A review of federal efforts to improve citizen experience and reduce administrative burden

No American would stand on a soapbox and shout out how easy it is to deal with the federal government. A small office deep within the White House apparatus has been coaxing agencies to reduce what’s officially known as administrative burden on citizens. Things like difficult forms, procedures for getting on airplanes, obtaining a loan. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, known as OIRA, has a progress report on a year old effort. Federal Drive Host Tom Temin guest OIRA’s Associate Administrator Sam Berger joins us now. Mr. Berger, good to have you with us.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin And let’s talk about this initiative. It’s about a year old, but it was a formal way for OIRA, and I guess really the White House, you might say, to get agencies to think in these terms. Fair to say.

Sam Berger Yeah. I mean, so coming in, President Biden had a couple of things he was focusing on, a range of things, but two big parts were, one, improving the way that government delivers its services to the American people, which you might call customer service or customer experience. Also, focusing on equity, making sure that when you look at groups that have been shut out of the process for too long, that we’re bringing them in, that we’re thinking about their needs and they’re trying to be responsive to them in the way that we’re responsive to everyone else. And this, and this effort sort of gets right at it’s one of these things where the career folks here at OIRA looked at these priorities and said, well, we have an authority that fits just right, namely the Paperwork Reduction Act. So the Paperwork Reduction Act is this, is this law that basically tells us at OIRA to make sure that when you’re filling out a government form that’s designed properly, meaning that it’s not asking for more information than it needs to, that it’s as clear as possible, etc.. Traditionally, people have thought of that as sort of applying to, you know, the forms that businesses might thought when they’re doing a range of things, but should equally apply to people when they’re trying to get access to a government service, access to a benefit that they’re eligible for. And the point of this effort is to say we need to be doing a better job here. We need to be focused on these issues. We need to be thinking about those burdens, and then we need to be looking for ways to reduce them. So that, that’s sort of the impetus for where this all came from.

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Tom Temin And is there an objective way to measure administrative burdens? Some forms, you know, tax forms, for example, just need a lot of information. And because of the regulatory or rules or legal apparatus behind them just can’t be simplified too much.

Sam Berger Yeah, it’s a great point. So obviously we can measure the time it takes. And one of the things that they talk about in the academic literature that we talk about is this time tax. And you know, part of the problem is figuring out how much burden there is. And there’s a couple of reasons that that can be a challenge. One is we shouldn’t just look at how much time it takes you to fill out the form. We need to be thinking about how much time it takes you to collect the relevant documentation to identify any of the eligibility requirements for the form and in some cases to take the various steps that are required. Maybe you need to have an in-person meeting. Well, if you’re working across town and you have kids and someone’s got to get child care, there’s a cost there. There’s a time to do that. All of these things should be added up. And so one of the things we told the agencies to do was a better job of covering the full panoply of costs that folks face. The reason being is, if you don’t understand how challenging it is, how long it takes, it’s harder to get people motivated to fix it. If you think a form takes people an hour to fill out, well, maybe you’re not going to pay your attention, pay attention. If you realize it takes them 8 hours, you know, then it’s really important. The second thing I would say about this is and we probably all experienced, you go to talk to somebody who’s working at, say, the DMV and you say, you know, I need to fill out, you know, do X, Y and Z, and they’re great fill out form, you know, 27-C, Then you get it stamped over here. Then you come back and fill out a 14-F and you know, they’re going through and you’re just desperately trying to write it all down because what for them is, you know, sort of like what they do every day. They know all these forms. Of course, they’re very conversed in it. For us is a totally new experience. It can be confusing, challenging, frustrating. And so, having agencies do a better job and then how do they do that? One big way is hearing from people. Right? Actually listening to the folks that are trying to go through these forms, finding out the sorts of challenges they’re facing, also finding out questions that might make perfect sense to folks in the agency. But when you’re looking at it fresh, you just don’t know what to do. And I think we’ve all probably hit a question on a form where you’re like, that doesn’t that’s not me. But I don’t even know what to say. And I don’t want to say something wrong. And then I can’t get this benefit or I get myself having to get on a phone. It’s all this complicated stuff. So having those conversations, hearing from folks is a really critical aspect of trying to make those changes. So step one, doing a better job of actually capturing it. And I should also mention, in addition to the sorts of burdens that I’m talking about, things that you can quantify.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Sam Berger. He’s associate administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which is part of the Office of Management and Budget. Interesting. Elaborate, if you would, on some of those non-quantifiable factors.

Sam Berger There’s also harder things like the psychological burdens. It’s just frustrating to put in your information for the fifth time on another form when you just did it and mailed it, you know, away to the agency. You put your stuff away and they come back and say, No, we need it again. And so capturing that cost as well, if you can’t put a number on it, that’s real. I think we’ve all felt it. So trying to get agencies to do a better job of of covering the full panoply of it and then doing a better job of reducing them. Right. So first you identify the problem, then you figure out how to make it better. So that’s sort of the underlying goal here.

Tom Temin And one way to find out, too, would be to ask your line employees, say your Social Security. Ask the people in the offices or at the front desk, so to speak, if you will. Even virtual, they know often better than agency management sometimes? Fair to say?

Sam Berger Oh, exactly. And I think part of the thing is making clear to folks that this sort of these sort of steps are valued, meaning that if you take time to figure out how to reduce burden. Right. Which isn’t necessarily easy. Right? You got to pull a whole bunch of people together. You have to understand all the various factors. Why do we ask for this information? And maybe in our St. Louis regional office, we don’t need it. But actually over here, it’s critically important. So what can we do? That takes a lot of time and effort. So making clear that that’s valuable. And I think there’s a couple of different ways to do it. One is hearing from folks, right when you look someone in the face and they tell you this is a real problem, there’s a SSA disability listening session about disability and someone said filling out this form is worse than getting cancer twice. Anyone who hears that says, well, this is a form we need to fix, right? And then you’re motivated. Second thing, though, is making sure that when you do that, you know. Your boss is going to come out and say, great job. Your colleagues are going to say, I see you, I hear you. I appreciate what you’re doing. And so things like this report that we just put out that lift, that work up, that highlight those success stories, because a lot of times it won’t be enough. I will always focus on where people can do better, which is important. But it’s also important to recognize where people have done well, to encourage folks to keep up that work. And that’s also, quite frankly, why things like I’m so excited about this opportunity to talk to you, because lifting up these stories, talking about folks that have done a great job, you know, whether it be in Social Security or USDA, or other places to make people’s lives easier is an encouragement to everyone to take those same sorts of steps. So it really is building this, this culture of burden reduction, a virtuous cycle where people are reducing burden and getting support to even go back and do more. But you’re exactly right. You’ve got to talk to the people on the ground, the people that are helping fill out the forms, the people that are filling out the forms. People are dealing with it. Because they’re the ones are going to really understand the pain points and have ideas about the best ways to fix it.

Tom Temin And just talk us through a couple of the highlights that you have in the report where agencies have made progress. One that caught my eye was the first one DHS efforts to reduce burden on individuals using mobile driver’s licenses as IDs when they go to the airport.

Sam Berger Yeah, so this is a great example. And I think, you know, even taking a step back, something very interesting that DHS did was setting a goal across the whole agency. So DHS interacts with about as many people as any federal agency. When you think about everything from TSA, immigration services, everything, you know, there’s tons of contact points there. And what they said is, well, look, let’s put a target of 20 million hours reduction across all of DHS. So you set a goal and then you tell everyone, figure out how to do it. Right. And that’s a great model. It makes it clear that from the very top, DHS is focused on this and that everyone across the agency is responsible for being a part of it. And one of the things that led to was almost a preemptive burden reduction effort, seeing the, you know, the sort of upcoming rise in mobile driver’s licenses and identifying that without any sort of changes that could run afoul of existing requirements, the DHS, DHS has around real ID. So starting to take the steps to work through what exactly it looks like to fix those problems. Hearing from folks about the issues that might come up being proactive there. Another example I might give is farm loans. You know, these are critical loans that USDA gives to farmers. They can be critical lifelines, keeping their businesses operating, making things work. But they’re really complicated. So they had basically ten different forms with 29 pages of paperwork.

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Tom Temin Holy cow.

Sam Berger Yeah. Took more than 5 hours to complete. That’s it. That’s incredibly challenging. But there were a lot of concentrated work, dedicated time and effort by civil servants across the country. They will get that those ten forms down to a single 13 page document and nearly halve the burden reduction. And then, they didn’t just stop there. They launched a new online assistance tool. So when folks are, you know, trying to access it, because I think we all know, you know, it’s rare that we’re filling out a burden form, you know, 9 to 5. We got to fill it out on our own time. And Lord knows for farmers, they got even more time that they’re working. Right. So trying to find a bit where they can actually go in and talk to someone during their business hours. That can be tough.

Tom Temin You know, come join me on the combine here and let’s talk about it.

Sam Berger Exactly. So helping them use this new this tool so that when they access or whatever time it might be in there in the morning or late at night, they can help them work through the process and make it easier. They’re going to get a 24 hour service and making sure they can submit things paperless online. So these sorts of steps, I think that, that can have a real impact. One other one, you know, I mentioned that SSA form. obviously, it would be surprising if I mentioned that form and I said and then no one did anything right after folks that kind of called out being so difficult. SSA has been doing a tremendous amount of work around reducing the burden in their in this building program. So started with hearing from folks all these listening sessions, understanding where the pain points are. But then they launched ability to allow online submission of these redetermination forms. Another thing, though, was getting rid of open ended questions. So some of the questions there. Folks found, you know, just very confusing, sort of like, you know, tell us about a typical day or something of that nature. It’s hard and that creates all the stress. And I want to get this wrong. So trying to get more concrete, make it clear so that folks understand what it is that they have to do, the information that they have to provide. And then another big part of this is, is pre-filling forms, right? So a lot of times we in the government have the information somewhere and we just need to take a little time to figure out where it is so we can pre-populated it for you. Because if we know what your income is, we don’t need you to tell us for the 80th time. You probably don’t want to tell us for the 80th time. We can save each other a lot of effort, both sides, by filling out ourselves. And also that makes it, that reduces error, right. We’ve all put in an eight digit number, submitted it, or maybe, as you know, whatever it is, and then realized we like transposed two things and now oh, we got to go back and fix it. If that stuff’s being pre-populated, you know, with that information, it’s just going to reduce that kind of error. It’s going to help us on the government side, too. So this is one of these things where we get improve program integrity, we can improve the customer experience and we can improve take up rate in these programs for people to get the benefits and access the services that they need.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Sam Berger. He’s associate administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which is part of the Office of Management and Budget. And on the reg-info-dot-gov site, there is a list of other types of information collection burdens that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is evaluating. And that is a long, long, long list. How are you going to get through all of this?

Sam Berger Well, look, we’re not going to fix every problem in a day, but every day we need to make progress on fixing at least one problem, if not more. Right. And that’s what we’re trying to encourage agencies to do. I talked about building up this virtuous cycle, making sure that from the top to the bottom of an agency, folks know a couple of things. One, this work is going to be recognized and appreciated, but also this work is important, right? It might not feel so exciting to be like figuring out how to get five questions down into one. But when you understand the impact that that has on people’s lives, when you have a chance to hear from people and say, thank you so much for making this forum better, now I can get this benefit that I need to put food on the table to keep my farm going, whatever it might be. So trying to recognize, you know, that we’re humans on all sides. And so we need to create these, this sort of environment that makes sure that people understand what they need to be doing, that they’re getting that positive reinforcement for doing it, and then that we’re going ahead and doing it. And so, you know, we’re going to be on an annual basis putting out a report that highlights this sort of work and that lets the public also see what’s going on and quite frankly, tell us what we can be doing better. A big part of this is hearing from the American people, understanding where there are issues and where there can be improvements. And so I would just encourage folks, when you see these opportunities for public participation, participate, because they really do make a difference. People see that this is a real problem. There’s someone that is going to be looking at that and trying to figure out how to fix it. And so, you know, that kind of feedback, that kind of information that we can get from the American people is just critical to make sure that we’re focusing on the highest value things, doing everything we can to improve the service that we’re providing to people. And that’s why folks get into public service, right, to do that job. And sometimes it can just be helpful them to understand where they should most be putting their attention and talents in order to make that kind of difference.

Tom Temin These data collection items that you are evaluating are organized by department and by large agency. They know you’re looking at this, correct?

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Sam Berger Oh, yeah. Agencies are well aware. And part of what we’re doing is also trying to make sure that agencies are talking to each other, finding out what folks. So there’s a couple of different parts of this. One is making sure agencies are talking to each other. They’re hearing what other folks have done that proven successful, but also making sure that agencies are talking to themselves. Right. Getting everyone in the same room so that they know not just what are the administrative requirements, but what are the legal requirements? Right. Where is there flexibility for agencies to make changes? Where are there things that made sense 15 years ago and everyone they’re just doing it and someone raise a hand and say, well, why are we doing this anymore? Does this make sense? Getting people in those rooms, having those conversations is really how you move the ball forward. How are you taking advantage, obviously, of advances when it comes to utilization of online and other new technologies to make sure that we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for folks. So having those conversations, having that feedback, and like I said, this is something that folks are well aware. You know, we put out some guidance on that, followed up with some clear kind of metrics in terms of what we’re seeing folks doing. And, you know, we’re going to keep following up on an annual basis. This is a thing that we’re going to be doing, but it’s not just a once a year thing. It’s once a year that we’re taking stock of all the work we’ve done over that year. And that’s critical, and I think folks recognize that, quite frankly, folks are excited because they realize there’s a real difference to be made, you know, in getting those ten forms down to one, and figuring out how to pre-populate, you know, these sort of data fields that can make a concrete difference in people’s lives.

Tom Temin And you found that the agency heads and also the high level career staff are interested in cooperating on this effort.

Sam Berger They’re interested and they’re excited. I think this is one of those things where it’s a proof point of like there’s a lot of good that you can be doing in the world in a given day. Here’s this is real. This is good. This is worth your time. And I think, you know, the DHS is a great example right from the top saying, across this agency, reducing it by 20 million hours, they hit that target. And so having other agencies, you know, set targets, set audacious goals and encourage that is exactly what we’re looking to do. We see a lot of excitement and interest. And I think hopefully building off the back of this report, building off of folks like you paying attention to this and lifting up, we’ll see even more effort, enthusiasm, excitement about making this, these kinds of changes and improving people’s experience.

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