Department of Labor Office of the Chief Information Officer - Most Valuable Government Response

Company: Department of Labor Office of the Chief Information Officer, Washington, DC
Company Description: The Office of the Chief Information Officer is a customer service organization dedicated to providing information technology solutions and leadership to advance the Department of Labor mission.
Nomination Category: COVID-19 Response Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Valuable Government Response

Nomination Title: Office of the Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of Labor

Federal IT organizations already face immense challenges to advancing technological modernization that benefits their workforce and the American public. This year, COVID-19 has presented an ever greater obstacle to government IT capabilities, creating an overwhelming need to keep employees safe and provide critical updates to citizens. The forward-thinking, rapid decision-making by the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) met these challenges head on, establishing a more innovative, open government, even in the midst of a pandemic. OCIO’s COVID-19 action serves as a model for federal IT, and highlights why this Office has provided this year’s Most Valuable Government Response.

As DOL quickly shifted to majority-telework for 95% of its workforce, OCIO demonstrated from the start that DOL was prepared for emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, establishing trust among the workforce and the American public to give credence to new technologies implemented down the line. To achieve this, OCIO immediately published external resources, such as the Novel Coronavirus Guidance and Resources, and updated internal DOL resources such as the Employee Assistance Program for work-related/personal issues.
https://labornet.dol.gov/Highlights/Novel-Coronavirus-Guidance-and-Resources.htm
https://labornet.dol.gov/me/hr/news/volume6-issue2.htm

OCIO leveraged employee communications with a cohesive, singular call-to-action, directing to centralized, comprehensive knowledge bases guiding users through nearly every aspect of the telework experience and lessen potential strain on the help desk. The first, the Telework Resource Checklist, prepared staff for remote work and ensuring users had access to automated processes for their security, login, and conferencing needs. Understanding many staff accustomed to on-site work were encountering remote work for the first time, OCIO published this guide with step-by-step visuals for each section within weeks of the pandemic’s start. The second, the IT Jobs Aids page, is an intranet-based repository of quick reference guides and job aids optimizing agency performance across the entire DOL IT catalog for collaboration tools, commonly used software, and cloud-based platforms. Creating the IT Job Aids page on the home page banner of DOL’s intranet, OCIO built easy access to visual guides, trainings, and video demonstrations for an array of IT offerings, ranging from Adobe to SharePoint and CISCO to WebEx.

OCIO’s COVID-19 response also directly impacted the American public’s access to critical services and benefits during a time of crisis. OCIO leveraged its DOL IT Platform’s content management capability to withstand an influx of 102 million sessions across 16 DOL and federal web properties without any service issues, including BLS.gov (crucial economic data to labor researchers), the Employment and Training Administration (heavy visitor traffic in search of information on Unemployment Insurance), and the Division of Federal Employees’ Compensation COVID-19 Response website (a request form to ensure affected workers obtain critical compensation coverage). Doubling Virtual Private Network capacity and expanding bandwidth, OCIO further supported high surges in website traffic. DOL.gov alone accounted for 39 million site sessions from March to June, tripling usage over the previous year. Within the same timeframe, Wage and Hour Division’s (WHD) Families First Coronavirus Response Act received 5.6 million page views. Benefits.gov experienced record traffic for the month of March totaling over 3.8 million sessions and a 108% increase in users in one weeks’ time for the Benefits Finder tool, an online questionnaire that matches citizens to eligible benefits.

Leading DOL swiftly and effectively, OCIO’s commitment to IT modernization facilitated majority-telework, communicated critical technology and safety information quickly, supported DOL Agencies’ business needs, and empowered government websites. Through these actions, OCIO demonstrated tremendous leadership in the federal community, ensuring DOL became more effective, innovative and responsive when American citizens and the DOL workforce needed the support most.