To align with the Biden-Harris administration’s President’s Management Agenda (PMA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has committed to leading the first-ever Agency Priority Goal (APG) dedicated solely to advancing customer experience (CX).
The heads of each major Federal agency set APGs every two years, and Federal agencies in December published their two-year Priority Goals covering fiscal years 2024 to 2025 on Performance.gov.
“This year, we celebrate the launch at the department-level at HHS in co-leading the first-ever advancing customer experience agency Priority Goal,” Ariele Faber, chief experience officer at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) within HHS, said during a March 5 webinar hosted by Federal News Network.
“What this means is that we have been able to drive change in our culture, not only at our agency level in our operating division, but we have now elevated this need to really hardwire customer experience best practices internal to our workforce and externally,” Faber explained. “One of the mechanisms we’re using to do that – and we’re really excited about it – is actually at the department level so that we are able to share and scale the best practices that we have learned across every operating division in HHS over the coming years.”
HHS is looking to improve customer experience “by simplifying its procedures, saving people time, and delivering results while maintaining program integrity,” according to the APG. By Sept. 30, 2025, HHS plans to enhance CX capacity by reporting on trust and other service-level experience measures for HHS operating divisions.
Faber, who serves as one of the CX Priority Goal leads, said HHS and CMS are focused on delivering seamless and secure products and services to citizens.
“In healthcare, we are interacting with people oftentimes in their most vulnerable state and in those moments that matter in their lives that are particularly private and personal,” Faber said.
HHS chose CX as its APG “to make this work last [and] to make sure that we are able to continue improving and delivering at our individual high impact service level,” Faber said.
One key priority within its CX goal this year, she said, is “measurement.” Faber explained that measuring one’s experience goes beyond the thousands of surveys and text messages, but instead requires a whole-of-government approach to answer the question, “How do we make sure that we are driving towards having the best health outcomes in the world?”
“At CMS, we are focused in both the public-facing realm through our HISPs [High Impact Service Providers], so we publicly report in the Performance.gov arena on each of our high impact services,” Faber said. “We are also at the department level, leaning into this Agency Priority Goal. We are looking to translate as best as possible these moments that matter in the life experiences in a public-facing way through our employee experience as well.”
Implementation plans that include quarterly updates of goal progress, including HHS’s APG, will be available starting this spring on Performance.gov.
