matter whether you're you know going to the DMV in interstate or you're you know dealing with the IRS or some other other service like you know some of the bigger ones that we have going to a state park or or something along those lines all those things are um are part of the parcel of the of the work that gets done and it's uh it's quite exciting actually all the things that we encounter that um you know that that need that are very important to us all as as as citizens and and that we have certain expectations about how they should be done and um and you know people are really trying to get there the one last question regarding the value uh of design is um you contribute to to the um design management institute what is it the design index yes the design value index yeah the design value index I think almost everyone who's watching the show or listening to this episodes knows it um that was uh focused on the stock value of commercial companies is there are you working on an equivalent for federal or governmental services um well I those kinds of things go through my mind because I like to analyze things and what we need to sort of converge on or what a what are the things that we can index around and so actually you know come come to me yet but there's a lot of work going on in customer experience and trying to uh trying to bring those numbers up and also um we haven't really talked about this but very very important in these big government environments is employee experience and so design methods and service design methods can be used against that as well and there are um there are a lot of um indicators around um around the value of employee engagement and so forth that go on here so I think maybe in the next few years we might come up with something like that um I don't know if any other countries have done that but um that would certainly be um on my mind to sort of find out if anybody has a similar kind of kind of index for government services but soon the government is going to be able to tell you their satisfaction scores and those kinds of things which will be a huge a huge start because they we really don't have um you know a comparable set of numbers being picked up um you know by the agencies themselves and that's going to make a huge difference and I think make everybody a little bit more motivated to get those those scores up because you will have a score there are no scores uh so so yeah what gets measured gets done eventually so uh yeah um let's move on into the third topic uh and that is of course I would almost say um this one the challenges and then again the question do you have a question started that goes along with the challenges uh gosh um yeah well I'll have to do I'll just have to do this one again but go ahead yeah what are the challenges associated with this uh this kind of transformation that that's going on it's not uncomplicated uh and I think it's going to take many years to to uh to have the same thing now I started in the design business when not very many people understood design so so that's happened quite quickly and much more quickly in the last 10 years so I think it took a while may take a while to get the ball uh rolling but I think it will get there eventually um when I think about you know maybe the biggest challenge especially in government services there's just kind of a lack of awareness um what about the value of design so the things that we've just talked about um you know it's not walking around knowledge not common knowledge people don't necessarily think about it they don't you know they don't it's not in their kind of world and so building awareness around these things is is very important and uh and I think for especially in the customer customer experience world you know that's that's been done there you know you can't go to a conference where people aren't talking about design but if you went to a conference that was an it conference or security conference or something like that and people were talking about design that would be uh probably a new a new thing so we just need to sort of build awareness and that's one of the biggest problems um also you have to kind of change the processes people are used to so one of the things about getting design going anywhere really is to be able to open up the process to be able to design for design to do a tour for example you know when um you say well I want to go do a three months of customer research I want to go do various parts around the country where these things I want to understand what the users are doing and bring that information back before we start to to do anything you know that's that may not be um you know well understood by the person that you're trying trying to convince and just as that there's more collaboration more workshoppy kinds of things more kind of low fidelity prototypes that prove out concepts and and get people talking as you know communication devices and so forth that's all kind of foreign to this environment and so you know more of that kind of stuff is going to be is going to is going to help but you know you can't what is the expression you can't make an omelette without breaking an egg you know like you have to change the processes up a bit and people's expectations around what gets what gets done and and and convince them it's valuable so that's another thing um um in the government environment a couple things go on about procurement so it's procurement processes as they exist right now don't really recognize the you know human centered design or service design I think it would be the most unusual thing in the world to see a an rfp about service design coming out of the out of the government and so you know that's kind of a problem because um people that write those things who you know they're they're you know rooms full of people that do nothing but write procurement and work on that may not really understand how this is done and um you know that's kind of a a challenge what's the challenge regarding procurement well there you know it's just not called out as part of the process you know normally so you know whether you're you know no matter what you're doing if you're trying to fix a recruitment problem or other kind of employee experience problem or an it problem or something that has to do with you know fixing the you know retail environments or something like that it would be unusual for that rfp to come out like we want you to do customer research we want to we have all these expectations it's getting better and people that are in the space do their share of kind of shaping those things and influencing how the best way to do something is there's trade associations that help um bring that together but it wouldn't be the common uh intuitive thing at this point so you know that's that's a time that we have to do and then just the people that know how to do the work that are in the community and the government contracting community is is very small and so you know when i was when i was in the commercial sector i would often you know hear people talking about doing doing government work and they'd say oh my god no that's such a hassle i can't you know do that contracting work i can't be in the market i mean there is something about being in the market every day that is um uh you know that that helps you sort of understand and stay and step with things and they're not that many companies that have uh you know the talent and the scale to to um to work on some of these things so i think that's that's a that's a problem too and i've also you know heard that that they're working on that i mean people that are in the office of management and budget and the general services administration have recognized that you know the the talent is in the small business community and to try to get them more involved is uh is an important aspect to it because not all you know big companies don't really have you know design consultancies within them oftentimes they do some other function um that's a that's a challenge as well so there's quite a few there's quite a few challenges but you know where there's a will there's a way and i think you know it comes back to who are the people that are really trying to change things and and what are they open to do and those are the people that i think are going to really be the movers and shakers and the change uh the change management the change agents in this environment so if if we fast forward like five years and think about the new challenges what will the challenges be in five years time you hope what will the new challenges be well you know i mean in in terms of just keeping up with things you you know you see what's coming down in terms of you know mobility uh a lot of the tech stuff you know like driverless cars all those kinds of things are going to have a huge impact on uh on how the government needs to operate you think about you know drones that are flying at the border for example or you know any number of like you know security threats or other things that a lot of it has to do with you know just technology being so much more accessible and not having this you know that used to be that you had to have a lot of of you know hardware big computers all that kind of stuff to to do anything and today it's all you know very accessible by the you know average small company or something like that so just keeping up with all that and being able to just keep up with it much less be in front of it is is going to be a challenge and it's going to continue to be a challenge but you know like like i said there's a lot of smart people out there that are trying their their best best to do it and they get a lot of inspiration from from from people that are challenging them every every day so you know being i think being agile and being able to pivot very quickly uh to new things uh because new things arise every day um and that the government has to do to has to deal with so that's uh that's an important thing too just don't get too set in your ways of doing things you've got um an audience listening and watching to you right now is there something that you would like to ask us do us do you have a question for something that you'd like to know or that we can think about well you know for me i would um i would love to to stand on the shoulders of other people that have been in um in government environments where design has been a big enabler for for the things that we talked about mission effectiveness and uh productivity uh and just you know better services delivered delivered to customers and so i would love to know you know more case studies we're we're attempting to write a little piece about service design in the in the government we've already pulled together about 40 government case studies on service design and they're trying to make some sense about you know why do you use service design and um and what are the what are the best places to use service design um service design isn't new but you know in the government space um just understanding where it's appropriate and really value added is important so any kind of case studies uh or or other things about how do you um how do you spread um the use of human centered design and service design in these kinds of environments i would be all ears like that for sure i know that there is a lot of expertise around that topic here in this community and regarding the case studies you were talking about what are you planning to make a publication around this or yeah yeah deloitte has uh something called the center for government insights and so we're working with leaders in that organization to sort of pull pull those pull it together in a way so that it will be yeah it'll be shared it'll be an article it will be shared through that and hopefully it'll be an important uh uh new piece about you know when you use service design i mean i think for service designers they kind of know when to use service design but it may not be exactly it's not for us yeah yeah i'll have you know have some of these issues and they they don't know well why don't we try service design here because that seems to be um the thing too that will help us not only understand what the what the front end the front stage needs to be but also what the back end needs to be and uh you know putting all those things together at one time is an efficient way to to actually you know make something happen so um yeah i i'm hoping i i don't know what the time frame is for that but i i know it will happen and i know that most of the research is is done and we could use more more case studies uh in service design and government settings to add to add to that research all right cool people uh this is a call to action contribute leave a comment connect with janine on uh on linkedin janine i want to thank you so much for sharing some of your thoughts and the things you're busy with i'm i'm looking forward to see where you will be in like 18 months from now what has changed so again thanks i'll have a lot more designers around me we're starting to hire uh folks and and uh it's going to be very very exciting i've been i have now a design studio here that we're working in every day and you know integrating more and more with the digital studio and so forth so it's been very exciting not you know not just the the work but how it's how it's coming along and i i'm so thrilled that deloitte's leadership is very switched on about this and enabling it to happen so i feel very proud cool again thanks so much janine thanks so much okay take care mark so do you know any examples where design has been used within the government leave a comment down below or connect with me or janine on linkedin if you enjoyed this episode please click that thumbs up button 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