Mission, approach, and history

Mission and Approach

The mission of GSA's Technology Transformation Service (TTS) is to empower our government partners to create better digital experiences to more effectively serve the American public.

TTS works with federal, state, local, and tribal agency partners to:

• Find a starting point for digital modernization
• Build staff capacity
• Modernize technology systems
• Improve the public experience of government
• Build and buy technology in better ways

Our work resides within the overall GSA mission: "To deliver the best customer experience and value in real estate, acquisition, and technology services to the government and American people."

History

TTS was created to help modernize government technology and processes. Major milestones include:

• 2014: Launch of TTS
• 2015: Formation of TTS organization within GSA
• 2017: Creation of Centers of Excellence (CoE)

TTS's mission and approach

TTS’s mission is to transform how the U.S. government builds and buys digital services and systems.

TTS currently has five chapters:

• Account management
• Acquisition
• Design
• Engineering
• Product management

Individual contributors from chapters occupy various roles on engagements.

TTS provides the following service offerings. Here is the kind of work we do:

• Strategy Development - Working with our partner to evaluate options to get actionable recommendations to achieve their goals
• Vendor Acquisition Support - Working with agency partners to buy and help issue and manage a procurement
• Website Modernization - Improving website experience by prototyping, implementing improvements, and getting the tools and coaching to manage the new site.
• Digital Services Transformation - Researching, prototyping, launching, and managing digital products from start to finish- while providing support and coaching.

Read more on the TTS website.

The TTS approach focuses on these tenets:

• Center on user needs. Use an empathy-first approach. We listen to the public and staff working hard to serve them.
• Understand the problem. Get a shared understanding of the problem first to build trust and guide us to better recommendations and solutions.
• Build often and iteratively. Use cross-functional teams and agile methodologies to deliver working software early and often. We build, test, validate with real people, then iterate and build again. These feedback loops deliver value quickly and avoid big failures that can come with “all-at-once” launches.
• Build partner capacity. Identify and empower product owners and advocates within partner agencies to promote and sustain best practices after TTS’s work has finished.
• Open by default. We , external,code and design in the open, use open-source software, use and build open source code, and evangelize our methods and practices across the federal government.

History of TTS

TTS was officially launched within GSA on March 19, 2014. It became part of TTS in 2015.

The creation of TTS came in the wake of the work of several programs, teams, and nonprofits that focused on improving the way the government approached technology. These included the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of Personnel Management Lab, the Sunlight Foundation, Code for America, the U.S. Chief Technology Office, and the , external,Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program.

TTS is a direct outgrowth of the PIF program, which was established by the White House in 2012. It placed experienced technologists in various federal agencies for six months, where they helped them learn and apply modern and user-centric approaches to building and maintaining systems, websites, and applications. PIF was moved to GSA in 2013.

Interest in establishing a permanent team of technologists along with the , external,troubled launch of Healthcare.gov and federal government shutdown of October 2013 motivated some PIFs to seek funding and ways to extend their terms. By mid-December, the unnamed team had secured a budget and began hiring.

Committed to the principles of user-centered design, developing in the open, and incorporating agile and lean development practices, the team worked to make government services simpler and easier to use – a goal that continues to guide TTS over a decade later.

From its inception, TTS focused on providing in-house digital services to a wide array of federal partners. Additionally, the early years also focused on offering digital tools and services for reuse and savings, among these were:

• , external,cloud.gov (2014)
• , external,USWDS: U.S. Web Design System (2015)
• , external,login.gov (2016)
• , external,cloud.gov Pages (2016)

CoE's mission and approach

The CoE mission is to accelerate IT modernization at federal agencies by leveraging private sector innovation and government services while centralizing best practices and expertise for holistic transformation.

CoE has six “centers”:

• Artificial intelligence
• Data analytics
• Cloud adoption
• Infrastructure optimization
• Contact center
• Customer experience

The centers are also supported by three practice areas:

• Acquisitions
• Innovation adoption
• Client services

CoE engagements are with federal agencies and often have multiple workstreams. Individuals from centers are staffed in the roles of engagement lead and/or technical consultant. CoE engagement teams are composed of federal employees and vendors.

Read more on the CoE website.

CoE’s approach follows these tenets:

• Co-lead and deliver enterprise-level IT modernization including migration of legacy systems to sustainable platforms
• Know our customer. CoE’s unique position in the federal workspace allows us to understand and anticipate the needs of our agency partners as customers.
• Use human-centered design to identify best outcomes for the public and efficiencies for agency staff.
• Leverage commercially available solutions to deliver results quickly
• Embed teams of our subject matter experts and top industry talent within partner agencies
• Speed up the procurement process by leveraging GSA’s assisted acquisitions and blanket purchase agreements

History of CoE

On October 24, 2017, the Office of American Innovation (OAI) established the IT Modernization Centers of Excellence within TTS to accelerate IT modernization across government to improve the public experience and increase operational efficiency. GSA implemented the CoE program in partnership with OAI.

CoE originally launched with teams that provided technical expertise in five interrelated areas:

• Cloud adoption
• Contact center
• Customer experience
• Data analytics
• Infrastructure optimization

In 2019, a sixth center–Artificial Intelligence–was formally added. In 2021 ‘Areas of Practice,’ Innovation Adoption and Acquisition, were introduced to support the work of the six technical centers.

CoE teams were intentionally designed to include partner detailees, GSA, and contractors. These blended teams would leverage best practices and multiple perspectives to deliver innovative solutions.

CoE’s first partner was the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The engagement sought to modernize IT across the department according to the USDA secretary's vision for making it data driven and a leader in customer service and experience in government and industry. Phase I began in April 2018, phase II in October 2018.

In October 2018, CoE also began working with its second partner, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In 2020, the CoE was codified into law by the , external,IT Modernization Centers of Excellence Program Act.

Additional Resources

• , external,TTS-only, Collaborative combined cultural history of TTS
• , external,TTS-only, Business Unit/Program Anniversaries & Important Dates to TTS