Department of Labor
Becoming a digital-first agency
Project details
Federal labor laws provide many important protections for workers, such as minimum wage and restrictions on child labor. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is responsible for enforcing them.
The Wage and Hour Division wanted to start using more modern software development methods, but they wanted proof that these new methods would address the division’s particular challenges before seeking buy-in from their leadership. They approached 18F to see how we could help.
The first thing we did was share how 18F implements user-centered design. We chose a small project to work on, observed how people in the Wage and Hour Division do their work, then quickly created a lightweight demo of how to address the barriers they encountered.
After they saw the benefits of iterative and user-centered design, we helped them develop a plan to transform the Wage and Hour Division into a digital-first agency. These efforts included training and mentoring to develop the agile skills of their in-house team, recruiting first-class digital talent, developing a user-centric culture and making data-influenced decisions.
We’ve worked closely the Wage and Hour Division for two years now, and while we’re still supporting their efforts in some areas, there are teams within the agency that are now successfully using agile techniques to approach their work.