Total experience: The missing link in government transformation

Since the bipartisan 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act was signed into law in 2018, the U.S. federal government has made notable progress in modernizing public services. Executive orders, and Office of Management and Budget memorandums and follow-on efforts have built on that momentum, driving the adoption of human-centered design, digital-first strategies and a renewed focus on rebuilding public trust. 

These efforts have produced real results — such as improved digital services through website modernization at the Department of Health and Human Services, streamlined form digitization by the Social Security Administration and incremental gains in agency compliance and reporting. However, they also reveal a significant blind spot: a narrow focus on external users, with insufficient attention paid to the internal workforce experience.

This oversight is increasingly untenable. In both public and private sectors, it is clear that employee experience is inextricably linked to customer experience. When federal employees must navigate outdated systems, redundant manual processes, and disconnected internal services, their ability to deliver on the promise of modern, efficient and human-centered public service is deeply compromised.

The missed opportunity of internal experience

The pressure on federal IT leadership is intensifying. In the face of government-wide reductions in staffing and contract resources, cost containment initiatives — such as those driven by the Department of Government Efficiency — are amplifying operational strain. IT executives are being asked to maintain, modernize and secure critical systems with fewer resources and rising expectations.

But this challenge is not solely an IT issue.

Siloed, vertical responses won’t be enough. The complexity of today’s environment demands intentional, horizontal collaboration across business functions — HR, finance, operations and beyond. Federal employees are expected to do more with less, all while navigating fragmented support ecosystems — onboarding, human resources information systems, learning management systems’ platforms and countless disjointed service channels — that were never designed for the pace or complexity of today’s government missions.

Breaking down these barriers and aligning around integrated, user-centric solutions is no longer optional — it’s essential.

The consequences are clear:

• Operational Inefficiency: Disjointed systems and processes strain mission support teams, reducing their capacity to deliver timely, high-quality services across the enterprise.
• Increased Mission Risk: Fragmentation obscures visibility, weakens coordination and delays response time, directly impacting the government’s ability to meet its mission with agility and resilience. 
• Employee Burnout: To meet rising customer expectations or compensate for inefficiencies, employees are working longer hours and juggling multiple systems, leading to unsustainable workloads and diminished morale.

The problem isn’t unique to government. Unilever, a global organization with over 155,000 employees and 3.4 billion customers, faced a similar challenge. Employees were losing nearly a day per week navigating internal processes. The company responded by forming dedicated teams to improve the employee experience — implementing automation and redesigning internal tools. The results were compelling: 300,000 hours reclaimed annually, the equivalent of 175 full-time employees.

Just as Unilever achieved meaningful transformation by prioritizing its workforce, the federal government can do the same. But it will require a fundamental mindset shift: The employee experience is not a back-office concern — it is a mission enabler.

What it means and why it matters

Total Experience integrates customer, employee and business operations experience strategies into a unified approach to service delivery. When employees are equipped with intuitive tools, real-time data and seamless internal support, they are far more capable of delivering fast, empathetic and effective services to the public.

According to McKinsey, productivity loss tied to poor employee experience costs the median S&P 500 company $480 million annually. Broken down, that includes:

• $116 million from skills gaps,
• $91 million from disengagement,
• $47 million from inefficiencies, and
• $226 million from attrition and vacancies.

In the federal government, these may not translate to profit losses, but rather they directly impact minutes to the mission, meaning time federal employees spend trying to navigate through a fractured experience is time that they are not focused on their core mission: public safety, research, policymaking, national security. Public servants, like private-sector employees, now expect and require consumer-grade experiences: easy-to-use systems, rapid onboarding, personalized support and seamless access to resources. These expectations aren't aspirational — they’re foundational.

A smarter model: From silos to fusion teams

Fixing the internal experience challenge requires more than new technology — it demands a fundamental shift in how work gets done. For too long, agencies have operated with siloed support functions: IT, HR, finance, facilities and operations working in parallel but rarely in sync. This fragmented model results in duplicated efforts, clunky workflows, and inconsistent user experiences that frustrate employees and slow down mission delivery.

Fusion teams offer a smarter, more integrated approach. These cross-functional, agile teams bring together talent from across traditionally siloed domains — blending IT professionals, human capital strategists, data analysts, mission leads and service designers. Rather than pushing isolated projects, Fusion teams co-create solutions that are user-centered, iterative and aligned to broader strategic outcomes. Their benefits include:

• Speed and Agility: Fusion teams enable faster decision-making and more responsive problem-solving by breaking down bureaucratic barriers. Issues that once took months to resolve through formal coordination can now be tackled in real time within integrated teams.
• User-Centered Design: Because these teams include direct input from frontline employees and mission stakeholders, solutions are designed with actual user needs in mind. This leads to tools and processes that are intuitive, useful and more likely to be adopted.
• Shared Accountability: With diverse expertise working toward a common goal, fusion teams distribute ownership across departments. This shared accountability encourages collaboration over competition and helps ensure that internal experience improvements don’t fall through organizational cracks.
• Better Use of Data: Fusion teams often include data analysts or performance specialists who can help design measurement frameworks, such as experience level agreements, that provide real-time insights into what’s working and where gaps remain.
• Greater Alignment with Mission Objectives: By integrating mission leads directly into transformation efforts, fusion teams ensure that internal solutions are not only efficient but also directly supportive of core public service goals — whether that’s processing benefits, advancing research, or responding to national emergencies.

Gartner predicts that organizations leveraging fusion teams will be 50% more likely to achieve successful digital outcomes by 2027. In government, where both public trust and operational performance are on the line, adopting this model isn’t just innovative — it’s imperative.

Fusion Teams represent a modern operating model for a modern government. They help agencies move from incremental, tool-by-tool modernization to systemic, experience-driven transformation — one that empowers federal employees and delivers better outcomes for the public they serve.

What government can learn from business

Public sector leaders often resist private sector comparisons, but in this case, the parallel is not only fair — it’s instructive. Companies like Unilever, Amazon and Microsoft have long recognized that investing in employee experience leads to outsized returns in productivity, innovation, and customer satisfaction.

The same logic applies to government. If public servants are the government's most valuable asset, then investing in their experience is not a luxury — it’s a necessity. And while the public sector may not be driven by profit, it is accountable for impact, efficiency and trust.

A new mandate for modern government

Customer experience improvements alone will not future-proof the federal government. Nor will cost-cutting measures or resource reductions, in isolation, deliver the efficiency and impact agencies are under pressure to achieve. While each of these efforts may produce incremental gains, they fall short without a holistic, integrated approach.

To truly modernize and deliver on its mission, government agencies must embrace total experience, placing employee experience on equal footing with citizen experience and operational efficiency. Total experience brings together customer, employee and business operations experience strategies into a unified model that drives performance across the enterprise.

Resource reductions and cost containment are real — but so is the opportunity. Federal employees are being asked to do more with less, while navigating outdated systems and disjointed support environments. Without modern internal tools and connected processes, burnout rises, productivity falls and the mission is put at risk.

This moment calls for more than siloed initiatives or piecemeal technology upgrades. It demands a bold shift in operating models — one that connects people, processes and platforms across traditional organizational boundaries.

It means:

• Reimagining internal collaboration through fusion teams that blend IT, HR, finance, operations and mission leadership to co-design and deliver integrated support services.
• Investing in employee-facing digital platforms with the same urgency and rigor applied to external systems — because the workforce is the engine behind every public service.
• Eliminating redundancy and friction in back-end workflows to unlock time, reduce waste and increase capacity without increasing headcount.
• Evolving measurement models from lagging, annual surveys to real-time sentiment and experience metrics like experience level agreements and net promoter scores.

This is not about perks or flashy tech. It’s about enabling government employees to work smarter, faster, and with fewer barriers — because that’s how modern agencies deliver on their missions and earn public trust.

Agency leaders must act now. The intersection of rising expectations, shrinking resources, and urgent modernization creates both a challenge and a mandate. Cross-functional collaboration, technology integration and an elevated focus on employee experience are no longer "nice to have" — they are mission critical. It's time to expand the vision: A citizen’s experience begins with the employee. Investing in that experience is how government will sustain trust, deliver efficiently and rise to meet the demands of the future.

Avery Muse, Sr.is the founder and CEO of The Muse Group and a recently retired member of the Senior Executive Service . Most recently, he served as executive director for the Office of IT Operations at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he led efforts to deliver and modernize IT services in support of mission-critical programs.