List of Best Practices Excerpts from 2009 Citizen Service Award Applications 3/19/09
In February, Business Gateway (Business.gov) launched an online community to provide small businesses, experts, and government representatives a place to share information about starting and running a business. The community was created, in part, to leverage the collective benefits of the users, while also aiming to improve satisfaction and reduce time spent managing customer service channels. Small business owners said they wanted access to more information to help them understand their state and local regulatory requirements. Business.gov responded by expanding the scope of its content, improving search, and providing access to over 9.000 state, territory, county and city government sites. These changes resulted in ACSI improvements in overall satisfaction (70%- 72% from FY 07-08). In addition, Content scores rose two points while scores for Functionality rose four points. Navigation went up from 71% to 73% and Search performance rose from 69% to 74%. Overall site performance also rose to 82% and direct web inquiries went down. In addition to these scores, a dramatic jump in site traffic (67% increase in monthly traffic from 1/08 – 1/09) and hours saved (22% increase in hours saved from FY 07-08 with users estimating saving nearly 4 million hours in FY 2008) - offers further validation that citizens are increasingly finding value in these changes. ―Top 10 Tips for Starting a Business‖ was recently added to the ―Starting a Business‖ section after multiple customer service emails identified the need to consolidate this information in one place. Contact: Nancy Sternberg, Program Manager, U.S. Small Business Administration, 202-205-6285
nancy.sternberg@sba.gov
Because college.gov's primary target audience is 9th through 12th graders, they held focus groups at high schools and let the students pick from two designs to make sure they were creating a site that appealed to their most important users. They developed content by asking current college students about the barriers they experienced in pursuing an education beyond high school. They also listened to students when they told them to do something nongovernment-looking and to connect them with other students. By asking their target audience on the front end, they saved a lot of costly fixes or re-tries after the site was live. Contact: Holly Anderson, Project Manager, 202-377-3710 holly.anderson@ed.gov
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services - The MyMedicare.gov self-service beneficiary portal with over 6.5 million registered users, provides a transparent, 360-degree view of the beneficiary, thus improving consistency and accuracy of CMS responses to beneficiary inquiries. Both MyMedicare.gov and the interactive voice response (IVR) system provide beneficiaries with the option of self-service, providing them with greater and instant access to general and personal information. In 2008, beneficiaries fulfilled 31% of phone based inquiries in the IVR rather than requesting agent assistance, resulting in $72M in savings via call deflection. Contact: Kenneth Taylor, Health Insurance Specialist, 410-786-6736 Kenneth.Taylor@cms.hhs.gov
Environmental Protection Agency, Indoor Environments Division - Most Americans spend 90% of their time indoors. Unfortunately, indoor air can have 2-5 times the levels of pollutants than outdoor air. IED has helped to ensure that 50% of schools have Indoor Air Quality management plans, assisted in 3 million people reducing their indoor asthma triggers, and getting 1.5 million homes built with radon resistant technology. With an anticipated budget cuts, all of IED’s program necessities came into scrutiny, even long standing customer services. One in particular was a 10-year old information hotline that has received over 100,000 calls overall. This hotline was viewed as the backbone to the public and was a must for serving customers. Unfortunately, it was also one of the most expensive lineitems in the budget at almost a half million dollars. To save this vital resource, every aspect of the hotline was considered to see where costs savings could be made including the functionality, operator resources, types of information requested, and much more. Three important issues were identified. First, more than half the calls were for publications but those requests should have gone to a distribution hotline. Second, three operators were on staff although the call volume did not require that much staffing. Third, the types of information requested were short and simple, as well as available online at the FAQ system. With the help of the hotline vendor, IED was able to identify three major, cost-saving improvements: -develop a new phone tree which promoted the online FAQ system. -provide an option to connect directly to the distribution hotline to place publication orders. -adjust operator staffing to include two operators that would be answering a call-back service rather than a ―live‖ answering service. Surprisingly, only a handful of complaints were made. The changes actually improved the service by getting customers what they wanted even faster. Ordering and receiving publications was faster, the ―living‖ FAQ system knowledge bank expands with more customer requests, and the hotline was retained. These improvements resulted in a 40% cost savings. The contract costs decreased from $405,000 down to $245,000 annually. A bonus to this hotline improvement was the growth of IED’s online FAQ system. Since its inception in 2007, the FAQ system has served 343,000 visitors who viewed more than 533,000 questions. Less than 4% of these visitors needed to ask a question. This equates to a 99.6% customer efficiency rating. Contact: Shamus Ozmen, Program Analyst, Office of Air and Radiation, 202-343-9404
ozmen.shamus@epa.gov
Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Information Center - Federal Student Aid (FSA) receives more than 16 million submissions of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) annually. FSA’s redesign of the FAFSA process has greatly reduced costs associated with the printing and processing of the application. The shift from all paper applications to nearly 99% Web processing has had a tremendous, and positive, effect on budget goals and remains one of the highest online submission rates in federal government. Applicants can begin the process with a prior year’s submission, known as a Pre-Filled FAFSA, in an effort to reduce errors and save time. Federal Student Aid has implemented self-service options for customers via an interactive voice response unit (IVRU) that uses automated speech recognition, technology readily adapted to by the younger generation we serve. They also have deployed an Internet correspondence service and Web Chat channel. These channels are very popular with the high school and college age customer base. In an effort to increase financial aid awareness to middle school and secondary school students, they launched FAFSA4Caster, an early estimator of federal aid eligibility. In 2008, FSAIC launched an enhanced customer satisfaction survey tool that features speech recognition and affords customers the opportunity to provide detail on why they are or are not satisfied. Increased survey participation, a major goal of Federal Student Aid, has increased four-fold with the new, easy-to-use survey. Another goal included more detailed data that they could use for their voice-of-the-customer improvement program. Their customer satisfaction scores are significantly higher since they have deployed enhancements based on customers’ detailed survey comments. Contact: Michele Brown, Director, Applicant Products and Services Division 202-377-3203
michele.brown@ed.gov
Abraham Marinez, Customer Service Lead 202-377-3069 Abraham.Marinez@ed.gov
Department of Labor - GovBenefits.gov (www.GovBenefits.gov), the official benefits website of the U.S. Government, provides citizens with a one-stop source for over 1,000 government benefit and assistance programs covering a broad range of categories including Food/Nutrition, Housing, Education/Training Assistance and Disaster Relief. GovBenefits.gov is continually expanding and updating benefit program descriptions, contact information and appropriate links, while maintaining accessibility for all visitors. Visitors can use a keyword search, search by benefit category or complete a confidential questionnaire that quickly matches them with programs they may be eligible to receive. To date, GovBenefits.gov has guided more than 8.4 million people to the help they need. GovBenefits is one of the original 24 cross-agency E-Government initiatives established to increase the efficiency and effectiveness with which citizens obtain Federal assistance. Prior to GovBenefits.gov, internet-using citizens were forced to search through a complicated maze of web pages, spending an average of 30 minutes searching for information on a single benefit. Not only did no effective benefit search-agent exist, people familiar with a particular program were often confused about which agency or call center to contact. Unable to determine which benefits they may qualify for, citizens wasted precious time applying for programs they were ineligible to receive, resulting in government agencies expending time and resources reviewing applications that did not meet the criteria. There was a dire need for a new solution. GovBenefits.gov was that solution. Its core function is a dynamic eligibility-prescreening questionnaire, composed of conditional questions that probe the visitor’s circumstances without collecting any personally identifiable information, such as names or social security numbers. The system cross-references user’s responses against the program eligibility database producing a customized list of programs matching the visitor’s specific needs. In addition to helping citizens quickly access the assistance they need, this service significantly reduces the time a citizen may spend researching unsuitable programs and decreases the number of potentially ineligible applications to agencies. The result is a decrease in wasted staff resources and an increase in cost savings to GovBenefits.gov’s 17 Federal funding partners. GovBenefits.gov developed the concept of a ―citizen minute‖ to express the dollar value of the time citizens save by using the site to locate benefit information. This time savings represents value to the citizens, and GovBenefits.gov conservatively estimates that users save 20 minutes on average finding relevant benefits on the site, as opposed to conducting an unstructured search across the internet or through alternative channels. To calculate citizen value, this time savings is multiplied by the number of information transactions citizens perform on GovBenefits.gov. When taken together, the value generated by the GovBenefits.gov program for citizens and government operations in fiscal year 2008 is estimated at over $89 million, nearly 20 times the cost to fund it. Contact: Curtis Turner, Program Manager, US Department of Labor 202-693-4205
turner.curtis@dol.gov
NIST’s National Center for Standards and Certification Information (NCSCI) is the primary and authoritative source in the U.S. for answers to questions on standards, technical regulations, and certification for manufactured products. NCSCI’s expert staff provides information to the national and international public, businesses, and government officials on U.S., foreign, regional, and international standards. Standards and technical regulations affect over 80% of global trade. NCSCI’s paper files and shelf holdings were re-evaluated resulting in print materials being reduced by 75% and CD-ROM and microfilm being replaced by web-based electronic resources. To better serve U.S. exporters, NCSCI developed and launched a free, web-accessible database ―Notify U.S.‖(www.nist.gov/notifyus/) This service replaced the paper-based service first offered in 1995. Notify U.S. provides timely notification of proposed trade-related standards and regulations issued by 153 countries for 41 industry sectors. Users can customize their user profiles to monitor and receive news only on those sectors and countries of interest. Notify U.S. has been extremely well-received. Over 56,000 trade information items are distributed annually (an increase of 700%), and service registrations have grown from 1200 to 2700. In 2008, 95% of NCSCI customers rated Center services ―Superior.‖ Contact: Anne H. Meininger, Technical Information Specialist, National Institute of Standards and Technology 301-975-2921
anne.meininger@nist.gov
Social Security Administration (SSA), Internet Benefit Claim (iClaim) - SSA delivers services through a nationwide network of over 1,400 offices, including regional and field offices, card centers, and teleservice centers. Annually, the Agency's front-line public servants provide information and assistance to over 38 million callers to the 800 number and over 44 million field office visitors. Through fiscal year 2007, rates of online filing for Social Security benefits hovered around 10 percent. With 80 million Baby Boomers retiring, SSA realized that meeting the expectations of this tech-savvy demographic group required dramatic improvements to the online filing experience. Those improvements culminated in the December 2008 release of iClaim. Since iClaim’s release, online filing has risen to over 25 percent of all claims. Paramount among the objectives of the iClaim project was improving the usability of the new application. The Agency conducted comprehensive focus group and usability testing with the public to ensure that objective was met. The result of these efforts was reducing the public burden estimate by about half. The new iClaim can be completed in as little as 15 minutes. So, using the Department of Labor’s ―citizen minute‖ value of $0.31, the estimated reduction of 15 minutes in filing time, and the estimated 1 million iClaims expected to be filed in 2009, the savings to the public could be in the neighborhood of $4.65 million a year. And that estimate doesn’t even include the time the public doesn’t spend on hold with Social Security’s 800 number or waiting in one of their field offices. Direct cost savings to the Agency, while difficult to measure precisely, can be estimated. For example, studies have found that, for the Agency’s old online application, an Internet claim for retirement benefits has an overall processing time that is 7.5 minutes less than an in-office or telephone claim. Even assuming no further efficiencies from iClaim, that’s more than 60 work years of savings. Those work years can be put to use to address dramatically rising workloads— 40 percent higher claims volume for retirement and 10 percent higher for disability—while continuing to deliver high quality service in Social Security field offices and through 1 (800) numbers. Social Security’s commitment to excellence in serving the public extends to the online service channel. The Agency uses the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to measure satisfaction with its online services, and those services are consistently rated best in government. In an open-ended iClaim survey question, respondents were if they had any other suggestions for improving the online benefit application experience. Close monitoring of responses revealed a particular page of information that was causing confusion. Those respondents also were scoring iClaim lower in overall customer satisfaction. Designers and developers restructured the logic of that page and clarified its language, releasing new software in just 2 weeks. In the days following the release of the new software, comments related to that specific page of information disappeared, and aggregate iClaim customer satisfaction scores rose 2 points.
Preliminary ACSI responses indicate that the public is significantly more satisfied with the new iClaim—overall satisfaction scores are running 2-4 points higher—than they were with the previous online benefit application. And that high level of customer satisfaction is producing an added benefit: an overwhelming majority of iClaim users indicate a strong likelihood to use other online SSA services. Contact: Michelle King, Deputy Associate Commissioner, 410-965-7748
Michelle.King@ssa.gov
Child Welfare Information Gateway - An example of Information Gateway efforts to develop accurate and useful resources for the field was the creation of the Promoting Healthy Families in Your Community: 2008 Resource Packet. Extensive focus group and end-user feedback was incorporated into the development of content and collaboration and review engaged nearly 30 national child abuse prevention organizations. Results were realized in the dissemination of nearly all 80,000 print copies to the field, and 85,096 downloads via the Information Gateway website in Q3/Q4 FY 2008 alone. Contact: Patricia Brincefield, Communications, Children's Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health & Human Services 703-219-4312
pbrincefield@childwelfare.gov