A bipartisan bill has been introduced in both the House and Senate to require OMB to set government-wide customer service standards to improve response times for citizen requests and government services.
The Government Customer Service Improvement Act of 2013 would hold the Chief Performance Officer at each agency responsible for improving customer service and it would also establish a specialized team to assist those agencies which consistently fail to meet customer service standards.
In addition, the bill sets specific service improvement targets for OPM, which has experienced chronic backlogs in processing retirement benefits for federal employees. As of March 2013, OPM still has a backlog of more than 36,000 claims.
"Customers who call OPM consistently experience busy signals and significant wait times," said one of the sponsors, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.; Virginia is home to approximately 130,000 federal retirees.