Government service delivery is no longer just a concept; it has become an operational necessity. That was the core message from leaders across Federal, State and Local Government who gathered at the 2026 GovExperience Summit, hosted by Carahsoft Technology Corporation. From the Department of Transportation (DOT) to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service to State and Local senior officials, speakers shared how their agencies are moving beyond the art of the possible and into the art of the probable, hardwiring real data pipelines, deploying agentic artificial intelligence (AI) and building constituent trust at scale. The summit brought together the entire ecosystem needed to make Government modernization a reality: technology, procurement and the human experience.
Here are the most actionable insights from the day.
When CX Becomes the Mission: Building a Culture That Lasts
One of the most consistent themes across the summit was that customer experience (CX) can no longer function as a standalone initiative or a compliance checkbox. Dr. Linda Davis, Chief Veteran Officer at the VA, described how her office has spent a decade hardwiring CX principles directly into agency culture, embedding them in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), tying them to employee performance plans and measuring outcomes publicly each quarter. The VA’s approach underscores that sustainable CX transformation begins with cultural change, not technological change. As Dr. Davis put it, “it starts with the change in the culture and the people, both those who are providing the services and those who you are serving.” This philosophy has allowed the VA, the largest integrated healthcare system in the country, to outperform Private Sector hospitals on star ratings while serving one of the most diverse constituent populations in Government. The key is to ensure that every stakeholder, from frontline staff to agency leadership, views their work through the lens of the constituent they serve.
Beyond the Front Door: Why End-to-End Digitization Matters
A recurring challenge raised across multiple panels was the tendency of agencies to modernize only what constituents see, such as the website, the chatbot and the intake form, while leaving back-end systems untouched. Matt Passos, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the Department of Commerce (DOC), was direct: “A lot of times we tend to digitize just the front end…but in the back end a lot of times your staff is working hard to try to keep that up.” His recommendation was to deploy AI and automation across the entire technology stack, from intake to adjudication to notification, to deliver seamless end-to-end outcomes. Travis Thomas, Chief Product and Technology Officer at DOT, echoed this with a concrete example: a grants portal delivered on time and on budget was ultimately deemed a failed product because local municipalities found it so confusing that it delayed their ability to secure funding for urgent infrastructure repairs. The key takeaway is to shift how success is measured. Instead of focusing on whether a system was delivered, organizations should evaluate whether it actually led to measurable improvements in the constituent experience.
AI Works Best When Deployed with Precision and a Human in the Loop
Enthusiasm for AI was matched throughout the day by an equal emphasis on disciplined, use-case-driven deployment. Matt Gonzales, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Presidential Fellow at the White House, offered a practical framework: identify your process bottlenecks first, then apply AI to the specific problem. “For you to use AI, you really need to know your use case, your processes, before you want to throw AI into it,” he advised. One panelist described how AI tools were used to ingest and group thousands of public regulatory comments, reducing review time from several months to a few weeks, while keeping a human reviewer in the loop throughout. In cybersecurity, AI-driven alert aggregation was highlighted as a means of reducing alert fatigue in Security Operations Centers (SOC), surfacing only the most actionable threats for human review. At DOT, AI-enabled “cognitive offloading” for civil engineers, summarizing lengthy inspection documents to surface anomalies, drove AI tool adoption from 30% to 70% of users in just 30 days. Across every panel, the message was consistent: AI amplifies human decision-making; it does not replace it. Successful agencies start small, iterate in sprints and scale what works.
Data Foundations and Interoperability Unlock Proactive Service Delivery
Across the Federal, State and Local Government panels, leaders agreed that the single greatest barrier to personalized, proactive service delivery is fragmented data. Natalie Evans Harris, State Chief Data Officer (CDO) for Maryland, challenged the prevailing assumption that breaking down silos requires consolidating everything into one system. Instead, she advocated for building the connective infrastructure, “the roads,” that allow agencies to share data at the intersection points that matter without dismantling the specialized repositories each agency depends on. The results of this approach are already tangible: Maryland’s integrated benefits platform allows residents to apply once and receive proactive eligibility notifications across multiple programs through automated back-end matching.
John Burstler, formerly of the VA’s Veterans Experience Office, described how a cross-agency customer data platform, pulling information from the Department of War (DoW), Social Security Administration (SSA), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), enabled the VA to enroll three million of five million previously unenrolled veterans in benefits between 2022 and 2024. Dartanian Smith Williams, CDO for the City of Baltimore, reinforced that this principle applies at the local level as well: coordinating data between departments enables smoother operations, reduces redundancy and frees budget for additional investment in constituent services. Building these data foundations is not glamorous work, but it is the prerequisite for everything that follows.
Omnichannel Engagement and Cloud Infrastructure Must be Built for Trust
The afternoon’s cloud and digital services panel, featuring leaders from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and more, brought the conversation back to a foundational question: how does Government earn and maintain constituent trust in every channel? John Hale, Chief of Product Management and Development at DISA, described the DoW’s evolution from treating cloud as “just another hosting platform” to embracing a hybrid cloud model that fuses on-premises and commercial capabilities to support decision makers at mission speed.
Vijay D’Souza of GAO offered a broader observation: successful cloud adoption requires more than spinning up applications; it demands specialized staff training, defined governance and clear performance metrics tied to mission outcomes. A real-world example highlights the stakes: one of the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) 38 designated high-impact service providers still directs constituents to a form with a disclaimer that responses may not be received. The alternative, an omnichannel model that connects chat, voice, video, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data and AI-assisted escalation, is within reach today. Twenty percent of the U.S. population speaks a language other than English. Accessibility, real-time sentiment analysis and seamless case continuity are not optional features for high-impact agencies. They are baseline requirements for delivering Government services that meet the expectations of a modern public.
The GovExperience Summit 2026 made one thing clear: the agencies making the greatest strides in constituent service are those that align technology, data infrastructure and workforce culture toward a single, measurable outcome: trust. As the Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider ™, Carahsoft helps agencies access the full portfolio of tools required to operationalize that vision, from cloud and AI platforms to CX technologies, all through established contract vehicles that simplify procurement.
Explore Carahsoft’s Customer Experience Technology portfolio of leading solutions that support Government modernization priorities, including AI, cloud infrastructure, digital services and advanced analytics.
Contact the Customer Experience Team at CX@Carahsoft.com to discuss how Carahsoft’s technology partners can support your agency’s mission requirements.
