Keeping IT Brief - Understanding Customers’ Life Experiences in order to Transform Federal Services

Understanding Customers’ Life Experiences in order to Transform Federal Services

04/27/23 • 9 min

It has been over one year since President Biden signed an executive order with an ambitious goal to “place people at the center of everything government does”
This executive order is promoting changes to social, financial and health services provided to Americans from government agencies when they experience the following events in life:

Approaching retirement,
Recovering from a disaster,
Navigating the transition to civilian life following military service,
Birth and early childhood for low-income women and their children; and
Facing a financial shock and becoming newly eligible for critical support

The framing of this work as supporting life experiences means that federal agencies will need to work together to understand and support their shared customers.
We’re joined by Nelly Kinsella, Organizational Change Manager of Anthro-Tech, a human centered design consultancy that works for social impact to discuss the progress that agencies have made on the goal of the executive order

Nelly Kinsella, Organizational Change Manager, Anthro-Tech
Nelly is an experienced communications strategist with a knack for digital engagement. She has led or supported the launch and maintenance of nearly a dozen digital products, including informational and educational websites, intranets, and highly integrated web and mobile applications. She loves to untangle knots, learn on-the-fly and pull apart the components of complicated situations.
Nelly holds Masters degrees in both Health Administration and Public Health Policy, as well as a graduate certificate in User-Centered Design (UCD) from the University of Washington. She is a scrum-certified product owner and practitioner of agile development.
Fueling Nelly's role as Organizational Change Manager at Anthro-Tech is her passion for coaching teams in UCD tools and process. Specifically, she is motivated to get organizations with a social-impact mission to harness the power of user personas and relentlessly enhance the customer experience.
Anthro-Tech
Anthro-Tech is a human-centered design consultancy focused on government agencies, nonprofits, and enterprises with a social impact mission. We help organizations gain a deep understanding of their customers through research to design products and services that are usable, useful, and make a positive impact on peoples’ everyday lives. Over the past 20 years, we’ve partnered with many organizations to transform how they engage their customers, including dozens of county, state, and federal government organizations, global foundations, and fortune 500 clients. Anthro-Tech was founded in 1997. We are a women-owned business with offices and user experience labs in Olympia and Seattle. We’re driven by our purpose - to build a great business that makes things better for people.

Approaching retirement,
Recovering from a disaster,
Navigating the transition to civilian life following military service,
Birth and early childhood for low-income women and their children; and
Facing a financial shock and becoming newly eligible for critical support

Previous Episode

Breaking Down The Current State of Federal Technology and Digital Modernization

In this episode, ICF’s Chief Technology Executive, Mark Lee, and Chief Technology Officer, Kyle Tuberson, discuss the current state of federal technology and digital modernization initiatives, and predictions on where efforts will evolve in the near future. To inform the discussion, Mark and Kyle share findings from a recent report published by ICF that uncovers common pain points throughout the modernization process, and how agencies can overcome them, tapping into trends such as upskilling, product management, the role of a Chief Data Officer, and the power of unified communication, among other key topics.
Mark Lee

Chief Technology Executive

As chief technology executive, Mark strengthens ICF’s technology solutions and drives the company’s overall technology strategy. His team works to increase ICF’s technology capabilities and enhance corporatewide technology procedures, systems, and partnerships to offer more value to clients and employees.

Mark’s team focuses on helping leaders think differently about how to address significant and interconnected challenges impacting society today. They provide technology, digital solutions, and advanced data and analytics tools—backed by deep domain expertise—to help clients deliver practical programs that lead to positive outcomes.

Mark previously served as the executive vice president of ICF’s public sector business and has been with ICF for nearly 30 years. He has held many leadership roles across the public sector business, including previously serving as the head of business development and the disaster management division. Prior to this, he led the climate, sustainability, environmental health, and surface transportation businesses and has extensive experience supporting a wide range of clients in addressing technology, regulatory, workforce development, and policy challenges.

An industry leader, Mark was recognized by WashingtonExec as a Top Public Sector Leader to Watch in 2020 and 2021, and he received a 2022 Longevity Award for his career trajectory at ICF. Mark is also an executive committee member for the Professional Services Council.

Mark holds a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kyle Tuberson

Chief Technology Officer

Kyle Tuberson is ICF’s chief technology officer. He has over 20 years of technology consulting experience in the areas of data visualization, geospatial analytics, data management, and data science. In his role, Kyle builds teams that use data to create innovative solutions to difficult business challenges. This includes helping clients evolve their cultures toward embracing digital adoption, better leverage data and scale enterprise technology for greater impact, enable faster development cycles, accelerate innovation through repeatable frameworks, and more.

Kyle’s team leads initiatives that focus on providing IT modernization services to the government and to industries such as healthcare and energy. These services include IT modernization, cloud computing, machine learning, internet of things (IoT), geospatial analytics, data visualization, and more. By applying data science and data visualization techniques to drive impact, they have helped ICF’s clients reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve access to healthcare in emerging markets, and prevent fraud with government programs.

Kyle was recognized by WashingtonExec as a Top Chief Technology Exec to Watch in 2023. He is also a 2018 Federal 100 award winner.

Kyle holds a master’s in technology management from George Mason University and a bachelor’s in management information systems from George Mason University. He was also awarded the CIO University Certificate in Federal Executive Competencies by the Federa

Next Episode

An Evening For Hope For The Children's Inn at NIH

Today Susan Sharer speaks with Jennie Lucca, CEO, The Children’s Inn at NIH and Todd Pantezzi, Children’s Inn at NIH Evening for Hope Gala Committee Chair about this year’s event. They discuss the unique public-private partnership with NIH, what’s new for this year’s Gala, and the Inn’s strategic plan, #INN2025, which has the following goals for the next few years:

To work with researchers at the NIH to determine barriers to family and young adult participation in clinical research studies. And to work with the NIH and consultants to design steps to help break down those barriers.
To interview our families to learn how The Inn can better serve them and implement those suggestions.
To take the best in hospitality design and incorporate technology to create an innovative, state-of-the-art living environment at The Inn.

If you’d like to learn more or donate, check out the links below.

Website:

https://childrensinn.org/

Bid:

https://one.bidpal.net/hope2023/browse/all