Citizen Digital Series: The Key Role of Data in Digital Government Services, With Corinna Turbes

Data is an integral part of digital government, and the United States recognizes that. In fact, the U.S. Federal Data Strategy (FDS) was conceived in 2019 to serve as the government’s official plan to improve how it uses data. In this episode of Citizen Digital, Eric speaks with Corinna Turbes, policy director at the Data Foundation. She discusses the current state of implementing the FDS, the role of data in improving customer experience, the Data Foundation’s recent report on customer experience and government experience success stories, and how to enhance customer experience through data.

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Eric Egan: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Citizen Digital, an ITIF web series where I speak with experts in the United States and around the world to explore how digital technology can improve citizen and customer experience. I'm Eric Egan, the policy fellow for digital government at ITIF. And with me today is Corinna Turbes, policy director at Data Foundation, a nonprofit think tank focused on improving government and society through database public policymaking. Corinna, thanks for joining.

Corinna Turbes: Thanks for having me.

Eric Egan: So we can start with you just sharing a little bit about yourself and how you came to work in this space.

Corinna Turbes: Sure. So as you mentioned, I'm the policy director for the Data Foundation and I've been in this role for about three years. And in that space I've done a lot of work working with private sector, academia, public sector on how to appropriately share data, how to leverage data in the federal space. But prior to that, I was working for an organization that focused primarily on the Federal Statistical Agency. So this is the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Health Statistics, those types of agencies. And before that I was working in federal advocacy at a nonprofit organization helping folks get involved in federal policy. And that really included a lot of organizing around the 2020 census. So a lot of data experience from all angles.

Eric Egan: Yeah, I was going to say you're a certified data [inaudible 00:01:25]. So our first question here, this is a series about citizen and customer experience with digital government. One of the questions we always ask is, what's your definition of that, citizen or customer experience with government broadly? And then the role you believe digital technology, technology, and in this case data, plays in that overall experience.

Corinna Turbes: Yeah. I was looking through all our reports to see if we had a written definition and we really don't. But really the consumer experience, customer experience is what people go through when they interact with the government. So how they pay their taxes, how they respond to the census, apply for student loans, change their address at Social Security Administration, all those kinds of things. Every touchpoint for federal services is an opportunity for a consumer or customer experience. And so there's a lot of analogies in this space, obviously to the private sector, that creating these seamless interactions, these capitalizing on efficiency and effectiveness, including clarity, timeliness, transparency, satisfaction is a big part of this. And while there's lessons to be drawn from the private sector, the government has different motivations. It's not as though the government is trying to turn our citizens into profit centers or things like that. They have an obligation to provide services even when it might cost money. But that doesn't mean we can't take a look at some of the innovations that are happening in the private sector for how to improve customer experience through digital technologies and digital experiences.

Eric Egan: Yeah, I'm glad you hit on that. It's one of the things that people tend to forget when they think about customer experiences with government is one, you're not ... you're often thinking about an agency that has a particular budget and isn't generating revenue in order to necessarily improve a lot of their services like a private company can. And there's not competition for the IRS, right? Whereas private companies can take a look at what their competitors are doing and there's various arms races, so to speak, for customer experience. Government, not so much. So it really is a different perspective. So yeah, and I think a lot of what we'll end up talking about today is generally the way that data feeds into this, in customer experience. But first I wanted to get to the federal data strategy. So as you know, last month, ITIF released a report on the federal data strategy. But before we talk about that a little bit, what is the FDS and why is it such an important federal effort?

Corinna Turbes: Yeah, this is a really great effort that we saw come out of the last administration but its goal is to fully leverage our federal data assets to help service delivery, to help agencies capitalize on their mission and to create a public good through our federal data. It's a 10-year plan started in 2020 and it outlined principles and practices as well as discrete action steps to make sure that we were getting the most out of the federal data that we already have and that we can use it to the best of its ability instead of it just being collected and sitting there for no reason. It's a way of really helping deliver on service and mission for the federal government.

Eric Egan: Yeah. And it was one too that I, a few years ago, I guess close to four years ago now, when it was ... the plan was shared by the Trump administration in 2019, we were similarly excited. But our latest report, it found that OMB guidance for this, the Office of Management and Budget, always forgetting to spell my acronyms. OMB's guidance for the FDS, the action plans, there hasn't been one since 2021, other guidance for legislation like the Evidence Act has effectively stopped. Any insights on why that may be? Is it because this was a Trump administration thing and the Biden administration maybe hasn't made it as much of a priority? What may be going on?

Corinna Turbes: So I think this is actually a priority of the Biden administration. In January 2021, he issued a supportive statement, a memo outlining the administration's emphasis on using data transparency and trustworthiness. And even though we aren't seeing necessarily new guidance or new action plans, the work hasn't stopped. The Federal Data Strategy is still in effect. It's being implemented through an office of management or an OMB memo essentially that is still in effect. And so there is still movement happening. We might not be seeing the same [inaudible 00:06:25] that we might have wanted for, but agencies are continuing to do a lot work that is outlined in the FDS, as well as the Evidence Act. One great example is America's data hub at the National Science Foundation that's looking to have data linkages and data sharing to build evidence. So there's a lot of work still happening.

I also think it's really important to note that a lot of these issues are hard. It's not as simple as flipping a switch when we're talking about data. And there's a lot riding on getting this guidance right. And so it's extremely important that it gets done correctly, especially the first time. And that knowing that agencies are still working towards this and that a lot of these memos and guidances are still in effect. And that it has crossed administrations, which I think is a really important thing to note. That a lot of times we see these management issues toggle but there's a lot of bipartisanship in this issue. And I think we see that across the administration.

Eric Egan: Yeah. No, that's a good point too. And I guess, for me, it was one of the odder moments about this. The 2021 action plan was released by Biden administration, so there seemed to be this pickup and "Hey, let's move forward with this." The original ... I think when you look at the principles and practices of the FDS, they're pretty solid. Any mature data organization's going to look at this and be like, "This makes sense." But I'm curious. You were hitting on one of my other questions, which is from your point of view, the FDS, it's still moving.

We're maybe not seeing the action plans released, we're not seeing the progress trackers, some of those things that provide some transparency with what the agency's may be doing. And I spoke with a few chief data officers at the agency level as well and they were doing a lot of things. I think that, to your point, align with the strategy itself, even if they weren't getting the year-over-year guidance. I know the Data Foundation has a lot of intimate relationships with CDOs at the agency level. Any other examples? What else are they doing that maybe does move the FDS forward but also it could just be their own enterprise level data strategies?

Corinna Turbes: Yeah. One of the things that I think is really important to look at with the chief data officers in particular is the Chief Data Officer's Council, the inter-agency group that provides a lot of opportunity for knowledge sharing, lessons learned, agencies that are at different stages in their data maturity being able to learn from each other on these aspects. And they've really done quite a bit of work. They have published a data ethics framework, which I think is really important and really important that that was something that was done collaboratively. You can't really just have one person giving your ethics down from on high. Having a collaborative stakeholder engagement process to thinking about your ethics when it comes to using data is a really important thing. So that I think is something that was really great that came out of an inter-agency process. They've also been doing a lot of work thinking about cataloging data skills, developing data literacy within agencies.

So that's a better way of making sure that, as data is becoming more and more integrated into the culture of agencies, there are people who are there to appropriately leverage that data, understand what it means, ask the right questions. There's also integrating with the learning agendas, which was a requirement of the Evidence Act. So as agencies are identifying their policy priorities, what are the sort of questions we want to have answered? The chief data officers are there to think about what data is present that they can use to answer those questions, what they might want to gather. And so being very strategic about how that data is being leveraged within agency plans. So they're really working hard where they can, finding really great opportunities to collaborate, and finding those strategic ways of making themselves valuable, of creating that culture, developing leadership and those data skills. And I think that's a really important part of the Federal Data Strategy, even if it's not necessarily a discrete check mark on an action plan. That this is a sustained, prolonged change that is happening across a very large enterprise that is our federal government.

Eric Egan: That's fair. And I mean, one of the other things I heard too from the agency's CDOs was that it's not necessarily a bad thing that they're not getting check the box action plan kind of things. So to me it's a balancing act between meaningful guidance that aligns with government-wide priorities and CDOs having the autonomy and not red tape, not compliance stuff where they can move forward with their own mission level priorities. But at the same time, align with a government-wide strategy.

Corinna Turbes: Yeah, that-

Eric Egan: So one question I guess have ... Oh, sorry.

Corinna Turbes: Oh, I was going to say that balancing act I think is a really important thing to realize and is a hard thing that requires a lot of creativity. Yeah [inaudible 00:12:04]-

Eric Egan: Yeah. Not just for the FDS, for any ... for all [inaudible 00:12:07].

Corinna Turbes: Any sort of government wide initiative, having that coordination function is really important, but knowing that these are not one size fits all solutions.

Eric Egan: Yeah. To bring it back a little bit to the theme of this show, the Biden administration has a lot of priorities around customer experience, executive order a few years ago. Thinking of, I guess, in a high level, maybe not even necessarily the data strategy, but why is data so important for some of those ... If we're talking about priority life events, we're talking about sweepingly improving customer experience across federal government, why is data so important for those kinds of initiatives? And I guess that ties into the FDS as well but more of a high level view.

Corinna Turbes: Yeah, and I think it comes down to data is the backbone of informed policymaking. So knowing where the pain points are in customer service. How long is the average wait time to talk to a person at the IRS? How long are folks waiting to get their benefits from the VA? Knowing where those pain points are and being able to have a good evaluation and craft a policy in response to solve that problem is reliant on having that good data. And so it gives us insights and allows us to design solutions and then evaluate those solutions to see if they've actually solved the problem. And so it really is the water we are all swimming. And we couldn't do anything to solve customer experience problems, we couldn't do anything to design solutions, without that data. And I think, even forward-looking, we talked about as solving a problem, data is what is going to feed into equitable, fair AI systems.

So if you needed to log into ... I pick on the IRS a lot, but they've been doing a really good job on their customer service improvement plans. I have a question on a tax return from 2001 in this state, using a machine that can put me to the right person instead of having to integrate into that, that is also something that is going to rely on good data. And so thinking about what data we already have, how we can collect it, how we can collect it in a non-burdensome way is a really important part of improving digital services and the customer service component that goes along with it.

Eric Egan: Yeah, that's a great point. Not to mention increasing use of artificial intelligence in government. It's really useless unless you have solid data governance really across the board. Particularly if you think about ... One of the other priorities in the Biden administration was the priority life events. So you're talking about interoperability there, agencies needing to work together to deliver on a life event moment, which is often inter-agency in nature. If you have someone who's in a disaster moment and they need support from FEMA or Health and Human Services and things like that. So a lot of that enhanced interoperability also relies on data standards, data sharing, so many of those other things there. So I don't know if that's a question as much of a comment. Helping answer my own question.

Corinna Turbes: The ability to predict is also something that really relies on data and can really contribute to excellent customer service. Using your FEMA example, knowing that even a year after a disaster comes through, we're going to have to put more education supports in as students' school is disrupted, as hospital services are disrupted. Using the data to predict where to allocate resources in the future to support customer interaction is another reason why having data be accessible and available for evaluation is so important because it allows us to see problems on the horizon and not just fully respond to problems as they are happening.

Eric Egan: So I do want to get to a report that the Data Foundation released last month as well. So this one ... It was maybe a little more positive than my own but it focused on customer or government experience success stories. And I was wondering if you'd maybe be willing to highlight a few of those, particularly if there's any role that data played in improving that customer experience in these examples?

Corinna Turbes: Yeah, I mean I think the ones that ... Well, first of all, I recommend that people go and read the full report. There's a lot of really good details in there. But I've been talking about the IRS a lot. But they improved the accessibility of representatives on the phone to be able to reduce wait times and implemented the Taxpayer Experience Office with this mission to create experience for taxpayers. And that relied on a lot of evaluation data in order to do that. FEMA, again, something that we've touched on briefly, enhanced applicant services. So to provide additional interactions for disaster survivors to improve the application process in getting disaster assistance. And that requires interoperable data, understanding who your client's customers are, what challenges they're going through, the transportation that falls apart around folks in these issues, the medical services that fall apart around in these services. And so being able to centralize some of those application services to expedite them makes it a really great use of data to improve customer service.

Eric Egan: Cool. Any other ... Because I knew the report didn't just highlight examples, it also had a set of recommendations as well. Any of those that maybe apply across the board or best practices or any thoughts that really apply to any federal agency?

Corinna Turbes: So there are five recommendations but three of them really come down to consulting cross-disciplinary experts, including the evaluation officers, your chief data officers and your statistical officials. And there's no coincidence that those are the three officials created and outlined in the Evidence Act. Because those three lanes help triangulate a good data infrastructure that can help you build the data system that you need to make these evaluations. So making sure that you are aligning with evaluation officers to ensure that customer experience activities are a part of evaluation plans, that they're a part of your learning agendas and can design data collections to meet those evaluation questions. The CDOs that can make sure that those data collections are supported, are protected, are within the agency's capabilities. And then your statistical officials who can help design the surveys and the data collection. And all of those people play an important role in making sure that the data that you have is serving the need to service customer experience.

This also is a really good time to bring up understanding the diversity of the American public in this. Agencies that are collecting new data from the public to support consumer experience in interaction, that's a diverse population. That is a huge swathe of people who have different languages, different backgrounds, different ... the ability to recruit them into a survey, those who are not able to access digital services. All of that needs to be considered when you are thinking about your customer service. It's one thing to reduce call times but also the reality is a lot of folks don't necessarily have access to a phone or the internet, so how are you going to serve them as well? And that's a really hard thing to have to think about but it's something that's worth doing. And then the final recommendation is that these tools and capabilities should be ready to support the adoption of artificial intelligence. It's the buzzword for a reason and that these will be very powerful tools. And having our data be ready for that, be ready to be able to serve and capitalize on those will be a really important part.

Eric Egan: Yeah. Solid set of recommendations and very good points. It's one we make at ITIF a lot. Particularly in my area when we're doing focusing on digital government. But I think that's why we ended up focusing on the FDS and the data strategy, because on the one hand, it's great to see that agency CDOs are continuing to drive forward. The ones that I spoke to, they talk about how the culture [inaudible 00:21:11] saying how great the federal CDO council was. The culture of data being this other was beginning to change, though I think they still want a better seat at the table. But they were speaking in terms of my outcomes, my offices.

The CDO offices outcomes are program outcomes. Data's not some other thing, it's a part of what drives how a government delivers or an agency delivers their business processes and whatnot. I know we're running short on time but at least one final question. Maybe again, having this in a data spin perhaps, and you're already hitting on maybe AI, but in terms of what excites you about digital experiences in government service delivery moving forward, anything worth highlighting or that you think is particularly interesting or exciting?

Corinna Turbes: Yeah, I think when we are talking about the future of digital services, customer experience and the data aspects that can support that, a conversation that's starting to happen more and more is the conversation around a digital identifier. There's a lot of conversations around a data system that is interoperable, that is secure, that protects privacy and confidentiality. And concepts around a digital identifier, a way of identifying citizens across agencies, is something that we're really starting to talk about in earnest. Many other countries have something like this but I think the policy conversations around is that something that would work here?

If so, how? Is that something that we want? How do we navigate a federal identifier with the state identifier? That's also a question that a lot of European countries that have adopted this don't necessarily have to navigate. And so these questions around digital identity and how they can be useful, what are some of the pitfalls and how do we design a good system that would employ that technology if that's something we want, is a really exciting thing that's happening. And really looking forward to seeing what are the topics that come up there. I think it's the next big question that we're going to have to grapple with in a lot of ways.

Eric Egan: Yeah, no, you and me both, and I'm curious to see how this evolves. Especially because, as you say, it's a very unique situation in the United States compared to other Western countries. A lot of the European countries who have implemented national IDs or digital IDs aren't as federated, don't have those kind of challenges and don't have the legacy structures and systems that we have. But it is also very exciting, particularly as everyone agrees there's so much room to improve in terms of how we are able to identify and authenticate someone, especially as digital transformation and agencies at all levels continues to advance. So no, I agree. It's one topic I keep top of mind.

Corinna Turbes: Yeah. And it's really interesting to see what are the ways ... And maybe we wouldn't need a singular identifier if we had better interoperability between state systems. Say my Washington DC driver's license, how does that interact with the federal level and can we use all of these privacy enhancing technologies and new computational powers to figure out a way to do it that gets us around this national registry that has a lot of baggage associated with it? So there's really cool-

Eric Egan: [inaudible 00:24:56] non-starter.

Corinna Turbes: There's a lot of really cool policy solutions to some of the challenges that we have and I am really excited to see folks starting to talk about them and really excited to hear people a lot smarter than me figuring out this challenge and happy to run with it once they do.

Eric Egan: That's my point of view too. I just wait for the smart people and-

Corinna Turbes: [inaudible 00:25:19].

Eric Egan: Well, that's about all the time we have for this episode. I want to thank Corinna again for joining us. For our audience, don't forget to subscribe to ITIF on YouTube for other great videos and technology policy and stay tuned for more episodes of Citizen Digital. Bye.