[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
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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
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
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
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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
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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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