Clickthrough: A Total User Experience Podcast

Yesterday, we shared part one of our new Clickthrough podcast. Guests, Mike Raker, CTO of Maximus and Jason Schick, Vice President of US Public Sector at Genesys focused on how citizen expectations about service delivery are changing and the pressure this is placing on federal agencies. In the second part of the podcast, linked below, the conversation with Raker and Schick continues with a focus on how agencies can deliver the change citizens are demanding, all while working within the constraints of an agency budget. For Raker and Schick, the two most important factors for federal agencies looking to improve citizen service delivery are partnership and the AI assist. Today, no federal agency can keep pace with the rate of technological change, so creating their own custom solutions is out of the budget and out of the question. And while COTS might be a less expensive option, it’s no secret that government agencies have unique requirements that aren’t easily bolted on to commercial solutions. What makes sense then is working with trusted partners that are fully invested in building solutions that are tailored to the unique needs of government, using best-in-class technology that has been proven to deliver results. Where the public sector and private industry can work together to solve these challenges with the most innovative technologies, real results can be achieved. Today, AI defines the leading edge of innovative technology, but particularly when it comes to service delivery solutions. AI chatbots can streamline workloads answering simple questions and inquiries with great efficiency, while directing citizens with more complex needs to the contact center representatives best equipped to answer them. Moreover, AI can then analyze data received during an interaction to further enhance service delivery for future interactions. And these are just two examples from a growing list of how AI can help agencies improve citizen service delivery.

Federal government agencies have found themselves in the middle of a service delivery revolution driven by generational change and fueled by the power of AI-enabled technology. Long gone are the days when citizens were content to walk into an office to get answers to questions about benefits or government services. Even the days of turning to websites in the hopes of finding the right answers, they are seemingly part of the past too. Today, citizens want to be able to connect with federal government agencies in similar ways that they have become used to interacting with consumer brands: on their terms beyond the nine to five. While government agencies might assume that the solutions they need to deliver this next generation of citizen services might be out of their reach because of constrained budgets, Mike Raker, Chief Technology Officer at Maximus and Jason Schick, Vice President of US Public Sector at Genesys, have good news. Raker and Schick joined The Clickthrough Podcast to share their insights on pathways to modernization for federal agencies looking to improve service delivery experiences for citizens. In part one of the podcast, shared here today, and available on all major podcasting platforms, Raker and Schick unpacked the challenges facing federal government agencies in service delivery and looked at how smart investments in the cloud and total experience solutions can address the key issues without breaking budgets.

In the first part of our podcast on digital transformation trends for the defense community, Donna Settle, Vice President, Federal Defense for Maximus, former Acting CIO for the Department of Defense, Reserve Brigadier General (Ret.) Leslie Beavers, and Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Mary F. O'Brien  who served as the director of command, control, communications, and computer/cyber and CIO, J6, Joint Staff at the Pentagon, shared their thoughts on the evolution of the Fulcrum Strategy and much need innovation in identity access and management strategies in order to meet the demands of real world threats and requirements of the Zero Trust approach to cybersecurity. We ended the first part of the podcast with a discussion about cybersecurity trends, but the conversation continued for much longer into other vital areas. The next part of the podcast continues to focus on digital transformation for the defense community but turns our attention to data, design, and the road ahead. Today, no organization can truly transform if it has yet to unlock the power of its data and makes that information interoperable across the entire defense ecosystem while still acting as a single source of truth. Without interoperable data any organization will struggle amongst other things to use AI to its fullest potential or capitalize on a full spectrum of intelligence that can reveal mission critical insights. While technology grounds this modernization conversation, Settle was eager to discuss the broader underpinnings of a successful transformation – people and process. Without all three areas subject to change, digital transformation can’t be fully realized. Moreover, within the processes driving change, ensuring that human-centered design principles guide actions so that systems truly work for the end user and can support innovation at scale. With so much at stake as tensions in the Americas and around the world continue to intensify, the ability of the DoD to leverage new digital tools and technologies in pursuit of national security has never been more important. You can learn more about digital transformation when you clickthrough to the second part of our podcast.

Today, federal healthcare agencies face many of the same pressures as private sector healthcare providers including more patients needing care, skyrocketing costs, heightened expectations surrounding the patient and beneficiary experience. But with workforce reductions and budget cuts across federal healthcare agencies, managing costs and expectations while still delivering on the mission has never been more difficult. However, according to the panel of experts on the new Clickthrough podcast episode, by unlocking the power of AI at scale, federal healthcare leaders can not only manage these challenges but can deliver real change to all stakeholders. In this episode, host, Hillary Fredrick is joined by Maximus federal health expert and Managing Director, Corinna Dan, and Karen Hay, Population & Public Health Industry Advisor at Salesforce. Together they discuss how technologies like Agentforce and Agentic AI are accelerating modernization, improving beneficiary experience, and helping agencies meet mission needs with greater speed, accuracy, and efficiency. While these changes cannot happen without technology and the rapid advancements in AI, Dan and Hay stress the importance of placing humans at the center of transformational change. Using the core tenets of human-centered design as the foundation, Dan and Hay shared that while what AI can do is important, what matters most is how it can work with human stakeholders to support better decisions, better outcomes, and a better experience for all.

The Defense community has always been on the cutting edge of technology adoption and deployment. From Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) role in laying the groundwork for the Internet, to the investments that developed today’s AI technology, and weapons systems, drone capabilities, and even medical technology to name just a few areas where the defense community has led the way in digital transformation. And this IT leadership shows no signs of stopping as we enter 2026. On our next two episodes of the Clickthrough podcast, we are fortunate to have three defense community experts who will guide our listeners through upcoming changes and important topics to consider in the coming year. Today, we welcome Donna Settle, Vice President, Federal Defense at Maximus as a podcast host along with guests, Leslie Beavers, who served as the Acting Chief Information Officer for the Department of Defense and is a retired Reserve Brigadier General with service on the Joint Staff J2, and Mary F. O’Brien, who is a retired United States Air Force lieutenant general. Lieutenant General (Ret.) O’Brien served as the Director of Command, Control, Communications, and Computers/Cyber, and CIO J6, Joint Staff at the Pentagon. The powerhouse panel had such a rich and thought-provoking conversation that we needed to create two parts to Episode 8 of the Clickthrough podcast. In the first part of their conversation, Beavers, O’Brien and Settle focused on the Fulcrum Strategy, the DoD’s Information Technology Advancement Strategy that has guided the agency since June 2024. With a new administration in place in 2025, it’s an important moment to review the accomplishments thus far and then build an understanding of how the strategy is evolving with new leadership in place. Following that discussion, the team tackled cybersecurity challenges and Zero Trust wins. With the defense community under near constant attack and vulnerable to insider threats, managing risk and mitigating attacks is always top of mind. Top of mind for our experts is credential and identity access management, which helps the agency comply with mandates and manage risk amidst a complex and highly distributed organization. For O’Brien, one of the key discussions that must occur within the DoD’s cyber teams is how to balance risk, usability, and accessibility to ensure the organization is both highly responsive and highly secure.

Caring for veterans is a job that for the most part falls to family members who, until the moment they start caregiving, have had no prior experience. As well as the physical act of caregiving, these family members suddenly need to become knowledgeable in navigating medical care and interacting with a formidable bureaucracy. Even though caregivers are a vital link between health systems and everyday life, the traditional caregiving model has cast the caregiver as a secondary stakeholder. Being outside the central loop results in the caregiver being left out of how care is designed, delivered, and improved. While this caregiving model has functioned, with today’s focus on user experience and the technology and data available to drive that change, it seems like an ideal time to explore a different model of care. In the latest episode of the Clickthrough podcast, brought to you by Maximus, Monica Rosser, Executive Managing Director of Federal Health for Maximus and Steve Schwab, CEO of the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, joined host, Hillary Fredrick to discuss the role of the caregiver and how technology and focus on whole health experience will improve the caregiver experience. A whole-health approach to caregiving is designed to give caregivers great access to services and information driving better outcomes for caregivers and those whom they support. A whole-health approach to caregiving starts with user-centered design. As Schwab explains in the podcast, user-centered design means involving the caregiver directly and not treating them like a secondary stakeholder. In practice, including caregivers involves creating feedback loops so they can continue to improve all aspects of the caregiving system through surveys, usability testing, and journey mapping. But there’s so much more to learn about building a whole-health approach to caregiving and supporting our hidden heroes, so why not clickthrough to listen to the podcast?

Generative AI has quickly become fundamental to this next generation of service delivery excellence, and now, the next generation of AI, agentic AI, is poised to help agencies further refine their service delivery capabilities. In this new episode of the Clickthrough podcast, brought to you by Maximus, host Hillary Fredrick and guests Mike Kuentz, a principal solutions architect from AWS, and Sam Frederick, Senior Director of Customer Experience solutions at Maximus, discuss how agentic AI is reshaping service delivery for federal agencies.

What do hackathons have to do with national defense? More than you might think.In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Arun Seraphin of NDIA’s Emerging Technologies Institute and Derrick Pledger of Maximus to explore how hackathons are helping government and industry tackle complex challenges in real time.From accelerating emerging technology solutions to breaking down silos between agencies and vendors, these events are evolving into powerful platforms for collaboration, experimentation, and rapid innovation.

In this episode of the Clickthrough podcast, host, Hillary Fredrick is joined by Jonathan Shapland, who is Senior Director of Technology at Maximus and Cathy Muha, Senior Director of the Customer Experience Accelerator at Maximus, to learn more about digital health services and what these newer, patient-centric solutions can offer to caregivers and providers alike.

In the third episode of Season 2 of Clickthrough, host Hillary Fredrick is joined by MaryAnn Monroe, Vice President of the Maximus CX Accelerator, and Mike Kuentz, Principal Solutions Architect, to unpack the promise – and the pressure of building a connected citizen-first future through AI, the cloud, and Total Experience Management tools. It’s a fascinating discussion, and one that anyone attending an AWS Summit this summer will definitely want to listen to.

There’s no doubt about it, 2025 is the Year of AI for the federal government. From predictive AI to generative AI there are so many examples of how AI can help federal agencies and workers be more efficient.But have you heard of Agentic AI? Agentic AI, where autonomous AI agents can understand and interpret customers’ questions using natural language and with minimal human intervention, is an easy way for agencies to connect with their end-users to triage and solve common problems. Agentic AI makes services more accessible and makes agency workers more efficient by enabling them to focus on more complex and high-value tasks. Moreover, AI Agents are available 24x7, are infinitely scalable and are consistent and accurate because they run on data driven insights.With the federal government under increasing pressure to modernize service delivery while ensuring efficiency, security, and accessibility. AI-powered agents are emerging as a game-changer, enabling faster, more intuitive, and scalable citizen interactions. But how can agencies successfully integrate AI into their workflows? In this episode of the Clickthrough podcast one of Salesforce’s leading experts in Agentic AI for government, Mia Jordan, joins Mike Raker, Chief Technology Officer at Maximus, and host, Hillary Fredrick to answer that question and discuss how Agentic AI can improve customer experience and drive efficiency in the delivery of government services.

Investments in constituent experiences (CX) are a key part of agency modernization strategies today across the federal government. But while most of these CX investments are directed towards external end users of agency services, the Department of Defense’s embrace of CX improvements is slightly different. For the DoD, their end user is the warfighter and their family and the need to improve their experience in interacting with the complex bureaucracy has never been more important as part of retention and recruitment goals.While much of the public conversation has focused on access to IT, training, and recognition, one of the other areas in which the DoD is improving CX is in healthcare. Investments in patient centric modernization are rising and in this episode of the Clickthrough podcast on Government Technology Insider, Hillary Fredrick had the opportunity of speaking to Seileen Mullen, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Ms. Mullen has spent nearly 30 years within the military healthcare ecosystem and shares her insights on the strategies that are enabling military health agencies to rethink, redefine, and reimagine integrated health services that are critical to warfighter readiness to ensure that customer experience is at the center of innovative care models.During the conversation Mullen shared that our “patients are now the drivers. They get to decide how and when they want to be seen, and not the other way around. It’s no longer about the number of times we get them in the waiting room. It’s about meeting the patients where they are in their lives at the time they need care ... Under My Military Health, which is a comprehensive blend of self-guided care-on-demand and scheduled virtual care and interactive messaging to better manage care plans between medical appointments. Today, we have five pilot sites, and we're rolling them out system wide, beginning in 2025.”

Welcome to season 2 of Clickthrough, we are thrilled to raise the bar with the value we deliver in our episodes this year. Subscribe to stay up to date on our latest episodes!About Clickthrough:In this podcast we will focus on solving the key challenges federal agencies face as they work to transform user experiences. Each episode will bring you insightful conversations between leaders in industry and government. In these conversations, we’ll discuss how agencies can use human-centered design and innovative technology to provide exceptional experiences at every level of service delivery.

This year has been a banner year for customer experience (CX) transformation in the federal government. Spurred on by the Executive Order on Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government and pressures from changes in the private sector, federal agencies from the Department of Defense to the IRS have invested heavily in CX. In our Clickthrough podcast, brought to you by Maximus, host, Hillary Fredrick has kept listeners up to date on CX transformation through design, data, technology, and a guest list of experts who have shared their insights and experiences. In this final episode of Clickthrough for this year, Fredrick shares her 2024 highlights and recaps the CX journey for federal agencies.

The Department of Defense is used to accomplishing monumental feats. From protecting the national interest to managing a workforce of nearly 3 million people, nothing happens on a small scale. This is clearly evident in both the IT modernization goals for the agency and its customer experience (CX) improvement plans to align with the December 2021 Executive Order on Transforming Customer Experience and Rebuilding Trust in Government.While it would be easy to treat these two major projects as separate entities, what the Department of Defense has learned is that when CX is put at the center of IT modernization the impact drives innovation forward more quickly and enables service members to receive the exemplary service they deserve.But what does this look like in practical terms?Hillary Fredrick, host of the Clickthrough podcast, sat down with Donna Settle, Vice President for the Federal Defense Market at Maximus and Chris Doty, Senior Practice Manager for the Department of the Air Force at AWS to learn more about how the United States Air Force and the United States Space Force have approached this vital work.Settle shared during the post that “cloud adoption and AI implementation alone don't necessarily solve a lot of the day-to-day experience problems. It's about empowering those customers and stakeholders to perform their mission more effectively. We do know that cloud adoption enables faster access to the mission critical data from anywhere and that as long as there's access, whether airmen are in a deployed environment or at a home station. We also look at AI from an implementation point to eliminate those boring, repetitive tasks. The goal overall is to free up the time of the airmen so that they can focus more strategically.”

Improving customer experience is one of the top priorities for federal agencies today. Driven by both a desire to match the omnichannel interactions that constituents are used to having with brands in the private sector and the Executive Order on Improving Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government issued in December 2021, federal agencies are investing millions of dollars in customer experience (CX) solutions. But how do agency leaders know if the investments they are making are driving the outcomes they are looking for? In this episode of the Clickthrough podcast, Michael Palmer, Chief Customer Experience Officer and Associate CIO, Bureau of Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce and James Bench, Managing Director of Technology Services at Maximus, join host Hillary Frederick to share insights about the role of data intelligence in helping agencies find their true north when it comes to setting and meeting their CX goals.

In this episode, we sit down with Joe Jeter, Senior Managing Director for Federal Technology at Maximus, and Prashanth Krishnamurthy, Senior Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services, to discuss how contact centers are raising the bar and driving the evolution of federal customer experiences.

In this episode, we sit down with Michael Carroll, Chief of Acquisition and Procurement at the US Army HRC, and Pamela Powers, Defense Market Lead at Maximus to discuss how Department of Defense (DoD) agencies can initiate a culture shift to embrace a total user experience mindset that will drive innovation.

In this episode, we sit down with Matt Smith, Senior Advisor to the CISO at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Kynan Carver, Cybersecurity Lead at Maximus to discuss how pursuing customer experiences (CX) and cybersecurity as a joint goal drives modernization.

In this episode, we sit down with Renae Facundus, Director of Interoperability and Analytics at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Monica Rosser, Health Market Lead at Maximus, to discuss how CX principles and interoperability initiatives are driving a new era of public health.

With the arrival of the Internet the world entered the Information Age, where everything you could ever want to know was just a click away. The public has access to so many web-enabled services – be it apps on their mobile devices or storefronts on their computers – that now the focus has shifted to refining user experiences. In the Experience Age, consumer experiences are shaping how the public expects to interact with government agencies when they are accessing services. So, how can federal agencies best meet these expectations? To answer that, Government Technology Insider talked with Maximus’s MaryAnn Monroe, Vice President of Total Experience Solutions and Services, and Joe Jeter, Senior Managing Director for Federal Technology to discuss how focusing on total experience strategy will help agencies to optimize interactions with the public and drive IT modernization efforts.

In this podcast we will focus on solving the key challenges federal agencies face as they work to transform user experiences. Each episode will bring you insightful conversations between leaders in industry and government. In these conversations, we’ll discuss how agencies can use human-centered design and innovative technology to provide exceptional experiences at every level of service delivery.