The US President’s Management Agenda (PMA) is an administration’s opportunity to lay out its vision for the government. The Trump administration’s new PMA, published on December 8, 2025, includes the most modest commitment to customer experience (CX) since PMAs began in 2001. It doesn’t even use the ubiquitous terms “customer experience” or “customer service.”

Prior administrations explicitly aimed to improve federal CX. The George W. Bush administration’s PMA included what was at the time a historically strong and detailed federal focus on e-government. It was followed by an even stronger commitment for “world-class” CX with the Obama administration’s customer service Cross-Agency Priority Goal (CAP). The first Trump administration’s Improving Customer Experience with Federal Services CAP continued the trend with the goal of CX that’s “comparable to leading private-sector organizations” and improvements to OMB Circular A-11 Section 280. And the Biden administration’s Federal Customer Experience initiative went even further with its goal of providing federal CX “on par with or better than leading” private-sector CX.

But the new PMA lacks an inspiring vision for stellar experience quality such as beating the private sector or all other governments, and there’s no moonshot target like leading the world in public-facing agentic systems. Instead, it’s just a list of laudable but mundane objectives that the administration has already been working on:

  • Consolidate and standardize systems, while eliminating duplicative ones
  • Reduce the number of confusing government websites
  • Ensure secure, digital-first services that are built for real people, not bureaucracy
  • Defend against and persistently combat cyber enemies
  • Eliminate data silos and duplicative data collection
  • Reduce wasteful processes through artificial intelligence

That fits with the overall approach of this PMA, which is more retrospective than visionary. The PMA was published nearly 11 months after Inauguration Day, and it mostly describes a basket of projects the administration has been doing all along instead of setting a strategy for the future. That’s disappointing for CX pros who want a federal partner in building the future of digital experiences.

But the Trump administration can make real progress on its modest CX-related goals — if it can stop other PMA goals from getting in the way:

  • The PMA goal to “eliminate woke” overruled CX on the very day the PMA went live. Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered his department to replace the Calibri font with Times New Roman. His goal was to “restore decorum and professionalism,” but studies show that Calibri is easier to read — especially on screens — which would contribute to the PMA objective of creating “digital-first services that are built for real people, not bureaucracy.”
  • In August, the administration issued an executive order on federal experience design, but as we wrote at the time, it focused on aesthetics over usability and came after the administration had fired existing design talent.

Federal CX Leaders: Keep It Simple And Efficient

It’s austerity time for federal CX teams. They won’t be given the latitude or resources to accomplish their grander aspirations. We recommend that federal CX leaders:

  • Build the business case for CX improvements around improving efficiency. The PMA leans hard on reducing staffing and increasing digital service delivery. Boosting participation or resilience won’t be compelling bases for a business case right now.
  • Adopt the federal government’s excellent design system. Leveraging a tool specifically designed for consistency across all channels and experiences is more important now than ever, because design systems help drive both quality and efficiency — especially with AI-powered experiences.
  • Whenever possible, prioritize cross-agency customer journeys. A journey-centric approach cuts through silos. That’s especially important for complex, high-stakes government experiences.

What To Do Next

Colleen Fazio, Gina Bhawalkar, Dario Maisto, and Sam Higgins also contributed to this blog post.