[Senate Hearing 117-651]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]





                                                        S. Hrg. 117-651
 
  PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST: BUILDING TRUST IN GOVERNMENT THROUGH CUSTOMER 
                               EXPERIENCE

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                              COMMITTEE ON
               HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS


                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                             JUNE 23, 2022

                               __________

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                       Printed for the use of the
        Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
        
        
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                       ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 51-531          WASHINGTON : 2023
      
        
        

        COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                   GARY C. PETERS, Michigan, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware           ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire         RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada                  JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
ALEX PADILLA, California             MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  RICK SCOTT, Florida
                                     JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri

                   David M. Weinberg, Staff Director
                    Zachary I. Schram, Chief Counsel
            Lena C. Chang, Director of Governmental Affairs
         Matthew T. Cornelius, Senior Professional Staff Member
                Pamela Thiessen, Minority Staff Director
            Sam J. Mulopulos, Minority Deputy Staff Director
                    Allen L. Huang, Minority Counsel
                     Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
                     Thomas J. Spino, Hearing Clerk

                            C O N T E N T S

                                 ------                                
Opening statements:
                                                                   Page
    Senator Peters...............................................     1
    Senator Portman..............................................     3
    Senator Lankford.............................................    15
    Senator Padilla..............................................    18
    Senator Rosen................................................    22
Prepared statements:
    Senator Peters...............................................    27
    Senator Portman..............................................    29

                               WITNESSES
                        Thursday, June 23, 2022

Martha Dorris, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Dorris 
  Consulting International.......................................     5
William Eggers, Executive Director, Center for Government 
  Insights, Deloitte, LLP........................................     7
Mathew Lira, Partner, Hangar Capital.............................     9

                     Alphabetical List of Witnesses

Dorris, Martha:
    Testimony....................................................     5
    Prepared statement...........................................    33
Eggers, William:
    Testimony....................................................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................    38
Lira, Mathew:
    Testimony....................................................     9
    Prepared statement...........................................    52

                                APPENDIX

Statements for the Record:
    The Center for Accountability, Modernization, and Innovation 
      (CAMI).....................................................    56
    Partnership for Public Service...............................    60
Response to post-hearing questions submitted for the Record
    Ms. Dorris...................................................    61
    Mr. Eggers...................................................    63
    Mr. Lira.....................................................    64


                         PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST:



        BUILDING TRUST IN GOVERNMENT THROUGH CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

                              ----------                              


                         THURSDAY, JUNE 23 2022

                                     U.S. Senate,  
                           Committee on Homeland Security  
                                  and Governmental Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in 
room 342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Gary C. Peters, 
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Peters, Hassan, Sinema, Rosen, Padilla, 
Ossoff, Portman, Lankford, Scott, and Hawley.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN PETERS\1\

    Chairman Peters. The Committee will come to order.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the 
Appendix on page 27.
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    I would certainly like to, first off, thank our witnesses 
for joining us here today.
    The purpose of today's hearing is to examine customer 
experience (CX) strategies in the Federal Government and 
discuss how government can more effectively deliver critical 
services and benefits to the American people.
    Customer experience has always remained a top priority in 
the private sector, with many leading companies working to 
better understand their customers, provide more effective 
digital services, while also increasing profits.
    Profit incentives do not drive Federal agencies. Instead, 
they are driven by their mission to effectively serve taxpayers 
and make government work efficiently, including reducing waste 
and saving taxpayer dollars. This important responsibility 
requires the Federal Government to continuously look for ways 
to modernize its information technology (IT), better assess how 
agencies perform for their customers, and deliver programs and 
services in a way that increases satisfaction and trust for 
people receiving services.
    Rebuilding trust in our government is essential, and we can 
help restore the public's confidence in the Federal Government 
by continuing to strengthen its ability to deliver critical 
services, whether it is assistance people count on, like Social 
Security checks or unemployment benefits, or scheduling 
appointments for critical services like the Department of 
Veterans Affairs (VA) health care. Restoring decades of lost 
faith is a monumental task, and I am pleased the Administration 
has made enhancing customer experience a top priority by 
encouraging Federal agencies to modernize programs, reduce 
administrative burdens, and launch new online tools to provide 
a seamless and secure customer experience.
    However, these efforts must also include examining past 
setbacks that resulted in service delays, which offer valuable 
knowledge to help agencies evaluate customer experience at a 
level of primary importance, strengthen accountability, and 
deliver better results all across the board. For example, I 
recently heard from small business owners in my home State of 
Michigan, who have run into issues assessing the System for 
Award Management (SAM.gov), the governmentwide registration 
system for Federal funding awards. Recent changes created 
unexpected challenges for companies seeking to register for 
Federal contracting opportunities.
    I had the chance to speak with General Services 
Administrator (GSA) Robin Carnahan about this recently, and I 
was pleased to hear that thanks to the swift work of GSA's 
Technology Transformation Services many of these initial 
setbacks are now being addressed. I will continue to conduct 
oversight of these challenges and stay in contact with both GSA 
and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to ensure that 
the problem is fully resolved and that small businesses are 
paid for their work and able to pursue new opportunities.
    Along with these measures, GSA and OMB are also taking 
timely efforts to dramatically improve the governmentwide 
customer experience by a designated $100 million from the 
Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) to help secure and 
modernize government technology and improve online access to 
government services. Once implemented, these reforms have the 
potential to not only improve the ability of Federal agencies 
to deliver modern, effective digital services to citizens but 
to also improve taxpayer satisfaction with the government.
    As Chairman, I have pressed for robust resources to improve 
the customer experience and promote government efficiency and 
accountability most recently by passing my bipartisan Federal 
Agency Performance Act out of this Committee last month. This 
bill seeks to provide lawmakers and the Administration with the 
necessary tools and data to measure and evaluate the 
performance of Federal agencies and ensure that they are 
meeting their long term strategic goals. This bill, along with 
other bipartisan efforts to address some of the key barriers to 
effective Federal service delivery, are an important step, but 
there is more that Congress can do to implement proven, 
effective solutions by government agencies.
    Today, I am pleased to be joined by our panel of 
nongovernmental expert witnesses who can discuss how we can 
better address this well-known problem so that the Federal 
Government can improve its ability to deliver valuable customer 
service to Americans more quickly, more securely, and more 
effectively.
    With that, Ranking Member, you are recognized for your 
opening comments.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN\1\

    Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks, 
everyone, for being here. I look forward to the discussion. We 
have some real experts with us today, with whom I have worked 
in the past, and I think this will be a helpful hearing to talk 
about how to improve the customer experience with government.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Portman appears in the 
Appendix on page 29.
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    I like the idea of looking at it from the customer point of 
view, the taxpayer point of view, the citizen point of view. In 
this Committee, we hear the phrase ``good government'' a lot, 
and it is usually in the context of accountability and 
transparency, both of which are important, but good government 
is also about efficiency and making things work well for 
people.
    I think government has an important, but limited, role in 
people's lives and people need to be able to interact with it 
efficiently and then focus on what they really want to focus 
on, which is their lives, their families, their jobs, their 
community, but in order to do that we have to have these 
interactions work. People deserve it. This involves everything 
from applying for Federal grants to support for small 
businesses to applying for veterans' benefits, making sure your 
Social Security and Medicare benefits are properly handled, 
dealing with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
    Back in the 90s, I was the co-chair of the effort to reform 
the IRS and involved in that a lot in the Senate Finance 
Committee, and we still obviously have huge challenges in terms 
of the customer experience there although we were able to make 
some improvements by focusing on it.
    Waiting in line at the airport, something all of us will be 
doing in the next week or so, I am sure; I will be this evening 
or tomorrow, along with Senator Peters. I hear plenty of 
concerns about our new Transportation Security Administration 
(TSA) scanning devices, as an example, and the customer service 
that needs to be improved.
    The Department of Transportation (DOT) has found that the 
Federal Department of Transportation's common application 
feature works, as an example of something positive in terms of 
customer experience. It is convenient because it allows 
applicants to apply for multiple infrastructure funding 
opportunities through one application.
    Permitting reform is something we have worked on a lot, and 
that is something that adds to customers being able to, again, 
interact quickly with the government, get what they need, and 
move on.
    On the other hand, I am concerned about other Ohio 
interactions with government that have not been so positive. 
Recently, we have had problems with the General Services 
Administration, for instance, the GSA website for government 
contracts. It was developed in-house, apparently. Ohio 
businesses have had real trouble getting paid for work they did 
for the government or had agencies stop working with them 
because the website system for registration renewal was not 
working correctly. Because the website was not working 
correctly, Ohio small businesses were the ones who were 
impacted.
    In 2018, as some of you know, Congress passed my 
legislation called the 21st Century Integrated Digital 
Experience Act (IDEA Act). I am glad to see Ms. Dorris and Mr. 
Lira here today because I know them from working on that bill 
and I appreciate their expertise.
    One of the things this 21st Century IDEA Act requires is an 
agency to maintain its website or digital service to ensure 
that it has the ability to interact well with customer, a 
consistent appearance, is accessible to individuals with 
disabilities, has a search function, has an industry-standard 
secure connection, and is generally designed around user needs, 
all common-sense elements and too often lacking with regard to 
Federal Government websites and other ways to interact 
digitally.
    It also requires that each agency make available an online, 
mobile-friendly digital service option for any in-person 
government transaction or paper-based process in a manner that 
decreases costs and improves customer service. It is kind of 
pushing the Federal Government to take it to the next level.
    Unfortunately, we know that many of the requirements of 
this law remain unimplemented. I look forward to a discussion 
with our witnesses today about why that is and how Congress can 
increase oversight to ensure full implementation.
    White House efforts in both the Trump administration and 
now the Biden administration have begun to move agencies in the 
right direction, I believe. In December, President Biden signed 
an Executive Order (EO) on customer experience with government. 
I do not agree with everything in that EO, but I do think it is 
important to prioritize customer service, and I am glad that we 
are moving in that direction.
    I am always open to learning about new legislative ideas, 
but I think we should focus on using the tools we already have, 
particularly through increased oversight of the recent mandates 
from Congress and these initiatives within the Executive 
Branch.
    There is also a lot we can learn from our private sector 
which is always developing new innovations we can tap into. We 
have to ensure that we are good stewards of taxpayer money and 
respect the balance of State and Federal jurisdictions on which 
our system is designed. I look forward to hearing the 
witnesses' ideas on how we can prioritize making our Federal 
Government work better for our citizens.
    Thank you, and I look forward to the testimony.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman.
    It is the practice of the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) to swear in witnesses, 
so if each of you would please stand and raise your right hand. 
Do you swear the testimony you will give before this Committee 
will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 
so help you, God?
    Ms. Dorris. Yes.
    Mr. Eggers. Yes.
    Mr. Lira. Yes.
    Chairman Peters. You may be seated.
    Today's first witness is Martha Dorris. Ms. Dorris is the 
founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dorris Consulting 
International (DCI), a consultancy that focuses on improving 
the lives of citizens through transforming governmental 
services by sharing best practices between government and 
industry.
    Previously, Ms. Dorris served as a senior executive at the 
General Services Administration, where she served for 34 years. 
Her expertise is in information technology acquisition, digital 
service delivery, intergovernmental solutions, and citizen and 
customer experience.
    Ms. Dorris is the host of the only government customer 
experience-focused podcast called the ``CX Tipping Point'' and 
publishes a monthly Citizen Services Newsletter.
    Ms. Dorris, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed with 
your opening remarks.

  TESTIMONY OF MARTHA DORRIS,\1\ FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE 
            OFFICER, DORRIS CONSULTING INTERNATIONAL

    Ms. Dorris. Good morning, Chairman Peters, Ranking Member 
Portman, and distinguished Members of the Committee. Thank you 
for inviting me to testify today. It is really a privilege to 
discuss how the Federal Government can improve the experience 
the American public has when interacting, engaging, and 
transacting with them.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Dorris appears in the Appendix on 
page 33.
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    As you mentioned, my name is Martha Dorris, and I am the 
founder of Dorris Consulting International, a small business 
consultancy that helps government and industry transform 
government services. I have been in my current role for almost 
seven years. I previously served for 34 years at the U.S. 
General Services Administration, including 12 years as the 
Deputy Associate Administrator for the Office of Citizen 
Services. These experiences have made me acutely aware of the 
challenges and opportunities confronting Federal agencies as 
they pursue improving public services.
    Every day, millions upon millions of people are interacting 
with the U.S. Government. According to Analytics.USA.gov, there 
is over 4.98 billion visits to government websites in the last 
90 days. People depend on government information to make 
important decisions every day and during the most critical 
times of their lives.
    Democracy is built on a system of trust. The experience 
people have with their government when they need it most is 
critical to building that trust. Over the past five years, the 
Department of Veterans Affairs has increased the veterans' 
trust in VA by over 20 percent through their focus on veterans' 
experience.
    Customer experience is a business discipline that can 
improve the delivery of services to the customer from the time 
someone has a need through the completion of the transaction. 
Customer experience includes knowing who your customers are, 
understanding their expectations, listening to real-time 
feedback, designing services through human-centered design 
techniques, and making continual improvements through measures 
that matter. Creating a customer-focused culture is core to 
ensuring that customers' needs are met. Customers mean the 
public, employees, businesses, and other agencies.
    The public expects to access government information 
anytime, anywhere, on any device. They should be able to obtain 
consistent information and services whether they are online, 
through a website or mobile app, a call, e-mail, chat, social 
media or in person. That experience should be easy, 
transparent, secure, reliable, and timely.
    The Biden-Harris administration has focused on delivering 
excellent, equitable, and secure Federal services through their 
management agenda and Executive Order. A management agenda that 
specifically highlights customer experience signals to the 
political and career officials that improving government 
services is a priority. Together, they set the vision and road 
map for designing services during key life events by putting 
people first, identifying short-term commitments for agencies, 
and strategies for incorporating customer experience into the 
business of government.
    The government has unique challenges when implementing 
customer experience due to the large and diverse population we 
serve, quantifying the benefits of customer experience, 
including increased efficiency, employee engagement, 
voluntarily compliance with government mandates, simplifying 
the lives of Americans, and building trust in government. 
Meeting the needs of customers requires starting with the 
customer and working your way backwards.
    Customer experience is not about technology alone. The time 
is now to modernize government services. To transform digital 
experiences, we need to modernize secure technology 
infrastructures, including broadband, cloud, artificial 
intelligence (AI), and collaborative technologies; modernize 
government websites and contact centers to create a full end-
to-end digital experience; ensure identity management is easy 
to use and secure; understand their customers by listening to 
feedback, using analytics and human-centered design techniques; 
and hiring and reskilling the talent needed to transform these 
importance services.
    While improving services has its challenges, the government 
has demonstrated many successes. A couple of notable 
accomplishments include: The VA went from 2,500 telehealth 
appointments per day in March 2020 to 45,000 per day in March 
2021 and improved trust by 24 percent over the past five years. 
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) created a 
contact center concierge service called AskUSDA to reduce the 
public's burden in navigating the USDA's organizational 
structure. The IRS has released a taxpayer experience strategy 
and established a Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer reporting 
to the Commissioner of the IRS. The IRS has expanded the 
customer callback service and is reaching more people in other 
languages.
    What can Congress do? Congress has the opportunity to 
ensure that improving government services is a priority that is 
sustainable over time. A Federal Chief Customer Officer needs 
to be established that is responsible for establishing the 
vision and strategy for improving the end-to-end customer 
experience. Each agency with high impact services needs an 
organization or executive in charge of customer-focused 
initiatives, reporting to the head or deputy of the agency or 
department. Congress should closely monitor service-level 
improvements and internal CX capabilities for all agencies 
through a CX report card based on a CX maturity model.
    The government's role is to serve the people. Reimagining 
how the public interacts with the government will improve the 
lives of the American people, make the government more 
efficient, and increase the public's trust in government.
    I look forward to your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ms. Dorris.
    Our next witness is William Eggers, Executive Director of 
Deloitte's Center for Government Insights, where he is 
responsible for the firm's public sector thought leadership. 
Mr. Eggers has authored numerous books and published a 
commentary that has appeared in, and gained recognition from, 
dozens of major media outlets, including the New York Times, 
the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the Washington Post.
    Mr. Eggers is also a former appointee to the Office of 
Management and Budget's Performance Measurement Advisory 
Council and former Director of the Texas Performance Review e-
Texas Initiative that was charged with developing 
recommendations to save tax dollars, increase the use of 
technology, improve customer service, and include competition 
in State services.
    Mr. Eggers, welcome to our Committee. You may proceed with 
your opening remarks.

TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM EGGERS,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR 
               GOVERNMENT INSIGHTS, DELOITTE, LLP

    Mr. Eggers. Thank you so much. Chairman Peters, Ranking 
Member Portman, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to participate in today's hearing.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Eggers appears in the Appendix on 
page 38.
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    My name is William Eggers. I am the Executive Director of 
the Deloitte Center for Government Insights. It is a research 
institute which has published hundreds of studies on public 
management, including dozens on CX and trust in government. I 
also serve as a fellow at the National Academy of Public 
Administration (NAPA), and as mentioned, I have authored 
numerous books on government reform, digital transformation, 
and public-private partnerships.
    Deloitte is the world's largest professional services 
provider with more than 120,000 U.S.-based colleagues, 
including 25,000 who work with government agencies all over 
America on modernization and digital transformation.
    I want to start off with a thought experiment. Imagine a 
baby girl is born in a hospital. Once given a name, her birth 
certificate and Social Security Number (SSN) are generated 
automatically. Her parents immediately receive information 
about tax credits they are eligible for and other resources for 
new parents. Their services are all activated the moment the 
hospital registers the birth.
    Now imagine similar services being triggered through not so 
happy events in a citizen's life: unemployment, a mental health 
crisis, the loss of property due to a natural disaster or the 
death of a loved one. The United Kingdom (UK) citizens coping 
with the death of a loved one used to have to notify multiple 
departments up to 44 times about the death. Not anymore. In a 
single interaction, the U.K.'s ``Tell Us Once'' process 
triggers notifications to all the relevant agencies in all 
levels of government. This is precisely what state-of-the-art 
government service delivery can, and should, look like. In 
fact, many governments around the world are already delivering 
services this way: proactive, frictionless, seamless, and 
structured around critical life events.
    Now CX is not a new concept for the U.S. Government. A 
series of Executive Orders, OMB circulars, and initiatives 
developed over the past three decades have focused on improving 
the customer experience in government, and most recently, 
President Biden's Executive Order emphasized improving customer 
experience by focusing on their life experiences as a way to 
build trust in government.
    The good news is that the Federal Government has made 
strides in improving the citizen experience, as Martha 
mentioned. One standout is the Department of Veterans Affairs, 
which having made customer experience and trust a major 
priority seven years, has dramatically improved veterans' 
satisfaction and trust.
    Despite some bright spots, however, low scores on citizen 
services on both trust in government and on CX show that the 
Federal Government still has a long way to go. One problem is 
that too often attempts to improve CX have focused on improving 
government operations from the lens of government, not 
citizens. For example, only half the government managers we 
surveyed said their agencies consistently collect feedback from 
constituents about their experiences accessing government 
services. To truly enhance the citizen experience, government 
agencies must place citizens at the center of service delivery 
and ask how to meet their needs.
    Protecting government services around life events, like the 
birth of a child or starting a business, is one way to provide 
citizens with exactly what they need regardless of how many 
services or agencies are involved. This approach cannot only 
improve citizen satisfaction but also cut costs, enhance 
mission effectiveness, and slash the invisible tax resulting 
from the friction of interacting with siloed government 
systems.
    Focusing on CX can be a powerful tool for improving 
declining trust in government. Our research demonstrates a very 
strong link between customer experience and public trust, and 
because digital is now often the first point of interaction 
many Americans have with government, a good online experience 
can generate a positive impression from users and enhance 
overall trust in government.
    World-class CX in government will entail linking services 
and funding across multiple agencies and levels of government. 
This poses significant challenges to how agencies operate today 
because it means overcoming silos in governance, culture, 
processes, and budgeting.
    The good news is that the experiences in numerous other 
countries show that such changes are possible. We have gleaned 
five principles that have guided these efforts. No. 1, put the 
user at the heart of service integration. No. 2, design a 
governance model that facilitates cross-agency collaboration. 
No. 3, incentivize agencies to work together through shared 
funding. No. 4, prioritize user trust by addressing privacy and 
security concerns. Finally, build the required infrastructure 
to deliver improved customer experience. Such shifts are 
difficult but possible with sustained effort, resources, and 
leadership.
    Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Eggers.
    Today's final witness is Mathew Lira. Mr. Lira is a partner 
at Hangar Capital, an investment firm dedicated to leveraging 
emerging technology to find solutions to the nation's toughest 
challenges. Mr. Lira brings a unique mixture of experiences 
from government, national campaigns, and the private sector.
    Previously, Mr. Lira served as the Special Assistant to the 
President for Innovative Policy at the White House Office of 
American Innovation, and he has also served as a senior advisor 
to then House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and then House 
Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
    Welcome, Mr. Lira. You may proceed with your opening 
remarks.

      TESTIMONY OF MATHEW LIRA,\1\ PARTNER, HANGAR CAPITAL

    Mr. Lira. Chairman Peters, Ranking Member Portman, 
distinguished Members of this Committee, thank you for holding 
today's hearing and for the opportunity to discuss this 
important topic.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Lira appears in the Appendix on 
page 52.
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    Let us begin with the good news. Momentum is building, and 
progress is being made. The Federal Government's institutional 
capacity for change management has been strengthened by the 
bipartisan work of this Committee. The Tested Ability to 
Leverage Exceptance National Talent Act (TALENT Act), the 
Modernizing Government Technology Act, the Centers of 
Excellence Act, and the 21st Century IDEA Act are reforms which 
continue to provide direct benefits to the American people, a 
fact demonstrated as recently as last week's announcement of 
dedicated CX funding in the Technology Modernization Fund.
    Yet, despite this progress, why does the challenge of 
improving customer experiences remain so pervasive across the 
Federal Government? Quite simply, we live in a time of 
exponential change, and far too often agencies are making 
linear progress. Over time, this means even as meaningful 
progress is made the gap between a customer's expectation and 
the experiences is getting worse.
    The only way to close this gap is for the pace of 
improvements to match or exceed the pace of change. Agencies 
must implement solutions which are capable of scaling to the 
size of the problem. Toward that end, I recommend the following 
initial steps be taken.
    One, efforts should initially focus on high impact service 
providers, the 35 Federal programs dedicated by OMB as having 
public-facing services with the greatest scale and impact. The 
prioritization of improvements to high impact service providers 
in the President's management agenda and recent Executive Order 
are welcome developments that should be supported by this 
Committee.
    Two, agencies should leverage commercial technology at 
scale. The technology to solve this problem exists. It exists 
today. In fact, it is largely commoditized across our economy. 
We do not need to hire Thomas Edison to invent the light bulb. 
We simply need to be smart enough to go into the marketplace 
and buy it. From robotic process automation, the digitization 
of citizen-facing forms, the use of electronic signatures, and 
other standards-compliant, Software as a Service (SaaS) 
platforms and products, proven commercial technologies exist 
that provide truly exceptional experiences and can solve so 
many of the customer experience problems facing agencies.
    Three, as my fellow witnesses have stated, CX needs a 
guaranteed seat at the table. There must be increased 
accountability within agencies for customer experiences. Too 
often the prioritization of CX improvements within agencies are 
driven by the ad hoc actions of a single advocate rather than 
as empowered equity in the organization's design. I believe 
this Committee should direct agency heads to designate and 
empower a senior official with Chief Experience Officer (CXO) 
responsibilities for every high impact service provider within 
their respective agencies, with a budget and operational 
authorities to match that responsibility.
    Four, agencies should leverage the authority they have been 
given. Far too many authorities given to agencies by Congress, 
and this Committee in particular, remain underutilized. 
Specifically, this Committee should encourage OMB to issue 
implementation guidance for the provisions outlined in the 21st 
Century IDEA Act and to leverage the requirement that all 
agencies comply with the design standards of the U.S. Web 
Design System. In all candor, as we have seen with success of 
similar efforts in the United Kingdom and various State 
governments, I believe the proper implementation of this single 
provision would do enormous good for the customer experiences 
across the government.
    Five, quantitative measurement of results. The Committee 
should explore requirements to collect and publish quantitative 
metrics of Federal service delivery. While qualitative metrics 
provide valuable insights, the direct measurement of customer 
experiences--wait times, backlogs, time to resolution, and 
other key performance indicators--are essential to meaningfully 
measuring the net effectiveness of agency efforts.
    In conclusion, while the issue of agency customer 
experiences does not grab headlines every day, it does impact 
millions of Americans every single day, people for whom broken 
links and poorly implemented web forms equate to sleepless 
nights and stolen time away from their families, millions of 
people who often in their most vulnerable moments deserve to be 
treated with dignity and respect. By leveraging modern 
technology, our government has the potential to deliver 
exceptional customer experiences and in the process restore the 
public's faith in our national institutions once again.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to testify before this 
Committee, and I look forward to answering your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Lira.
    Mr. Eggers, according to the Pew Research Center, trust in 
government has remained low for most of the 21st century. Only 
two in 10 Americans say they trust the government in Washington 
to do what is right. Based on your research, could you share 
with the Committee the most prevalent factors that have 
contributed to such a low level of confidence in the Federal 
Government?
    Mr. Eggers. I think there is a number of things that can be 
done to rebuild that trust. Why do we not see that trust 
always? First of all, trust starts with making people feel 
trust. Much of this happens when citizens interact with 
government. By focusing on interactions and improving this 
experience is a really important first step, and when those 
interactions are not good interactions, then people have 
declining trust. So making the interactions empathetic, 
inclusive, and very human can have a positive experience, and 
this can have a cascading impact on the rest of government.
    Second, it is about transparency. Trust can be improved by 
having much greater transparency around government policy 
decisions, technology decisions, by openly sharing information 
on data collection, security measures, privacy controls, and 
around trustworthiness.
    The other finding that we found was that while the overall 
level of trust in government has been declining, when you 
actually look at trust in individual agencies, there is very 
big discrepancies. There are some Federal agencies that are 
actually highly trusted, and oftentimes those are the agencies 
that people have the most interactions with.
    We cannot address the issue of trust and confidence issues 
in the Federal Government with a one-size-fits-all approach 
because strategies to build greater trust between citizens and 
law enforcement will entail a bigger focus on looking at 
humanity in terms of that as a trust signal while most 
important for service agencies like the Postal Service are 
reliability and competency.
    The key thing is that agencies really need to focus on what 
are the signals looking at in terms of where trust is high or 
low and what the citizen experience looks like and actually 
really focus on improving that in the same way that we saw with 
the VA over the last six years.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you.
    This next question is to Mr. Lira and Ms. Dorris. We will 
have you go first, Mr. Lira, then Ms. Dorris. You both have 
significant experience in government agencies and have tried to 
address a number of issues while you were there. I would like 
you to share with the Committee some of the obstacles that you 
faced when you were trying to drive customer experience 
transformation to regain the trust that we have just talked 
about with Mr. Eggers. What are the obstacles that we have to 
overcome, Mr. Lira?
    Mr. Lira. Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. I would 
put it in two categories. The first and the most dominant are 
the process blockers. It is the stated policy of the 
government, oftentimes supported by statute. It is the willful 
intent of agency leaders through Executive Orders and agency 
planning.
    It is inside the process, where agencies either get bogged 
down or move too slowly, things like, logistical matters such 
as authorities to operate or going through a procurement 
process that takes months or even years instead of weeks and 
days. These are known issues, and the agencies that were able 
to move the fastest and to make the most progress were where 
they constructed what I would call a leadership spine, 
essentially a core team of advocates and stakeholders at every 
level of the organization. It was not enough simply to have a 
well-motivated Chief Technology Officer (CTO). You needed to 
have equally well-motivated procurement officer and equally 
well motivated counsel so that you can manage the process of 
getting an agency to move forward.
    Very rarely, if at all, it was a technology problem. It was 
not, as I said in my testimony, a need to create technology or 
to invent it or, even in some cases, to build it. It was 
getting through a process that is tied to a different era.
    But that leadership spine, I think, is constructive as the 
second big blocker, which can be cultural. Oftentimes when 
agencies were resistant to change, it was not a result of 
anything more than fear of what it would mean for the workforce 
or fear of what it would mean for how they operate through 
their daily lives as professionals. When you can address those 
concerns, it was amazing how quickly all the reasons and 
blockers could sort of melt away.
    Again, that is where I would go back to the principle of a 
leadership spine and how can we structurally include 
stakeholders at every level of the organization because much 
like the human spine, if even a single layer is missing, you 
have an enormous impact on mobility, and the agencies that are 
able to move the fastest built that with a lot of purpose.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you.
    Ms. Dorris.
    Ms. Dorris. Thank you, Chairman Peters, for that question. 
As you know, I spent many years in the government trying to get 
the government to embrace customer experience, and I think in 
some ways it is very complex but in some ways it is very 
simple. That is making customer experience a priority at all 
levels in the government and actually understanding what 
customer experience really means, and that is why I spent so 
much time on kind of definitions and the differences between 
customer service, customer experience, and user experience.
    Customer experience really does take into account 
everything that everybody has mentioned, so making that 
understanding, making people accountable, leadership to drive 
that home, putting the customer at the center. Once you have it 
as a priority, then you can figure out how do you put the 
customer at the center, how do you have outside-in thinking 
rather than inside-out thinking.
    I think the comments made around silos. Agencies do not 
think of things from an enterprise perspective. People think 
about customer experience, and they go right to technology. 
Contact centers are a critical component to delivering like an 
end-to-end digital experience, which does not get very much air 
time, but the integration of contact center data and in-person 
data and what people are calling about, interested in, and have 
problems with can actually driving improvements to the digital 
experience.
    With that, I think it starts at the top and works its way 
down.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you.
    Ranking Member Portman, you are recognized for your 
questions.
    Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and again, thank 
you all for your expertise you are bringing to this. It is 
frustrating because it seems like we make progress and then one 
step forward, sometimes one or two steps back. One of the 
realities is that we live in, as some of you have acknowledged, 
an increasingly complicated world with more and more digital 
experiences, and with that digitization comes a great 
opportunity to make things more efficient but also a great 
opportunity to make things more complicated.
    I mentioned the GSA website as an example and the problem 
that Ohio small businesses are having with it. It was done in 
house. One of my general approaches to this is that do not do 
it in-house if you can buy it off the shelf. It is more 
efficient, it is better for the taxpayer, and you know, those 
commercially available products tend to work better. It does 
not mean that there are not some specialized functions.
    Any thoughts about that from the three of you? Ms. Dorris.
    Ms. Dorris. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman. I have a lot 
of thoughts about it. I think, first, websites--we will tackle 
the one question about buying versus building. I agree. I spent 
many years at GSA building things internally to provide to 
Federal agencies, and we could never really sustain it over 
time with the resources and the expertise that we needed.
    I know that we are leading toward building a lot, and today 
that could be purchased off the shelf. I agree with you 100 
percent. I think that there is room for building things that 
are pilots that can be used and tested internally to know what 
you really need and then buying more commercial products.
    In terms of the website piece, I think that websites are a 
critical component to delivering digital services, but they 
really--taking a website strategy only does reduce equity and 
access, and so that is why I like the customer experience piece 
of----
    Senator Portman. Yes, talking in terms of call centers and 
so on is part of it, too.
    Ms. Dorris. Exactly. Yes.
    Senator Portman. So quickly on that question on in-house, 
out-of-house, any very quick responses from the two of you 
because I have so much I want to talk to you about?
    Mr. Eggers. Yes, I would just say really quickly I 
completely agree with you. Let us look at call centers, contact 
centers. There is a lot of best-in-class technologies right 
now, about 15 of them, when you look at AI and when you look at 
robotic process automation, and so on and so forth. Actually 
bringing those together and integrating those into a whole, 
that is the key to really having a great call center 
experience.
    Call centers should not be a back-office function anymore. 
They should be really at the center, at the heart of a lot of 
citizen experience with government, and we have a lot of great 
technologies now, off-the-shelf technologies that can be 
integrated to provide that experience.
    Senator Portman. Yes. Combined with the higher technology 
we now have, so it is not telephone trees anymore. It is AI.
    Yes, Matt.
    Mr. Lira. Senator, I completely agree. I believe very 
strongly that we need to leverage the technology that is in the 
marketplace rather than try and invent it in the government for 
two reasons. One, the one that was already mentioned is about 
the core competency and the sustainability of that change. Even 
if you can build an exceptional team to build a product in a 
moment, can that sustain over the decades?
    Senator Portman. Yes, can you sustain it?
    Mr. Lira. The second is about scale. We are dealing with 
major programs that touch, in some cases, hundreds of millions 
of Americans, and it is very unlikely that a small team in an 
agency could ever scale to the size of the problem.
    Senator Portman. Yes. I think that is an interesting 
observation from all of you and we need to keep it in mind.
    You talked about quantitative measurements of results, Mr. 
Lira, and I could not agree with you more. One of the 
challenges we have with regard to the 21st century IDEA Act, as 
an example, is measuring it. I told you earlier I am 
disappointed in the implementation. I, frankly, am not sure 
because I do not know how to measure it very well and our team 
has had some issues on that.
    There is this Federal Information Technology Acquisition 
Reform Act (FITARA) measurement that is not related as much to 
the customer service generally but to IT improvements, and they 
have a measurement, a metric, that they have put together. Do 
you think that on things like--you mentioned wait times as an 
example and other ways to measure government service, 
including, by the way, answering the telephone or getting the 
right answer in terms of the IRS, to measure that.
    But, should we incorporate customer service metrics into 
something like the FITARA scorecard? Would that make sense, Ms. 
Dorris?
    Ms. Dorris. I think for the FITARA scorecard, since that is 
targeted to Chief Information Officers (CIOs), having a digital 
services component to that scorecard that measures that because 
it is a critical piece to service delivery. I think customer 
experience on its own should have a scorecard that has, a whole 
group of measures around, building internal capacities, and do 
they have strategies and governance, and do they actually 
measure things, and how do they set targets. I do think FITARA 
should include that, but I also think CX needs its own report 
card.
    Senator Portman. Mr. Eggers.
    Mr. Eggers. I would just speak to overall CX and look again 
at the VA. They launched VSignals to measure customer 
experience across the VA. They collected more than 4 million 
survey responses, 1.8 million comments from veterans, and then 
they started measuring what matters. They measured the 
attributes that drove trust, and they have been able to improve 
their ability to create a world-class experience.
    It was not a once-a-time thing. They continued to look at 
this, and one interesting thing the data showed was that the 
veterans' most common complaint was not about health care; it 
was about scheduling, visiting a hospital, lack of facilities 
in the waiting room. By measuring it this way, they were able 
to evolve into a more empathetic and trusted organization.
    Senator Portman. They took the time to do the survey, to 
find out what the customer experience really was and what the 
needs were.
    Mr. Lira, I suppose that you are going to answer the 
previous question saying, yes, we should have more quantitative 
measurements, and I am going to ask you something else.
    IDEA. Why has it not been implemented more effectively? One 
of my concerns, as you know perhaps, is that OMB has not issued 
the guidance that they are required to do under this law and 
until that guidance is issued it is very difficult to get the 
agencies to implement this integrated digital experience 
legislation. What is your view on it?
    You helped me a lot in writing the bill and advocating for 
it. What is the problem, and what is the solution?
    Mr. Lira. Great question, Senator. I think the first 
problem is a question of prioritization. Clearly, the bill 
became law in 2018-2019 timeframe. We headed into the crisis, 
and so there was a lot on various agencies' plates. OMB needs 
to issue the implementation guidance. Firsthand the importance 
of OMB's leadership on an issue like this. I believe that the 
21st Century IDEA Act is greatly aligned with their strategy in 
the President's Management Agenda (PMA) and in the Executive 
Order. I view it as a tool that will enhance their strategy 
rather than distract.
    The second is the role of this Committee in oversight. I, 
to answer very briefly, think something like a CX scorecard, 
perhaps even as a standalone product, could help reinforce the 
implementation of that Act and other legislative 
accomplishments of this Committee in the way that the FITARA 
scorecard has done with that report card.
    It is tangible. It is binary. It is quantitative. I will 
say, firsthand, being on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, 
it was an incredibly useful tool, the FITARA scorecard, in 
driving agency deliverables.
    Senator Portman. To all three of you and to my colleagues 
on the Committee, let us work on that. I think that is 
something that could be very meaningful both to move the IDEA 
Act implementation but also more generally with regard to 
customer service metrics, understanding what the needs are, 
understanding what the success or failure is in implementing 
the strategies.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Portman.
    Senator Lankford, you are recognized for your questions.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD

    Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, thanks 
for holding this hearing to be able to have a dialog about 
customer service.
    If I go on hold with just about any commercial entity 
nowadays, they tell me how long I am going to wait; they ask if 
I want to get a callback rather than wait that long; they say 
if you will hold at the very end of this you can push a button 
to be able to give us an evaluation. If I go to a fast food 
restaurant, on my receipt, it says, hey, punch in your survey 
here and we will actually give you a free meal next time if you 
will tell us how we are doing. So everybody seems to say, to 
me, please give me your feedback until I log in with a Federal 
agency, and then I do not get that same response.
    As we worked through the process over the last several 
years, I have a bill called the Federal Agency Customer 
Experience (FACE) Act. FACE Act is not that revolutionary. It 
allows agencies to get customer service information back so 
that individuals that want to give feedback to agencies can. I 
have been fought and fought and fought on this for years now.
    The simple statement is: Allow the American people to give 
feedback to agencies. In this case, with the FACE Act, if 
agencies want the feedback even, so it even gives them the 
latitude. It is not requiring agencies to do it.
    It is finally in real conversation at this point, after 
years of pushing this simple idea, to say, allow the American 
people to be able to do that.
    Mr. Lira, you had mentioned before there are some things 
that are moving. I was nodding my head when you said that 
earlier, to say, yes, there are finally some breakthroughs on 
this, where people are starting to say, OK, let us let the 
American people talk to their own government like everyone 
talks to other entities.
    With that, let me ask a couple of questions on this. Some 
agencies, as you mentioned VA, have started to experiment 
already with finding ways around it to be able to get feedback 
on this, some of the most basic things, how long is this line, 
the details that go out to other Americans dealing with other 
entities. What is the low-hanging fruit for customer service 
experience that the technology already exists that Federal 
agencies could put in place?
    I want kind of a rapid response of what your thoughts are 
of what are customer service improvements that could be done 
right now with technology that already exists. You can take 
that in any order.
    Mr. Lira. Do you want to start?
    Ms. Dorris. Sure. Thank you, Senator, for that question. I 
think your legislation around getting feedback is really where 
agencies should start because that way they can actually 
identify those pain points and adopting some of those best 
practices from the private sector, such as transparency, 
knowing where people are in the queue and how their 
applications or their transactions are going through that 
process. Same thing with the customer callback function, that 
is starting to get use. IRS just started using that, but that 
also saves time and efficiency.
    There is, many other--even on the website, use of 
analytics, use of whether it is the digital analytics program 
that GSA has or even more detailed analytics through their 
websites and their contact centers, and having agencies really 
assess those metrics to see where those pain points are.
    Senator Lankford. OK. Mr. Eggers, Mr. Lira, do you have 
anything you want to add on that?
    Mr. Eggers. Yes, very quickly. I would say what we are 
seeing in the private sector is a focus on 
hyperpersonalization. We are seeing the contact center not as a 
back-office function but instead as an experience hub. We are 
seeing omni-channel service delivery wherever you are at any 
one time, and you stop, you come back, and they know exactly 
where you are, a big focus on using solutions like AI and 
blockchain, and a strong focus on digital trust.
    Senator Lankford. OK. Mr. Lira.
    Mr. Lira. First of all, on the FACE Act, I think getting 
that sort of data is absolutely essential. It is natural for 
any large organization to be hesitant, especially if they are 
concerned about what that data might show. But as I like to 
say, the person waiting in line knows how long they are waiting 
in line, and so if you do not collect that data the only person 
you are fooling is yourself.
    Senator Lankford. Right.
    Mr. Lira. It is very critical that agencies do that.
    To your question on technology, I am particularly bullish 
on robotic process automation as a bridge technology between 
legacy systems and modern customer experiences. One of the 
challenges that we faced at agencies was the sequential nature 
of having to improve a largescale agency enterprise system 
which might be decades old before you can make the necessary 
customer experience improvements, and technologies like robotic 
process automation (RPA) enable you to bridge that gap.
    Again, you have seen that in places like the United Kingdom 
and in various State governments, where they have been able to 
use technologies like RPA to do them concurrently. Even as they 
are making the back-end improvements, they are making 
meaningful improvements to the front-end experience.
    Senator Lankford. OK. That is helpful because we all hear 
the same phrase over and over again: We would do this except 
for our legacy hardware and legacy software.
    I have heard that for 10 years as agencies request 
additional dollars, and then dollars are allocated to them, and 
then they come back next year with the exact same line: We have 
legacy hardware and software. We cannot do this anymore.
    Let me bring up, Mr. Eggers, what you had mentioned before 
about duplication and trying to get some cooperation. If you 
are a pipeline company and you are trying to submit requests 
and information through Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 
(FERC) right now, you are going to fill out different forms, 
but you are going to put the same information in form after 
form after form after form that you are turning in. Multiple 
different entities are like this, where you are filling out the 
same information, and agencies are not cooperating and sharing, 
to be able to share that information, or it just does not save 
to be able to do it.
    Another illustration I can give you that I brought up for 
years, the Census Bureau, every 10 years, contacts every single 
American and gets basic information back from them, and they 
act like this is something that no other entity in the Federal 
Government does, and they have this complicated system to do 
it. The IRS actually contacts almost every citizen in America 
every year. But the IRS and the Census Bureau refuse to 
cooperate with each other to where every 10 years Census Bureau 
information could be added to the IRS forms, and then when you 
turn in your IRS forms you are also completing your census that 
year. They continue to fight that idea and say, no, the two of 
us cannot share information on this.
    What is holding us back in Federal agencies from sharing 
that information so that people are not refilling out forms or 
an area that is as simple as when you complete your IRS form 
every year, once every 10 years, that is also your census 
information?
    Mr. Eggers. I would just say this is one area where we are 
pretty far behind many other countries around the world. Almost 
every country in the European Union (EU) right now has a once-
only process right now that they are implementing or have 
implemented, where basically you only have to give our 
information to government once and then it is shared, and this 
is even across different levels of government. But they made 
this a priority starting about five to seven years, first 
learning from Estonia.
    On the business example, I think that is something we have 
not talked about yet, but actually looking at the business the 
government-to-business sort of thing and looking at businesses 
as customers, treating them that way. You can dramatically 
reduce the friction, reduce the cost of compliance with 
government while actually increasing compliance, by focusing on 
business as a user, and that is not done enough in a lot of the 
regulatory agencies today.
    Senator Lankford. No, it is not.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Lankford.
    Senator Padilla, you are recognized for your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PADILLA

    Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the 
three of you for your participation today.
    I concur with a theme that has already come out of the 
hearing, that we should consider every interaction between 
citizens and the government as an opportunity to either 
demonstrate whether we are being efficient and effective and 
trustworthy, or at least measure, because if we are not, how do 
we improve upon customer service.
    I want to acknowledge that President Biden's Executive 
Order from this last spring noted that too often a disaster 
survivor, a small business owner, a veteran, an immigrant can 
wait months for the Federal Government to process the benefits 
to which they are entitled, and this lost time is referred to 
as a so-called time tax because of the delay. We clearly are 
committed to reducing this time tax that is imposed on 
citizens, and we should be striving to make it easier for 
citizens to interact with government, particularly for the most 
vulnerable.
    For the most vulnerable, sometimes them accessing the aid 
that they are entitled to involves invasive and time consuming 
and confusing requirements. That is why, among other 
initiatives, I have pushed for a pilot program to address the 
documentation barriers facing people.
    For example, people experiencing homelessness, as primary 
Exhibit A, I mean, somebody whose everyday concern leads with 
finding a place to sleep, finding a place to shower, finding 
somewhere to eat. That requires a considerable amount of 
cognitive bandwidth, and adding layers of paperwork with 
different requirements to receive benefits adds an unnecessary 
tax, that time tax that I talked about, which can be mentally 
or emotionally insurmountable for a lot of people.
    Again, that is an Exhibit A of how the lenses of customer 
service, customer experience I should say, and behavioral 
science should be applied to a wide variety of policy reforms, 
whether they are related to accessing deserved public benefits, 
paying taxes, solving food insecurity, navigating disaster 
benefits or anything else.
    The lead-up, and it is predictable for you, Mr. Eggers. You 
studied other countries who are using human-centered design and 
behavioral science to significantly improve outcomes. How have 
you seen that work, improve societal equity as well, and what 
lessons might we take away that should apply here in the United 
States?
    Mr. Eggers. First of all, I could not agree with you more. 
We just released a study looking at digital access for all and 
looking at the role of digital experience in actually 
increasing equity. It is a really important subject that a lot 
of cities and States are now focused on.
    Just look at, say, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance 
Program (SNAP) application process. At one point in California, 
it was 50 pages long. Most people who are applying oftentimes 
they do not have laptops. They are doing it off their phone and 
so on. They really looked at how do we simplify that user 
experience, how do we make it much more simple to do, and 
really by focusing on what does the journey look like, what are 
the obstacles, what are the pain points, and really 
understanding that in a deep way, where can we automate it, and 
so on and so forth.
    There are things going on in that respect, and I think it 
is one of the equity issues that people do not talk enough 
about because it does have this time tax. But to think about 
the homeless or a mental health crisis. That is a Byzantine 
system to go through, and what we can do is we can streamline 
that by really focusing on it.
    But the problem that often you see here is the silos 
between government agencies, the silos between levels of 
government and even sometimes between the public and private 
sector. That is the major thing that needs to be really fixed 
because citizens do not care what government agency is 
providing the service. They just want to get something done and 
especially if they are facing a real sort of tough and 
difficult issue in their lives. As you said, you do not want to 
overload them from a cognitive standpoint.
    We have a lot of examples from all over the world that do 
that. Let me give a quick example. In Portugal right now, 
Ukrainian refugees, they can ask for temporary protection. Once 
they get that protection, immediately, they get a Social 
Security Number, they get a tax ID number, and they get a 
health insurance number. It happens automatically, so then they 
can access government benefits and the labor market. They do 
not have to do anything for that to happen. It all happens 
behind the scenes with government agencies.
    Senator Padilla. Yes. Just as an aside, having been in 
public service first at the municipal level and at the State 
level and now at the Federal level, by the time somebody picks 
up the phone to call a department, an agency, or an elected 
official's office to ask for help, they are usually near wit's 
end. Right?
    They have tried to figure it out on their own. They have 
asked a spouse, a child, a friend or a neighbor. If they have 
access to reliable internet, they have searched online. By the 
time they get to the point of picking up the phone, if they 
have not given up, at wit's end, and our systems for taking the 
intake and processing rarely keeps that in mind.
    Ms. Dorris, you spent many years focusing on creating a 
citizen-focused culture. What recommendations do you have for 
us to better include the voices of particularly the most 
vulnerable?
    Ms. Dorris. Thank you, Senator. I think, Bill gave some 
great examples of using different components of customer 
experience in terms of getting feedback, bringing people who 
are in the situation into the design as much as possible, 
having a staff that reflects the people that you are trying to 
serve so that when you are designing services that you have 
input from users in those circumstances or people who can 
identify with that.
    Creating a culture, again, starts at the top in terms of 
even setting priorities and setting customer values, including 
for serving underserved populations. It all kind of comes 
together in the way and the priorities within the agency.
    Senator Padilla. OK. Thank you very much.
    I would love to explore this further, but I know my time is 
up. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Padilla.
    As we start to wrap up the hearing, we have heard a number 
of ideas from all three of you. I am going to ask you here in 
some final comments, what is your top thing that you think we 
should do in Congress, in this Committee, whether it is 
legislation, whatever action you think we should take? Of all 
the ideas that you have put out there and you have written 
about, I am going to ask each of you to give me your top idea, 
something that we should take charge of. I will start with you, 
Ms. Dorris.
    Ms. Dorris. Thank you for that question. I think having a 
Federal Chief Customer Officer to drive these changes and 
improvements would be my No. 1, which was really hard to come 
up with one.
    Chairman Peters. Mr. Eggers.
    Mr. Eggers. I would say three real quick ones. First is 
funding. The funding designated from the Technology 
Modernization Fund, it is a good start, but more is needed. For 
instance, in just the State government of New South Wales in 
Australia, they have allocated more than $2 billion in their 
Digital Restart Fund to accelerate life events and whole of 
government digital transformation. I think more funding is 
needed.
    More flexibility. You need flexibility in interagency 
mechanisms to pool funds, second employees from these projects.
    Then, oversight. We cannot change what we cannot measure. 
The passage of the Customer Experience Bill would be of great 
help to drive change and other sort of mechanisms we have 
talked about today.
    Chairman Peters. Great. Thank you.
    Mr. Lira.
    Mr. Lira. Mr. Chair, if I could recommend only one item, it 
would be the robust but purposeful oversight of this Committee 
on progress on these issues. The Committee has done an 
incredible bipartisan job over many years giving agencies the 
tools. There are some more than need to be added, but seeing 
that the progress is being followed through on at the agency 
level. This does not necessarily need to be adversarial or 
about just sort of ``gotcha'' and finding anecdotes. But in the 
spirit of the FITARA scorecard, providing consistent oversight 
and measurement of progress by Federal agencies is actually a 
tool, and I have seen it firsthand, for the people in the 
agencies who are driving that change.
    Chairman Peters. Great. Thank you.
    One final question. As Congress continues to introduce and 
pass legislation that addresses various facets of consumer 
experience, we continue to hear that well-intentioned, about 
some outdated laws, such as the Privacy Act and the Paperwork 
Reduction Act (PRA), can actually impede the ability of Federal 
agencies to enhance customer experience while still respecting 
privacy and reducing the burden.
    So to each of you, in your opinion, what are particular 
aspects of these laws that should be reformed to enable greater 
service delivery and customer satisfaction? I will start with 
you, Mr. Eggers, and then, Mr. Lira and Ms. Dorris, you can 
wrap it up.
    Mr. Eggers. I would just say, as we have talked about this 
whole session, to actually do this well, you need to get a lot 
of feedback from users and you need to just basically be able 
to understand what the users are going through in a very deep 
way, and that is how every company and every other government 
does modern digital today. Anything that impedes that right now 
needs to be reformed and modernized.
    Obviously, the Paperwork Reduction Act was passed for a 
very different time. I think that is the key thing to focus on. 
Various administrations have looked at this for years, but I do 
not think we have seen the sort of progress that we really need 
to do digital and customer experience well.
    Mr. Lira. The laws that you mentioned have not been 
reauthorized in the Digital Age.
    Chairman Peters. Right.
    Mr. Lira. There is a great deal of legacy laws there that 
are no longer relevant to today's world, as Mr. Eggers 
indicated. In some ways, the Paperwork Reduction Act has 
become, in practice, the Paperwork Protection Act because it 
has inhibited the ability of agencies to move quickly.
    As you know, Mr. Chairman, there are critical and important 
equities around privacy and the protection of the citizens 
against overly abusive processes from agencies, and those 
equities should be protected and any reform in those areas. But 
clearly, if the political capital exists to update and 
reauthorize those bills for this age and for the age going 
forward, it would do a tremendous amount of good in agencies.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you.
    Ms. Dorris.
    Ms. Dorris. Thank you, Chairman. I agree with both Bill and 
Matt, and I think that especially the Paperwork Reduction Act 
has provided agencies with convenient excuses for not 
collecting feedback over the years. That needs to be changed so 
that we can better understand how the public businesses, 
employees, et cetera, are interacting in their experience with 
the government.
    Chairman Peters. Right. Thank you.
    We are in a vote series, so I am going to have to slip off.
    Did you have any other additional questions?
    Senator Padilla. [Shaking head negatively.]
    Chairman Peters. I have one member who is on her way here. 
Senator Rosen is on her way. She should be here momentarily, so 
I will leave the gavel here. But when Senator Rosen comes back, 
she will pick up the gavel, she will ask her questions, and 
then we will adjourn the meeting. That should happen in a few 
minutes.
    We will be in recess until Senator Rosen gets here, which 
should be momentarily.
    [Recess.]

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN

    Senator Rosen [presiding.] The Committee will reconvene.
    Thank you for waiting. We really appreciate it. Of course, 
we are in the middle of a vote, so I appreciate your 
indulgence.
    I am not going to thank the Chair; that would be me. But I 
appreciate all of you being here and for testifying and for the 
work that you do.
    I want to talk a little bit about the small business 
startup experience and their experience with the government. 
Mr. Eggers, in your written testimony, you discussed how 
founding a small business is really a significant life event, 
right, when Americans often have to interact with multiple 
Federal agencies and even multiple levels of government. Small 
business startups face a number of challenges in the United 
States, not the least of which is navigating the complex web of 
local, State, and Federal requirements.
    In Nevada, we have seen a spike in new startups over the 
last two years, I am proud to say, including nearly 100 in the 
Reno-Sparks metro area alone. That is why I am working to 
improve the startup experience through legislation I hope to 
soon introduce to create a central portal, an Small Business 
Administration (SBA) portal, where small business startups can 
find information on Federal, State, and local permitting and 
licensing requirements. It becomes a one-stop shop so you or 
the other business owners do not have to find a million 
different phone calls or internet addresses, and it is just one 
way to enhance the customer experience for startups and help 
them navigate everything they need to do.
    Mr. Eggers, what other kinds of coordination across levels 
of government do you think we can do to improve the business 
customer experience, and how can we here in Congress help 
facilitate that?
    Mr. Eggers. I am so glad that you are focused on that. I 
wrote a study a number of years ago that was called 
``Compliance without Tears,'' which is basically by improving 
the government-to-business you can actually both increase 
compliance but actually reduce the costs to business 
dramatically, and we need a lot more focus on that.
    A good example of the business one-stop that you are 
talking about is actually in the State of Connecticut right 
now. The State of Connecticut has a portal which has 
information and services by significant business group, and 
they look at starting a business, managing a business, and it 
has customized checklists to guide business owners through the 
process of setting up a business entity. More than 17,000 
checklists have been created on the portal since it went live 
in the summer of 2020, and so that is a great example of 
actually being very proactive in this way.
    I mentioned Portugal. They have also done things like this.
    But actually, if you look at like teaming up with States 
like that--and Ohio has the Ohio Business Gateway, and others 
which are pretty advanced in this area--and getting to the 
point where you can have an integrative approach from Small 
Business Administration, from these State portals that are 
doing it the same way and at the local government level, you 
can dramatically reduce those costs of starting a business and 
the friction that it involves.
    Senator Rosen. Would you like to build on that, about how 
can we help you do information sharing, data sharing between 
intergovernment agencies the same way through this portal? Are 
there other things we can do like that that would help reduce 
the number of forms that you may have to fill out?
    Mr. Eggers. Absolutely. There is a lot of technology 
solutions to that right now, and we see that happening all the 
time. I do not want to get into the details of it, but it is 
around application programming interface (APIs) and 
microservices and other sorts of things where you actually do 
not even have to share a lot of sensitive information. It is 
just a way of sharing that data between entities.
    Every company uses this sort of technologies right now to 
share data across different departments. We are seeing this 
happening more and more in government agencies around the 
world. We are seeing this in New Zealand and Australia as they 
try to integrate across levels of government. That is what I 
think is really important, and that is an area where I think 
the United States is a little bit behind some other countries 
right now, but we can learn lessons from them in doing so.
    I do think just as you mentioned. I think starting a 
business and the business area is a really great place to start 
there.
    Senator Rosen. Yes, and I think that that is really true, 
and that really leads to my next question about investing in 
our technology infrastructure so that we can do these kinds of 
things that make it easier for someone to start a business, 
with common data being shared across agencies, not sensitive 
data but maybe name, address, phone number. Simple things make 
a huge difference. Right?
    I want to build on Senator Lankford's comments on legacy 
technology because as many people here know I am a former 
computer programmer. I wrote code and Common Business-Oriented 
Language (COBOL) and Formula Translation (FORTRAN) and 
Assembler way back. We will not say how far back, but it is 
troubling that there is agencies at the State and the Federal 
level whose IT still run on those legacy systems that I used 
when I started my career, in the 1980s.
    Improving customer service, again, with the government 
means not only modernizing these websites but being better able 
to digitize all of our experiences and bring that 
infrastructure really down to everyone and make it more 
flexible and better customer service.
    Ms. Dorris, what are the biggest challenges in upgrading 
government IT that are needed for enhancing the public's 
experience with the government because this is where I think 
people's opinion of how government works for them really is? 
Who answers the phone? Who answers the e-mail? How easy are 
these systems to navigate? These are the frustration barriers 
that prevent people from doing what they need to do or having 
success.
    Ms. Dorris. Thank you, Senator. I really do not think that 
the issue is technology as much as it is making service 
delivery and the experience a priority. I think it is around 
the culture in an organization and working together and 
breaking down stovepipes by putting the customer at the center 
and working through the solutions to get to the experience that 
you want to provide. I think it is driving those measures and 
changing the culture to a place where people can work together 
to deliver better experiences to citizens and to businesses.
    Senator Rosen. You talked in your written testimony about 
mobile devices really a dominant technology for most people. 
What investments do you think we need to make to better make 
that mobile, digital experience improve that for interacting 
with customers?
    Ms. Dorris. Great question. I think all websites should be 
available--should be mobile-enabled, and this impacts people 
using websites, but it also enables the underserved communities 
to be able to access information and services. That has been 
part of the 21st Century IDEA Act that was passed in 2018, and 
mobile is definitely an important component to it.
    Senator Rosen. Yes, I could not agree more. In order to do 
all these things, there is something really important we have 
to do, and that is investing in our technology workforce 
because we cannot do any of these creative measures, we cannot 
do any of this programming, IT support, all of that without 
having the professionals. Building that tech workforce of 
tomorrow is not only important for our government but for 
securing our data, cybersecurity, for every individual that 
interacts with our Federal agencies and, I would argue, State, 
local, and the like.
    That is why my bipartisan Cyber Ready Workforce Act, which 
we introduced, would provide grants for registered 
apprenticeships in cybersecurity so that we can fill the 
nation's over 700,000 job openings just in cybersecurity alone, 
including in the Federal Government. These jobs are critical to 
protecting the data of Americans seeking assistance, so we do 
not want to create these portals and not have them be safe.
    Ms. Dorris, how can cybersecurity and IT workforce 
development programs, reskilling, upskilling, how can they help 
us build the talent pipeline and protect people's personal 
information? What more do you think we can do?
    Ms. Dorris. I think cybersecurity is obviously a high 
priority in terms of securing the systems that we use, but it 
is also important to delivering on the better experience for 
users of government systems. I actually am involved in the U.S. 
Cyber Challenge Program, which really was to identify the next 
cybersecurity workforce, and we hold cybersecurity camps, that 
then we can drive some new talent into both government and 
industry.
    I think whatever the Federal Government can do to one 
impediment to this has been on the Federal level, is training 
people in cybersecurity who are a certain level in the 
government and then being trained and wanting to go into a 
cyber position, but the Federal personnel regulations did not 
allow them to go into that work, the cyber workforce at a 
higher level. They had to go back at the same level they were. 
We have a lot of human resource (HR) issues to work through in 
terms of reskilling the workforce for new kinds of skills.
    Senator Rosen. I will have my team reach out to you. I 
would be interested in hearing about some of those roadblocks 
in HR that prevent us from upskilling or reskilling folks in 
the cyber space. Thank you.
    I want to thank you all again for being here, for joining 
us today, for your thoughtful work on where we need to go 
moving forward because, as we have heard, improving customer 
experience in government is a tremendously important priority 
for this Administration and for Congress. Enhancing the ability 
of Federal agencies to deliver seamless, secure, and equitable 
services increases trust in government and reduces unnecessary 
burdens on our taxpayers. This Committee will continue to 
examine ways we can support these critical customer service 
priorities.
    The record for this hearing will remain open for 15 days, 
until 5 p.m. on July 8, 2022, for the submission of statements 
and questions for the Record.
    This hearing is now adjourned. Thank you.
    [Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X

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