Agency Information Collection Activities: Generic Clearance for Improving Customer Experience (OMB Circular A-11, Section 280 Implementation), 29733-29736 [2020-10546]

Agencies

• DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

[Federal Register Volume 85, Number 96 (Monday, May 18, 2020)]
[Notices]
[Pages 29733-29736]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2020-10546]


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DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

[Docket Number DHS-2020-0019]


Agency Information Collection Activities: Generic Clearance for 
Improving Customer Experience (OMB Circular A-11, Section 280 
Implementation)

AGENCY: Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

ACTION: 60-Day Notice and request for comments; New Collection, 1601-
NEW.

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SUMMARY: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as part of its 
continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, is 
announcing an opportunity for public comment on a new proposed 
collection of information by the Agency. Under the Paperwork Reduction 
Act of 1995 (PRA), Federal Agencies are required to publish notice in 
the Federal Register concerning each proposed collection of 
information, and to allow 60 days for public comment in response to the 
notice. This notice solicits comments on new collection proposed by the 
Agency.

DATES: Comments are encouraged and will be accepted until July 17, 
2020. This process is conducted in accordance with 5 CFR 1320.1.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments, identified by docket number Docket 
Number DHS-2020-0019, at:
    [cir] Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov. 
Please follow the instructions for submitting comments.
    Instructions: All submissions received must include the agency name 
and docket number Docket Number DHS-2020-0019. All comments received 
will be posted without change to https://www.regulations.gov, including 
any personal information provided.
    Docket: For access to the docket to read background documents or 
comments received, go to https://www.regulations.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On September 11, 1993, President Clinton 
issued Executive Order 12862, ``Setting Customer Service Standards'' 
which clearly define his vision that the Federal

[[Page 29734]]

agencies will put the people first. Executive Order 12862 directs 
Federal agencies to provide service to the public that matches or 
exceeds the best service available in the private sector. Section 1(b) 
of Executive Order 12862 requires government agencies to ``survey 
customers to determine the kind and quality of services they want and 
their level of satisfaction with existing services'' and Section 1(e) 
requires agencies ``survey front-line employees on barriers to, and 
ideas for, matching the best in business.''
    On March 30, 2016, President Obama established the Core Federal 
Services Council, which again emphasized the need to deliver world-
class customer service to the American people. The Council, composed of 
the major high-volume, high-impact Federal programs that provide 
transactional services directly to the public, were encouraged ``to 
improve the customer experience by using public and private sector 
management best practices, such as conducting self-assessments and 
journey mapping, collecting transactional feedback data, and sharing 
such data with frontline and other staff.''
    In March 2018, the Administration of President Trump launched the 
President's Management Agenda (PMA) and established new Cross-Agency 
Priority (CAP) Goals. Excellent service was established as a core 
component of the mission, service, stewardship model that frames the 
entire PMA, embedding a customer-focused approach in all of the PMA's 
initiatives. This model was also included in the 2018 update of the 
Federal Performance Framework in Circular A-11, ensuring `excellent 
service' as a focus in future agency strategic planning efforts. The 
PMA included a CAP Goal on Improving Customer Experience with Federal 
Services, with a primary strategy to drive improvements within 25 of 
the nation's highest impact programs. This effort is supported by an 
interagency team and guidance in Circular A-11 requiring the collection 
of customer feedback data and increasing the use of industry best 
practices to conduct customer research.
    These Presidential actions and requirements establish an ongoing 
process of collecting customer insights and using them to improve 
services. This new request will enable the Department of Homeland 
Security (hereafter ``the Agency'') to act in accordance with OMB 
Circular A-11 Section 280 to ultimately transform the experience of its 
customers to improve both efficiency and mission delivery, and increase 
accountability by communicating about these efforts with the public.
    The Agency will collect, analyze, and interpret information 
gathered through this generic clearance to identify services' 
accessibility, navigation, and use by customers, and make improvements 
in service delivery based on customer insights gathered through 
developing an understanding of the user experience interacting with 
Government.
    For the purposes of this request, ``customers'' are individuals, 
businesses, and organizations that interact with a Federal Government 
agency or program, either directly or via a Federal contractor.
    ``Service delivery'' or ``services'' refers to the multitude of 
diverse interactions between a customer and Federal agency such as 
applying for a benefit or loan, receiving a service such as healthcare 
or small business counseling, requesting a document such as a passport 
or social security card, complying with a rule or regulation such as 
filing taxes or declaring goods, utilizing resources such as a park or 
historical site, or seeking information such as public health or 
consumer protection notices.
    Under this request, three types of activities will be conducted to 
generate customer insights:
    Customer Research (E.g., User Persona and Journey Map Development): 
A critical first component of understanding customer experience is to 
develop customer personas and journey maps. This process enables the 
Agency to more deeply understand the customer segments they serve and 
to organize the processes customers interact with throughout their 
engagement with the Federal entity to accomplish a task or meet a need. 
In order to adequately capture the perspective of the customer and the 
barriers or supports that exist as they navigate these journeys, it is 
necessary to directly interact with customers rather than relying 
solely upon the Agency's stated policy of how a process should work or 
employees' interpretation of how services are delivered. This can occur 
through a variety of information collection mechanisms that include 
focus groups, individual intercept interviews at a service site, 
shadowing a user as they navigate a Federal service and documenting 
their reactions and frustrations, customer free-response comment cards, 
or informal small discussion groups.
    Regardless of the format, the Agency will apply Human Centered 
Design (HCD) Discovery methods to generate personas and journey maps, 
ultimately identifying customer insights. An approach to recruiting 
participants, resources for preparing and structuring interviews, and a 
consent form for interviewees can be found at https://www.gsa.gov/cdnstatic/HCD-Discovery-Guide-Interagency-v12-1.pdf. This document is 
also included in the package.
    Insights documented, summarized and presented in customer personas 
and journey maps can then be shared across the program, the Agency, 
other Federal, State, and Local government stakeholders and even with 
the public to validate and discuss common themes identified. These 
products can be used as ``indicator lights'' for where more rigorous 
qualitative and quantitative research can be conducted to improve 
Federal service delivery.
    Publicly shared personas and journey maps will include language 
that qualifies their use (see question #16), and high-level, non-
identifying descriptive statistics of the population(s) interviewed to 
develop it (ex. ``25 Service members that transitioned to civilian 
employment within the last decade, 14 female, 11 male, 21 enlisted and 
4 officers) to ensure that the perspective represented is understood. 
Quotes or insights will never be associated with an actual individual 
unless they have signed a release form (see link above for template) 
and this was included in the specific collection request. Customer 
Feedback (Satisfaction Survey): Surveys to be considered under this 
generic clearance will only include those surveys modeled on the OMB 
Circular A-11 CX Feedback survey to improve customer service by 
collecting feedback at a specific point during a customer journey. This 
could include upon submitting a form online on a Federal website, 
speaking with a call center representative, paying off a loan, or 
visiting a Federal service center.
    In an effort to develop comparable, government-wide scores that 
will enable cross-agency or industry benchmarking (when relevant) and a 
general indication of an agency's overall customer satisfaction, OMB 
Circular A-11 Section 280 requires high impact services to measure 
their touchpoint/transactional performance in as a real-time manner as 
possible, with respect to satisfaction and confidence/trust using the 
following questions, without modification. Responses will typically be 
assessed on a 5-point Likert scale (1 (strongly disagree) to 5 
(strongly agree)). These questions align to drivers of experience 
developed in consultation with leading organizations in customer 
experience both in the private sector and industry

[[Page 29735]]

groups that study the most critical drivers of customer experience.
     5 point Likert scale: I am satisfied with the service I 
received from [Program/Service name].
     5 point Likert scale: This interaction increased my 
confidence in [Program/Service name]. OR I trust [Agency/Program/
Service name] to fulfill our country's commitment to [relevant 
population].
     Free response: Any additional feedback on your scores 
above?
     5 point Likert scale: My need was addressed OR My issue 
was resolved. OR I found what I was looking for.
     5 point Likert scale: It was easy to complete what I 
needed to do.
     5 point Likert scale: It took a reasonable amount of time 
to do what I needed to do.
     5 point Likert scale: I was treated fairly.
     5 point Likert scale: Employees I interacted with were 
helpful.
     Free response: Any additional feedback for [Program/
Service name]?
    The surveys shall include no more than 15 questions in total. The 
Agency may add a few additional questions to those listed above to 
clarify type of service received, inquiry type, service center 
location, or other program-specific questions that can help program 
managers to filter and make use of the feedback data.
    As part of the Customer Experience CAP goal's strategy to increase 
transparency to drive accountability, the feedback data collected 
through the A-11 Standard Feedback survey is meant to be shared with 
the public. This collection is part of the government-wide effort to 
embed standardized customer metrics within high-impact programs to 
create government-wide performance dashboards. Data collected from the 
questions listed above will be submitted by the Agency to OMB at a 
minimum quarterly for updating of customer experience dashboards on 
performance.gov. This dashboard will also include the total volume of 
customers that passed through the transaction point at which the survey 
was offered, the number of customers the survey was presented to, the 
number of responses, and the mode of presentation and response (online 
survey, in-person, post-call touchtone, mobile, email). This will help 
to qualify the data's representation by showing both the response rate 
and total number of actual responses.
    User Testing of Services and Digital Products: Agencies should 
continually review, update and refine their service delivery, including 
communication materials, processes, supporting reference materials, and 
digital products associated with a Federal program. This often requires 
``field testing'' program informational materials, process updates, 
forms, or digital products (such as websites or mobile applications) by 
interacting with past, existing, or future customers and soliciting 
feedback. These activities can include cognitive laboratory studies, 
such as those used to refine questions on a program form to ensure 
clarity, demo kiosks at a service center where customers can provide 
informal feedback while waiting for a service, or more formally 
scheduled in-person observation testing (e.g., website or software 
usability tests). These information collection activities are more 
specific than broad customer research and related to a particular 
artifact/product of a Federal program. As such, there will be a more 
structured interview/set of questions than more open-ended customer 
research. Findings from these activities are meant to support the 
design and implementation of Federal program services and digital 
products, and may only be shared in an anonymized/in aggregate if a 
particular insight is useful to include as part of a customer persona, 
journey map, or common lesson learned for improving service delivery.
    The Agency will only submit under this generic clearance if it 
meets the following conditions:
     The collections are voluntary;
     The collections are low-burden for respondents (based on 
considerations of total burden hours or burden-hours per respondent) 
and are low-cost for both the respondents and the Federal Government;
     The collections are non-controversial and do not raise 
issues of concern to other Federal agencies;
     Any collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions 
from respondents who have experience with the program or may have 
experience with the program in the near future;
     Personally identifiable information (PII) is collected 
only to the extent necessary and is not retained;
     Information gathered is intended to be used for general 
service improvement and program management purposes.
     Upon agreement between OMB and the agency all or a subset 
of information may be released as part of A-11, Section 280 
requirements only on performance.gov. Additionally, summaries of 
customer research and user testing activities may be included in 
public-facing customer journey maps and summaries.
     Additional release of data must be done coordinated with 
OMB.
    This clearance will help the Agency to establish a process where 
customer experience is regularly monitored and measured. The results 
will assist the Agency in the planning and decision-making processes to 
improve the quality of the Agency's products and services.
    Results from feedback activities and surveys will be used to 
measure against established baseline standards and for measuring the 
Agency's progress toward defined goals.
    There are neither legal nor technical obstacles to the use of 
technology in these information collection activities. The 
determination to use technology, and which technology to use, will be 
based on the type of information collected and the utility and the 
availability of specific technology to each respondent in a proposed 
customer research activity or feedback survey.
    The Agency will work to ensure the streamlining of all customer 
research and feedback surveys under this clearance. The Agency will 
also work to reduce existing customer feedback surveys and questions 
into alignment with the A-11 Standard CX Feedback survey as part of a 
coordinated Agency-wide customer program. The information to be 
supplied on these surveys will not be duplicated on any other 
information collection.
    The information collected in these surveys will represent the 
minimum burden necessary to evaluate customer experience with the 
Agency's programs and processes. The Agency will minimize the burden on 
respondents by sampling as appropriate, asking for readily available 
information, and using short, easy-to-complete information collection 
instruments.
    Without regular mechanisms for collecting and generating customer 
insights, the Agency is not able to provide the public with the highest 
level of service. These activities will be coordinated to ensure that 
most individual respondents will not be asked to respond to more than 
one survey instrument per transaction or to participate in more than 
one qualitative feedback or testing activity.
    These surveys will be consistent with all the guidelines in 5 CFR 
1320.5, especially those provisions in subsection (g) which require 
that a statistical survey be designed to produce results that can be 
generalized to the universe of study. There are no special 
circumstances that would cause this information collection to be 
conducted in an unusual or intrusive manner. All participation will be 
voluntary. Should the Agency need to deviate from the requirements 
outlined in 5 CFR 1320,

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individual justification will be provided to OMB on a case-by-case 
basis.
    No attempt will be made to generalize the findings from these three 
groups of activities to be nationally representative or statistically 
valid. They are meant to compliment and help to contextualize 
performance and evaluation data as part of a three-pronged approach to 
understanding Federal program implementation and opportunities for 
improvement (Performance, Evaluation, and ``Feedback'' data \1\).
    Customer Research: Insights gleaned from qualitative customer 
research may be presented publicly in the format of a conceptual user 
persona or customer journey map. Customer research can take anywhere 
from 6 weeks for a short sprint to a full fiscal year, depending on the 
specific project. The Agency expects most journey mapping efforts to 
last approximately 6 months, with a user persona and journey maps ready 
for feedback (both from internal and external to government 
stakeholders) within one month of completing customer research.
    Publicly available Journey maps will include specific language to 
contextualize their use and will be included in specific requests. This 
language can include something like:

What should I know about journey maps?

    Journey maps are living documents--continually refined and 
revisited. There is never a ``final'' version, and these maps are meant 
to serve as a summary of the voices of actual customers of U.S. 
Government services. A map may not precisely document the way a 
Government program is meant to be navigated, accessed, or used. It 
might not capture every government program or resource available to a 
customer segment.
    However, it is the product of a qualitative research approach to 
gather insights from customers' actual experiences. These findings can 
help us to identify areas for high-impact improvements across delivery 
channels and organizational silos.
    Customer Feedback: Once touchpoint surveys are implemented at 
transaction points along the customer journey interacting with Federal 
services, data from the A-11 Standard CX Feedback survey will be 
submitted to OMB quarterly for review and publication in a summary 
dashboard on performance.gov.
    This data will include:

 Specific transaction point at which the survey was 
administered
 Total volume of customers that interacted at this transaction 
point during the given quarter
 Total volume of customers that were presented the survey
 Total number of customers who completed the survey
 Mode(s) of collection (ex. online, over mobile, over the 
phone, paper form)
 Specific survey instrument that shows the Agency's wording of 
standard A-11 CX Feedback survey
 Distribution of the responses across the 5 point Likert scale 
for each of the standard questions

    The purpose of collecting volume and response numbers is to share 
customer feedback measures in context of the response rate and total 
volume of responses to qualify interpretation of the CX feedback data.
    Testing of Services and Digital Products: Similar to Customer 
Research, this can range from a short two-day rapid feedback from users 
within an Agile product development sprint or longer effort to gather 
more extensive feedback from multiple physical locations.
    DHS is particularly interested in comments which:
    1. Evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is 
necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency, 
including whether the information will have practical utility;
    2. Evaluate the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of 
the proposed collection of information, including the validity of the 
methodology and assumptions used;
    3. Enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to 
be collected; and
    4. Minimize the burden of the collection of information on those 
who are to respond, including through the use of appropriate automated, 
electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or 
other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic 
submissions of responses.

Analysis

    Agency: Department of Homeland Security DHS.
    Title: Generic Clearance for Improving Customer Experience (OMB 
Circular A-11, Section 280 Implementation).
    OMB Number: 1601-NEW.
    Frequency: On Occasion.
    Affected Public: Individuals.
    Number of Respondents: 2,001,550.
    Estimated Time per Respondent: 3 mins or up to 2 hours.
    Total Burden Hours: 101,125.

    Dated: May 12, 2020.
Melissa Bruce,
Executive Director, Business Management Office.
[FR Doc. 2020-10546 Filed 5-15-20; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 9110-9B-P