The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is one of the government’s most visible agencies, interacting with more than 2 million people daily at US airport security checkpoints. With a large group of diverse stakeholders—all with competing priorities and high expectations— TSA needed to communicate with and provide essential information to multiple audiences. In addition, the agency faced the challenge of redefining its public face, which centered around poor perceptions of the checkpoint experience. TSA turned to Sapient to harness the cost-effective power of social media, Web 2.0 strategies, and emerging technologies to improve the airport travel experience and better prepare passengers to get through security.

To improve communications with the travelling public, Sapient researched and analyzed passenger behavior to identify key moments within the trip experience that create opportunities for engagement. We accomplished this through workshops and extensive interviews, surveys, and analysis of TSA reports and web metrics. The iPhone MyTSA application and mobile web solution Sapient designed as a result became TSA’s friendly face to the traveling public: the mobile experience delivers a quick one-touch dashboard of frequently-used information including general airport conditions, guidance on what and how to pack, and location-specific security wait-time information. The iPhone MyTSA app also incorporates the power of crowd sourcing to report the wait times of security lines, while the Twitter-based tool helps travelers plan their airport arrival time.

Since its release, the app has earned almost 200K downloads with more than 10.5K downloads/day at its peak. It earned media value through reviews, stories, and coverage on CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Gadgetwise, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Kayak, Executive Travel, Techcraver, Appolicious, Information Week and was named a “Top Federal Mobile App” by the White House and “Best Government Mobile App” by Excellence.gov awards.