A bipartisan group of House members has introduced the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act, which aims to improve customer experience and accountability across the Federal government in part by creating a new senior management position at the Office of Management and Budget devoted to improving customer experience.
The legislation was introduced on Oct. 23 by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., Byron Donalds, R-Fla., Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., and William Timmons R-S.C.
“This legislation prompts the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to designate or appoint a senior official at OMB whose primary responsibility is to lead and coordinate the improvement of delivering government services to the public,” Rep. Khanna’s office said.
The bill also would put Federal agency heads on the hook for those same goals by declaring them “responsible for improving government services, building better trust with the public, and designating a senior agency official to drive changes,” the congressman’s office said.
“The Federal government has an obligation to efficiently and effectively deliver quality services that Americans rely on including Social Security, retirement benefits, Medicare health coverage, veterans programs, student loans and grants,” said Rep. Khanna.
“With growing frustration over government dysfunction, Congress should help bring service delivery across agencies into the 21st century. The Government Service Delivery Improvement Act is a bipartisan solution that will directly help constituents by making the delivery of government services more efficient and reliable,” the congressman said.
Rep. Khanna previewed some of the outlines of the current legislative effort late last year at MeriTalk’s New & Next: Government Tech Renaissance event. The congressman said he was working on a bill that would create a Federal government chief design officer “to have all of the government agencies have design where the consumer experience is center.”
“For too long, our nation’s bloated federal bureaucracy has acted as an unaccountable, antiquated, and Byzantine institution. This is why I am proud to support Rep. Khanna’s bipartisan proposal. We must ensure that our government prioritizes the input of the American people by adopting a modernized and innovative customer-centric approach to service,” said Rep. Donalds.
“It is unacceptable that the federal government consistently ranks among the lowest in customer satisfaction when compared to the private sector, and that federal regulation stands in the way of improvement,” Rep. Loudermilk said.
Similarly-themed legislation was introduced in the Senate earlier this month.
While the text of the House bill was not immediately available today, industry trade groups who spoke in favor of the measure when it was announced said that it would promote more Federal government adoption of technology that will yield better customer experience results.
“The Government Service Delivery Improvement Act would help to advance the digital transformation and IT modernization of government by encouraging the use of commercial software solutions, improving coordination across government, and imposing more accountability for better service delivery,” said software trade group BSA. The group added it “appreciates the bipartisan leadership of Reps. Timmons and Khanna to facilitate the use of enterprise technology to improve government services for taxpayers.”
The Alliance for Digital Innovation said it supports “the Government Service Delivery Act and its efforts to promote use of commercial cloud based solutions to deliver modern government services to the American people.”
