Libraries today are hubs of information. No longer just places for printed books and magazines, today’s libraries are an information commons for the digital age. At the forefront of this changing role is America’s library, the Library of Congress (LOC). Natalie Buda Smith, Director of Digital Strategy at the Library of Congress, is one of the leading experts on opening the digital front door of government to citizens.
In a conversation with Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman and as part of a broader webinar with citizen experience expert Evan Davis, Executive Managing Director for Strategic Growth at Maximus, Buda Smith shared how the LOC has reimagined its strategic plan to natively include digital rather than treat it as a separate workstream. “All of our workstreams are becoming more digital,” she explained to Heckman. “Needs are changing quickly, and we can respond to that change at speed [with an integrated] strategic plan.”
“In our mission to serve Congress and the American people, we have four goals to give people more opportunities to engage with our collection and engage with Congress,” she continued. The four goals are to expand access, enhance services, strengthen capacity, and foster innovation, with the first two driving citizen engagement and experience and the latter two goals supporting the LOC’s staff in achieving expanded access and enhanced services. “Our mission is to help people understand American history and who we are as Americans,” she explained. “And one of the principal ways we can achieve this is by extending our digital collections and access to them.”
But as Buda Smith was quick to point out, digital access today doesn’t just mean through the LOC’s website. “People want access to information in new ways,” she explained. “You’ve got AI, and people are building APIs, and they want to hook into the information. We’re responding by giving them access to information in new ways, like APIs.”
To this end, an agency’s digital presence isn’t just a website; it’s a digital front door. In his portion of the conversation, Davis explained that the digital front door gives customers more self-service options and lets them navigate the wealth of information that an agency like the Library of Congress holds. “It’s about meeting customers where they are and interacting with them in their preferred means,” he added. “Let’s rely on what more and more of the overwhelming majority of the government’s customers and citizens have with them, and that’s digital access, particularly on mobile devices and tablets.”
With over 15 million visits per month to LOC digital spaces, it’s clear that Buda Smith and her team understand what citizens want and need from the LOC in the digital age, thus far. But with AI becoming a greater part of daily lives and agency tech stacks, continuing to embrace innovative technology is top of mind for Buda Smith. “We’re finding the best use of AI is processing materials and collections,” she noted. “Using AI to help with the process is effective, low risk, and really helps us deliver more to the American people.”
“The future of service delivery, of interacting with constituents — that future is going to be cheaper, and it’s going to be faster and easier to understand,” Davis concluded. And with such a measured approach to not just technology modernization, but the modernization of citizen service delivery prioritizing investments, Buda Smith and her team have created that very pathway to success.
Ready to open the digital front door to better customer experiences and service delivery? Click here.