Federal Manager's Daily Report

The Trump administration has released fuller details on its initiative to improve services to the public under its recently issued President’s Management Agenda, with the aim of providing “a modern, streamlined, and responsive customer experience across government, comparable to leading private-sector organizations.”

“Despite some important strides to improve customer experience, many federal government services fail to meet the expectations of the public, creating unnecessary hassle and cost for citizens, businesses, and the government itself,” it says. Benefits of improvement, it adds, include increasing the public’s trust in government.

It says the foundations will be to capture and analyze the voices of citizens; build and deliver customer experience tools and products across the government; and deliver easy and effective experiences, whether in person, via phone or online.

Many of the responsibilities will lie with the U.S. Digital Service, which will among other things “deliver targeted improvements on a portfolio of agency-specific projects.” It cited ongoing projects including several aimed at making veterans benefits more readily accessible, the VA disability claims appeals system, immigration processing, and login.gov, a common identity platform for accessing government services.

Also, customer experience dashboards are under development for high-impact programs that will track transaction success rates, staff professionalism, timeliness and other mission-specific outcomes, it says.

In addition, it commits to “providing greater recognition of high-quality customer service at senior leader and cross-government levels” to incentivize and reward customer experience improvement across programs. “Too often agency leadership and front-line staff do not view providing excellent customer experience as a priority. In some cases, staff that work directly with citizens feel undervalued,” it says.