The General Services Administration (GSA) has supported the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) information technology modernization initiative and helped consolidate several online contact centers, enhance the USDA website and boost the Farm Loan program's approval rates by 3.5 percent to date.
USDA became the first subject of the Technology Transformation Services' Centers of Excellence in 2018 and since then, the department has tackled IT modernization issues and avoided more than $50 million in costs, GSA said Wednesday.
The partnership has focused on addressing challenges in cloud adoption, contact center, customer experience, data and analytics as well as infrastructure optimization in an effort to transform USDA.
Collaboration results include the closure of 31 of 37 data centers, reduction of duplicate data analytics, dashboards and data visualization training, launch of a single omnichannel infrastructure for contract center support, development of a Centralized USDA Cloud Office and establishment of data analytics capability.
"The IT modernization initiative] creates not only a new customer-focused environment but also ensures we continue to save millions of dollars in duplicative and antiquated systems each year,” said Gary Washington, chief information officer of USDA.