The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid and Booz Allen Hamilton’s Recreation.gov Project Both Recognized for Outstanding Work

LaunchDarkly applauds federal partners for winning this year’s 2023 Service to the Citizen Awards


OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 14, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LaunchDarkly, the platform that helps engineering teams build better software, celebrates the winners of this year’s 2023 Service to the Citizen Awards. The Service to the Citizen Awards recognize government officials and their industry partners who have exemplified dedication to improving the lives of employees and customers.

As an industry partner to both agencies, LaunchDarkly is delighted to announce that Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) and Recreation.gov (R1S), along with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are each recognized with a 2023 Service to the Citizen Award for the transformation of their respective services.

“At LaunchDarkly, our mission has always been to empower developers and organizations to rapidly, collaboratively, and safely transform their applications. Seeing both Booz Allen Hamilton and CMS harness our platform to drive such profound positive impacts for citizens is both a testament to their innovation and a validation of our vision,” said Sara Mazer, Federal CTO at LaunchDarkly. “We're deeply proud to be a part of their journey and celebrate their well-deserved recognition with the Service to the Citizen Awards.”

The Booz Allen / Recreation.gov Team worked with an interagency coalition of 12 federal partners to reinvent Recreation.gov during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, the application took too long to load and it was difficult for users to find the information they needed for their various transactions. Using modern technologies, cloud-native microservices and DevSecOps best practices, the agency partners coalition led a team of contractors, software engineers, cloud architects, customer experience specialists, and other experts to rebuild Recreation.gov from the ground up in 15 months.

With a dramatically improved user experience and processing functionality, Recreation.gov is now a one-stop shop for trip information, planning, and reservations on par with today’s modern e-commerce experiences.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is responsible for managing one of the most highly visited government websites in the U.S., Medicare.gov. However, it was difficult for users to find the information they needed, and applications within the site were too complex to use. The Web & Emerging Technologies Group at Centers for CMS modernized their DevOps processes in a way that allowed them to progressively roll out functionality and user experience enhancements without disrupting any active users on the website. Applications during peak periods, such as enrollment, underwent a staggered release for each application group, ensuring that functionality in production was as expected.

With these technical achievements, CMS is able to reach the development velocity required to provide Medicare beneficiaries and Medicare.gov users with a continuously optimized user experience, without downtime or call center alerts.

Both BAH and CMS will be recognized on September 15, 2023 at the Public Service Leadership Academy (PSLA) awards gala at The Mayflower in Washington, D.C. This event will publicly recognize over 300 champions of change across the federal, state, local and international governments in the digital services, information technology (IT) and customer experience communities.

“Each year, we continue to see governments maturing in the way they design and deliver services to their employees and customers, from leveraging new ways of designing and developing services to using emerging technologies. The public and employees deserve a 21st century experience and it’s our hope that this program honors those unsung heroes who make it happen,” said Martha Dorris, the President of the Public Service Leadership Academy.

Those interested in learning more about LaunchDarkly’s federal offering and reading more about how it helped with CMS and Booz Allen Hamilton/Rec.gov’s digital transformations can visit https://launchdarkly.com/government/.

Those interested in learning more about the Service to the Citizen Awards can contact info@servicetothecitizen.org or visit the Service to the Citizen Awards Program: Champions of Change.

About LaunchDarkly
DevOps has spawned tremendous innovation from CI/CD to agile planning, but the ongoing struggle to connect the code engineering teams build to compelling customer experiences causes inefficient development cycles, costly outages and fragmented experiences. The LaunchDarkly platform helps engineers connect their work to the thing that matters most - their customers. Now, developers have a safety valve to instantly rewind when things go wrong to improve the velocity and stability of releases. They can target product experiences to any customer segment and maximize the business impact of every feature. And teams using LaunchDarkly easily drive consistent, engaging mobile experiences through better coordination and optimization of mobile development. See why engineering teams at the most innovative companies, including 25 percent of the Fortune 500, build products that customers love with LaunchDarkly. Learn more at www.launchdarkly.com.

About the Public Service Leadership Academy
The Public Service Leadership Academy (PSLA) is a 501(c)(3) that builds the next generation of leaders through leadership development, coaching as well as recognizing leaders across government and industry who have impacted excellence in government.

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