OMB announces $2.4 billion in Technology Modernization Fund awards to modernize contact center infrastructure across 34 federal agencies, prioritizing AI-powered routing and cloud telephony.
OMB announced that the Technology Modernization Fund board has approved $2.4 billion in awards to modernize contact center infrastructure across 34 federal agencies, funding transitions from legacy PBX telephone systems to cloud-based platforms with AI-powered routing capabilities.
The awards respond to the Executive Order on Improving Customer Experience, which found that federal contact centers handle approximately 1.4 billion citizen interactions annually with satisfaction scores averaging just 42 out of 100 — below private sector benchmarks by 31 points.
Funded projects include AI-powered call routing that reduces transfer rates by an estimated 40 percent, natural language IVR systems that eliminate menu-based navigation for common inquiries, real-time transcription and sentiment analysis for quality assurance, and digital channel deflection tools.
The AI-powered contact center implementations are subject to the Executive Order on Federal AI Safety Testing, requiring pre-deployment bias testing for any AI system that routes citizens to different service tiers.
GovAcademy's Government Contact Center Modernization course (GA-028) covers the CX mandate context, cloud telephony platform evaluation, AI chatbot governance, and Section 508-compliant omnichannel service design that are directly relevant to the TMF-funded modernization projects.
The course has been updated to include AI contact center testing requirements from the federal AI safety EO and NIST AI RMF considerations for AI-powered citizen service systems.
Implementation teams at the 34 agencies receiving TMF awards have begun outreach to GovAcademy for cohort training packages. The academy estimates approximately 2,800 contact center managers and CX professionals will require training.