U.S. Department of the Treasury 

Public Law 115-336, “21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act” 

December 2022 Report 

Prepared for the Office of Management and Budget and the public per the requirements 

of section 3(d) of Public Law 115-336. 

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Progress to Implement the 

21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act 

2022 Annual Report 

Background 

Section 3(d) of the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (21st Century IDEA) requires 

the head of each federal executive branch agency to report annually (through 2023) to the Director 

of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the public on the agency’s progress to 

implement the requirements of the Act, and modernize their websites and digital services. The 

information below details our efforts to modernize our websites and digital services in 2022. 

Efforts to Date 

Building on the work we began in 2019-2021, our focus in 2022 has been to continue with 

modernizing and improving our websites, digitizing services and forms, improving customer 

experience, standardizing the use of centralized shared services, and supporting administration 

priorities. Treasury continues to leverage 21st Century IDEA initiatives to streamline our digital 

footprint to better serve the American public. 

Major accomplishments for 2022 include the expansion of digital access to communications, 

upgrading and migrating systems, applying shared services, and increasing support of 

accessibility and mobile devices. Treasury websites also underwent redesign efforts to deliver a 

cohesive user experience (UX) for the public. 

Accomplishment #1: Improve and Modernize Websites 

In 2022, Treasury continued to evaluate its public-facing websites and digital content and took 

measures to enhance these solutions to better serve the American public. From upgrading 

content management systems (CMS) to improving accessibility and mobile access, Treasury is 

committed to ensuring our websites are reliable and user-friendly. 

• The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) successfully launched an updated website 

(BEP.gov) on Treasury’s shared CMS. Delivering a contemporary, responsive design that 

contains 508 compliant visual components with interactive capabilities and allows for more 

dynamic content updates and web publishing features. BEP.gov averages around 50,000 

users per month and the update significantly reduced the website’s bounce rate to 1.6%. 

• The Bureau of the Fiscal Service (Fiscal Service) launched a major redesign of 

TreasuryDirect.gov and completed a content rewrite on the Bureau’s Administrative Resource 

Center’s (ARC) shared services website, arc.fiscal.treasury.gov. The TreasuryDirect.gov 

redesign benefits the 25 million customers that have visited the website year to date by 

including a modernized look and feel, a new task-based navigation, embedded help, improved 

search function, responsive design, and streamlined content that is written in plain language. 

• The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collected data about how users interact with the IRS.gov 

website, evaluating it against the business needs of each page. Based on analysis of that 

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data, IRS created five new content templates for common page types which created a more 

consistent user experience by ensuring users can easily navigate to critical information. 

• The United States Mint (Mint) implemented a “waiting room” functionality to its e-commerce, 

cloud-hosted website, catalog.usmint.gov. This feature allows Mint to route excess users to a 

custom-branded waiting room, helping preserve customer experience and protecting servers 

from overwhelming requests during high volume coin launches. 

• The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) fully applied the U.S. Web Design 

Systems (USWDS) to OCC.gov, Helpwithmybank.gov, and Careers.OCC.gov to make it 

easier to build and manage accessible and mobile-friendly websites. 

• OCC enhanced its search application on OCC.gov by merging four data sets, allowing the 

public to gain more granular information on OCC’s regulated institutions in a single place. 

Accomplishment #2: Digitize Services, Forms, and Accelerate E-Signature Use 

Efforts continue to streamline processes across Treasury as bureaus and offices look at 

opportunities to digitize their services. Automating processes and enhancing communication 

improved efficiency and reduced costs associated with previous manual efforts. 

• The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) successfully upgraded the BSA 

Electronic Filing System (E-Filing) software stack and database, resulting in the latest security 

patches being applied and continued vendor support. 

• Fiscal Service leveraged low code technology to provide customers with better self-service 

functionality and enhance internal case management for multiple program areas (e.g., 

USASpending, Financial Management Quality Service Management Office). 

• IRS continued to build upon Digital Notices and Letters (DNL), a feature that provides 

taxpayers with access to digital versions of specific IRS notices. From January to November 

2022, 118,525 digital-only notices were sent to taxpayers’ online accounts. The increased 

number of digital-only notices allowed for an equivalent reduction in the number of notices 

mailed to taxpayers, resulting in associated cost savings. 

• IRS expanded its use of secure messaging to communicate with taxpayers and their 

representatives, launching a new installation to service the Tax Exempt and Government 

Entities (TEGE) business functions in May 2022 and completing technical delivery of the Large 

Business and International (LBI) Opportunity Zone installation in August 2022. 

• Mint began developing automated document workflows to enable both technical and nontechnical staff to automate repetitive manual tasks and paper processes. 

• Mint acquired a cloud-based, enterprise-class e-signature service that allows the user to send, 

sign, track, and manage signature processes using a browser. 

• The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) made a series of policy adjustments 

to make electronic filing of operational reports and federal excise tax returns easier. This 

removed administrative obstacles to electronic filing, which hovered around 50% each year. 

Accomplishment #3: Improve Customer Experience 

Treasury has a responsibility to manage customer experience and improve service delivery using 

leading practices and a human-centered approach as defined by Executive Order 14058: 

Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery. As a High Impact Service 

Provider (HISP), enhancing our customers’ experiences with using our services is a priority. 

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• In May 2022, Treasury launched a customer experience (CX) Community of Practice that 

brings together CX leaders and practitioners from across the Department to build a customercentric culture, foster collaboration, and share CX best practices. Additionally, several of 

Treasury’s offices established dedicated CX teams, including the IRS Taxpayer Experience 

Office and Fiscal Service Office of the Chief Customer Officer. 

• Fiscal Service completed a review of chat bot technology to understand how it could be 

leveraged to improve customer interactions across Fiscal Service digital properties. 

• Fiscal Service received positive customer feedback on their TreasuryDirect.gov redesign and 

the content rewrite on arc.fiscal.treasury.gov, including but not limited to “Clean, compact, and 

helpful.”, “Navigation is very clear and orderly”, and “It was a breeze to use, which is very 

good, especially for a government website.” Fiscal Service will continue to measure success 

over time by monitoring scores and comments from site surveys, analyzing web traffic, and 

reviewing call center data to ensure accessibility of data on the site and validate a consistent, 

positive user experience. 

• IRS implemented improvements to the Tax Withholding Estimator Results page based on user 

research and feedback from moderated user testing sessions, resulting in a more user-friendly 

experience for the public. Key areas of improvements included changes to the Results page 

to help users understand their results better before filling out a new Form W-4 (both online 

and paper), and improved ability for users to set a new desired outcome for the following year. 

• The IRS Online Design Guide (ODG) is a tool that provides web design and UX standards for 

digital IRS applications, products, and services. It seeks to create a consistent online 

experience for IRS customers by using a design system developed with industry best practice, 

validated by user testing, and driven by the IRS brand. In 2022, IRS expanded the ODG and 

ODG User Interface Kit (ODG UI Kit) to include 36+ User Interface components, patterns and 

templates informed by user research, best practices from industry leaders, and adhering to 

accessibility standards, leveraged across IRS products and services to ensure a cohesive, 

consistent experience. 

• TTB conducted user testing and applied UX best practices to improve popular sections of 

TTB.gov, implementing a new design and user-centric online tool that sets the standard for 

the development of future pages. 

Accomplishment #4: Standardize and Transition to Centralized Shared Services 

Treasury continues to find opportunities to increase efficiencies and cost-savings by utilizing 

federal shared services. Also, as a Federal Shared Service Provider (FSSP), Treasury remains 

committed to supporting and promoting its own shared services. 

• FinCEN completed its USA.gov Analytics implementation for its participation in the GSA 

Digital Analytics Program (DAP). 

• TTB selected Login.gov as the identity provider for myTTB. This represents the first step 

towards providing TTB industry members the use of a common identity provider across federal 

government services, which improves their customer experience, and signifies another step 

towards a single sign-on solution for myTTB. 

• Departmental (Headquarters) Offices (DO) continued the migration of its public-facing 

websites to a modern, shared CMS. This CMS allows Treasury to seamlessly host, publish, 

and protect public-facing websites while maintaining a consistent user experience. In 2022, 

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DO migrated the Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s BEP.gov and Fiscal Service’s Treasury 

Financial Experience (TFX) and Treasury Financial Manual (TFM). Development on the 

shared platform is underway for the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Terrorist 

Financing Targeting Center (TFTC). DO continues to work closely with bureaus and offices to 

identify additional public-facing sites to migrate to the shared CMS, offering benefits such as 

built-in, bolstered security features and common web design standards. 

Accomplishment #5: Administration Priorities 

Treasury prioritized key administration priorities in 2022, including pandemic relief and economy 

recovery efforts, as well as the application of security enhancements to its infrastructure and 

applications to reduce vulnerabilities. 

• The Office of Recovery Programs (ORP), an office within DO (Headquarters), continued to 

support nine COVID relief programs established by the CARES Act and American Rescue 

Plan (ARP) Act. 

o In response to customer feedback and an analysis of system performance, ORP 

implemented rigorous business and validation rules to the Emergency Rental Assistance 

(ERA) and State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) portals. ORP deployed 200+ 

rules, resulting in an improved end-user experience, greater data integrity, and compliance 

with evolving legislative requirements. ORP also deployed enhancements to the bulk 

upload functionality for the ERA and SLFRF portals, allowing the systems to ingest large 

volumes of funds expenditure data for reporting purposes via 25+ new recipient templates. 

o The Self-Service Resources website was developed to provide self-resources to assist 

recipients with questions about reporting, technical issues, eligible use of funds, and other 

common questions to reduce Help Desk burden. 

• As Government web properties are both mission critical communication tools for sanctions 

and visible targets for cyberattacks, Treasury is responsible for securing its public-facing, 

mission critical websites in support of Executive Order 14028, “Improving the Nation's 

Cybersecurity". 

o Treasury’s shared CMS platform includes integration with a Content Delivery Network 

(CDN) provider, proactive and continuous performance monitoring, and security controls 

to ensure high availability for the public. In response to global cyber events in 2022, DO 

also invested in additional security enhancements specifically aimed at improving the 

security posture of Treasury’s CMS against cyber-attacks, including implementation of a 

bot manager to automatically identify good and bad bots, as well as expansion of Web 

Application Firewall (WAF) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protections. 

o TTB continues to work to implement actions to enhance the security of all systems, 

including implementation of multi-factor authentication (MFA) for public-facing and internal 

systems. TTB is also making progress toward maturing application logging, ensuring data 

in transit and at rest is encrypted, reaching phishing-resistant MFA compliance for publicfacing systems, and addressing changes to password policies for public-facing systems. 

Implementation Challenges 

Funding and resource prioritization continue to be the greatest challenges in supporting initiatives 

aligned with the 21st Century IDEA. Ensuring that existing websites and digital services are 

brought into alignment with 21st Century IDEA, and that new offerings are built to the Act’s 

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_______________________ 

requirements, requires sustained support and coordination of resources. Treasury implemented 

improvements to many digital products and services in 2022, as well as the related security, 

maintenance, and operations processes. These efforts relied on the availability of resources, 

consistent funding, and prioritizing service delivery in line with increased urgency in addressing 

priorities. In 2022, Treasury received funding aimed toward improving the security posture of its 

high visibility, public web properties against emerging threats related to global events in Ukraine. 

Treasury leveraged this injection of dedicated funds to implement increased security 

enhancements and thus strengthened the resiliency of all web properties hosted on the DO 

shared CMS. The infusion of funding allowed us to increase safeguard measures for our 

forwarding facing web presence which also yielded progress toward IDEA objectives. This 

example illustrates that significant, rapid digital transformation is possible when appropriate funds 

and resources are granted to agencies to tackle urgent priorities. 

As digital modernization evolves, the need for specialized skillsets and dedicated assets also 

remains a critical component. Limited staff resources and the inability to hire specialists correlate 

with diminished funds, and the necessity to hire specialized skillsets is not exclusive to the federal 

government thus competition for these resources adds to this hardship. 

Treasury will continue focusing efforts on implementing 21st Century IDEA in line with the Treasury 

Strategic Plan, President’s Management Agenda and Transforming Federal Customer 

Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government, and balancing that with the 

ongoing cybersecurity efforts. 

Conclusion 

Treasury remains committed to 21st Century IDEA adoption and looking for opportunities to 

enhance our digital space. Modernizing Treasury operations plays an integral part in the 2022-

2026 Treasury Strategic Plan, highlighting Treasury’s pledge to work hard to deliver an improved 

digital experience to the American public. 

The $80 billion multi-year monies provided by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) 

will allow Treasury to accelerate digital transformation in support of 21st Century IDEA. The IRA 

will enable IRS to drastically reshape how we deliver an improved digital experience to taxpayers 

and their representatives. We are excited about the upcoming opportunities as we look towards 

the future. 

/s/ Tony Arcadi 

Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Systems and Chief Information Officer 

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