Interior Department taps first-ever chief digital experience officer from OMB

The Interior Department has its first-ever chief digital experience officer. 

Andy Lewandowski, formerly the digital experience advisor to the federal chief information officer, is helming the new digital strategy and delivery role as of Monday, OMB and DOI confirmed to Nextgov/FCW. 

Now, Lewandowski will be charged with helping Interior implement some of the policies he worked to craft during his two-plus years at OMB, including the digital experience guidance released last fall. Lewandowski himself spoke late last year about how OMB would be piloting analytics to hold agencies accountable for implementing the guidance.

“The American public should get a simple, seamless and secure customer experience when they interact with the government,” he also said previously.

That OMB guidance did require agencies to tap digital experience delivery leads. But the chief digital experience officer position isn’t common across government agencies, although some do have digital service directors or heads of digital transformation. 

Lewandowski also helped develop the Biden White House’s 2021 customer experience executive order while at OMB, meant to improve how the government delivers services to Americans. Prior to OMB, he worked in the U.S. Digital Service for over three years.

“One of my core beliefs as a technologist is to go where the work is. That’s just what Andy Lewandowski is doing in his new role as the Department of Interior’s first chief digital experience officer. As a driving force behind the administration’s customer experience executive order and digital experience guidance, I could not be more excited for Andy to lead the implementation of these critical enhancements across DOI," Federal CIO Clare Martorana said in a statement to Nextgov/FCW.

He’s the second OMB advisor to depart that office this month. Former senior advisor to the CIO, Eric Mill, also recently moved on from his policy role to a delivery-focused one —  the first executive director for cloud strategy in the Technology Transformation Services at the General Services Administration.

In his new gig, Lewandowski will be in a department that contains four government agencies delivering services dubbed high-impact because of their scale and effects on those that use them — the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Trust Funds Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service.

The National Park Service alone boasted 312 million recreation visits in 2022, and the Interior Department also provides services to 1.9 million American Indian and Alaska Natives.

Inside the department, the information management and technology strategic plan lists customer experience as one of its five strategic goals for 2024 to 2029. 

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include a comment from Clare Martorana.