The philosophy of measurement GAO, the Eames Studio, and GSA’s strategic plan come together into a single project

One of the most interesting things I got to do in my federal career was to help create and maintain agency strategic priorities. Now, you might not be in a federal agency, but if you’re in any kind of business, this process is probably familiar to you.

I kept my involvement in this process laser-focused on digital experience, because that was my remit, but it was fascinating to be able to talk with agency leaders, especially my counterparts in the Office of Chief Financial Officer (OCFO), to place where digital experience landed in the agency strategic plan and how to measure it.

The majority of the discussion boiled down to this: how to assign percentage-based achievements to a complex goal underpinned by a mixture of technical- and management-based requirements?

That mixture was not unique to my team; I would argue that, at this point, most teams have that mixture of requirements at play. So how did we do this?

How could we continuously provide complex data to agency teams at the fidelity that they needed while also rolling all that data into a single percentage number for OMB and Congress in such a way that we could zoom in and out on its complexity, with no fear of finding ourselves in logical dead ends or data deserts? In many ways, this was like the short film Powers of Ten by the Eames Studio, where a camera zooms out on the earth over and over again to show that, as you lose detail you gain scope, and as you lose scope you gain detail. That’s okay, as long as you can always zoom your way in and out again.

The answer for us in the General Services Administration (GSA) was not technical; no Salesforce, Qualtrics, or Microsoft program could build this measurement tool for us. No Google or IBM team could take this on. We built our measurement tool, the Enterprise Digital Experience Index, EDXIndex, through human-centered conversation and relentlessly resolving the many philosophical questions that arise when building datasets and measurement tools.

We had to talk to each team, each supervisor, and each GSA division to understand what information they needed to make strategic decisions on their level, what data they could give us, and what datasets we needed to work together to build for the first time. We needed to lose the right fidelity of information as we gained scope in reporting up the chain of command, and we needed to be able to get back down into granular data at a moment’s notice.

I’m so proud of the work we did. I had no fear when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audited our work in 2024 to check on our implementation of the 21st Century IDEA legislation. I knew we had the data. I looked forward to talking to GAO about it. In their turn, GAO produced a report in which GSA was one of the few agencies not impugned for our implementation actions.

Working on complex issues like customer or digital experience is hard; communicating the right level of information to the right people is part of it. But it’s possible to measure complexity clearly and recurrently if you do the work to understand the data landscape. It takes technical and human-centered competence, and a lot of grit. But it results in a great measurement tool that can zoom in for detail and out for scope whenever you need.

What we’re reading this week

From a couple of weeks ago, but HBR Podcasts talks about how to stress test your strategy before it fails. Lots of good insights here.

Anthropic, maker of Claude, just posted a paper about how LLMs, aka, your AI-driven chatbot, could become an insider threat. Terrifying and only strengthens our position that LLMs should be trained on ethical principles, instead of just given flat guardrails, something our team was working on in GSA until March.

Finally, in celebration of July 4th, our national pastime, and lols, check out this delightful musing on watching a live baseball game (McSweeney’s). We don’t know what they’re talking about with the “crisp summer air”, since where we all live it feels like a warm, wet, wool blanket wraps around your face every time you step outside, but we do mutually appreciate the presence of a $14 hotdog at a ballpark.

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸Have a great Fourth, everyone!!🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Speaking of AI and strategy

The rise of AI can make you feel powerless.

You’re not. Take it from a smarty like Hetty Lamar, co-inventor of the technology underpinning modern wifi, GPS, and bluetooth.

Come learn how to harness the power of your ability to learn in our workshop, How to Think with AI on July 17th at 11am EST. https://shorturl.at/jrTY1

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸Use code 9F7FX4Z to get 20% off this week only. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸