Reimagining Workforce Services for the Department of Labor

A CASE STUDY

My roles

• Customer Experience Lead, GSA’s Centers of Excellence

• Consultant

• Usability expert

• Workstream lead

COVID-19 killed more than a half million people in the U.S. by early 2021. Over 29 million had tested positive and the global pandemic triggered an economic recession. In response, the U.S. Congress passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill to speed up the country's recovery. 

The Department of Labor (DOL) is responsible for the well being of U.S. wage earners and job seekers. The agency’s chief  innovation officer wanted the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) to improve service delivery to the nation’s workforce. He reached out to GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS) for help.

Solution: Research ETA customer needs and recommend foundational strategies and tactics.

I led the team that researched one of ETA’s longest standing digital tools, the CareerOneStop website. We collaborated with ETA leadership to transform findings into initiatives for improving the experiences of CareerOneStop customers and transforming how ETA provides its services.

My team’s activities included:

• Heuristic evaluation

• Usability testing

• Web traffic analysis

• Customer interviews

• American Job Center visits

Outcome

Our primary recommendations: 

• Create key performance indicators (KPIs) that track the experiences of customers

• Establish a customer research practice

• Adopt a product development approach

• Build continuous improvement capabilities instead of launching a redesign