USA Services Making the Federal Government more CitizenCentric Citizen Services Conference October 1

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USA ServicesMaking the Federal Government more
Citizen-CentricCitizen Services
ConferenceOctober 12, 2004
Martha Dorris Deputy Associate Administrator Offic
e of Citizen Services and Communications General
Services Administration
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Office of Citizen Services Communications

• Established in July 2002
• By OMB for E-Gov Strategy execution
• Enable Federal agencies to become more
  citizen-centric by providing answers to citizens
  that are timely, accurate and responsive.
• Assist Federal government web sites to be more
  citizen-centric and user-friendly

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USA Services Vision

• Presidential E-Gov Initiative
• Make it easy for citizens to get timely,
  accurate
• answers to their questions about government
• information and services
• Facilitate agency collaboration to share data,
• benchmark citizen services, set performance
• metrics, and share best practices

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USA Services

• Challenge USA is a pluralistic society
• American population nearly 300 million
• All walks of life all manner of life experiences
• Many special needs seniors, kids, businesses
• New Americans speak a variety of languages

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USA Services
Challenge Department of Obscurity

• Name one cabinet-level department of our
• government (60 of Americans cant)
• Name more than 5 cabinet-level departments
• of our government (only 4 of Americans can)
• And the name-recognition winner is
• OMB (with
  0 recognition)

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USA Services

• Solution
• Present a front door for citizens
• Offer information and services through a variety
  of channels web, phone, e-mail, and publications
• Help all Federal agencies be responsive to
  citizen inquiries

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USA Services

• Services for Citizens
• We answer citizen questions about the
  federal government.
• Web FirstGov.gov
• Phone 1-800-FED-INFO
• E-mail via FirstGov.gov
• Publications Pueblo, Colorado 81009

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USA Services.Online

• FirstGov.gov
• The Official Portal to the
• U.S. Government
• Pulls together millions
• of federal and state web
• pages
• 17 million page views
• per month

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USA Services.Online
FirstGov en Español

• 29 million people in the USA speak
• Spanish at home today
• We link to 125,000 government pages in
• Spanish
• Spanish federal pages are linked, but so are
• 42 state websites in Spanish, plus Wash, DC,
• Puerto Rico and many local government
• websites
• We also link to government pages in 25 other
• languages.from Armenian to Vietnamese

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USA Services.Online
FirstGov.gov from Armenian to Vietnamese.
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USA Services.E-mail

• Accept and respond to e-mail
• in English and Spanish
• Started e-mail in April 2003
• Expect 100,000 e-mails this year
• Answer 99 within two business
• days
• Current average time to respond
• 6 hours

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USA Services
News flash Not all citizens want to get their
information online! Citizen from
Virginia Whenever you want the government to
answer a question, the response (if you can
actually talk to anyone) is check our website.
Cant anyone answer a question? Its lazy and
non-responsive for a government that is supposed
to be the peoples.
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USA Services

• News flash
• Not all citizens want to get their
  information online!
• PEW Internet American Life Project Report,
  issued May 2004
• A plurality of Americans who contact government
  do so via the telephone (42). Using a
  government website is the second most frequent
  approach (29)..
• When Americans were asked what way they
  preferred to contact government, telephone was
  again the top choice 40 chose phones 24 chose
  the web.

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USA Services.by Phone

• National Contact Center
• 1 (800) FED-INFO
• Trained agents answer
• questions about the Federal
• Government in English and
• Spanish.
• Available 8am to 8pm (M-F)
• Knowledgebase available
• online

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USA Services.by Print

• Consumer Information Catalog
• Pueblo, Colorado 81009
• Hundreds of free or low-cost federal
• publications
• Full text available online
• Topics include health, federal benefits, money,
  housing, childcare, employment, small business,
  education, nutrition, cars travel, and more

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USA Services What do Citizens Want to Know?

• Government benefits Social Security, Medicare,
  Medicaid
• Loans and grants student, small business
• Buying government surplus properties
• Federal programs in Spanish and other languages
• Small business assistance
• Passports and visas
• Government jobs how to apply
• Immigration status and information
• Money issues taxes, investments, savings and
  credit

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USA Services
Figuring Out What Citizens Want

• Analysis of their questions
• Usability testing
• Constant customer satisfaction surveys

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USA Services
Surveys -- 2004

• ACSI satisfaction survey on ordering print
  publication
• -- ease of ordering score of 93
• -- agent courtesy professionalism score
  of 93
• NCC internal survey 97 of users would call
  again for help

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USA Services

• ACSI pop-up survey on FirstGov.gov
• -- consistently scores among the
  top in
• Federal websites
• And from September 2004, the Brown University
  Survey Results
• With a score of 88 out of 100, FirstGov.gov was
  rated the
• 1 government website!
• The next highest score was 65 out of 100.
• Brown University evaluated 1,629 government
  websites
• before they decided FirstGov.gov was 1.

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USA Services
Summary of Public Contacts
Channel FY 2004 .
FirstGov.gov page views 204,000,000 Other
OCSC Webpage views 27,394,000 Print
publications 5,129,000 Toll-free
telephone calls 1,500,000 Assisted
Telephone Calls 3,830,000 E-mail (all
programs) 97,000 ListServ
emails 1,029,000 Total
Contacts 242,979,000
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USA Services

• Help Federal Agencies
• be responsive to citizen inquiries

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USA Services for Agencies

• Misdirected Inquiries No cost
• We handle your misdirected phone and e-mail
  inquiries
• from the public
• Contact Center Solutions
• Tier 1 Service Offering - Reimbursable
• New FirstContact contract vehicle for contact
  center solutions
• Publication Distribution Reimbursable

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USA Services 29 Partners October 2004
Department of Labor National Archives and Records
Admin. National Aeronautics Space
Admin. National Science Foundation Nuclear
Regulatory Commission Recreation One Stop SAFECOM
(Homeland Security) Small Business
Administration Smithsonian Institute Social
Security Administration Department of
State Department of Transportation Department of
the Treasury Department of Veterans Affairs U.S.
Postal Service
Agency for Intl Development Department of
Agriculture Business Gateway Department of
Commerce Department of Education Department of
Energy Environmental Protection Agency General
Services Administration GovBenefits.gov Grants.gov
Health and Human Services Housing and Urban
Development Department of the Interior Department
of Justice
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What is FirstContact

• Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ)
• Firm Fixed Price
• Performance based
• Managed by USA Services
• 5 experienced, pre-qualified solution partners

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Who are the solution partners?

• Aspen Systems Corporation (Rockville, MD)
• www.aspensys.com
• Datatrac Information Services, Inc. (Richardson,
  TX) www.datatrac-dc.com
• ICT Group (Newtown, PA) www. itcgroup.com
• Pearson Government Solutions (Arlington, VA)
  www.pearsongov.com
• Teletech Government Solutions (Englewood, CO)
  www.teletech.com

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Why are we doing this?

• Supports USA Services vision of
• Providing easy access to information and services
• Ensure timely, consistent, and accurate responses
  to citizen inquiries
• Supports USA Services goals of
• Improve customer service to citizens across the
  Federal Government
• Reduce agency costs in labor and information
  technology for citizen inquiry services

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Benefits to you!

• Only Government contract for contact centers
  solutions
• Access to state-of-the-art solution providers for
  a small investment
• Sufficient competition to ensure good prices and
  performance.
• Task Orders are not protestable.
• Flexible pricing structure to meet diverse agency
  requirements.

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Benefits to you! (continued)

• Get a contractor on board in a short period of
  time
• Agencies can retain COTR functions on Task Orders
• Access to GSA experts who facilitate the process
  and partner with you to ensure that your contact
  center services are best in class
• Support the Presidents Management Agenda
• Improve E-Gov Scorecard

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Contact Center Services

• Email and Telephone
• 5 levels of CSR skills
• Multi-language support
• Emergency response and 24 X 7 support
  available
• Assistance with forms and applications
• Fulfillment order intake
• Customer feedback satisfaction surveys

• Automated Services
• Traditional IVR and voice recognition/text to
  speech technologies
• Self-service answers to FAQs
• Routing calls to most appropriate destination
• Automated fax-back service
• Web Services
• Hosted FAQ services to provide answers to FAQs
• Web text chat
• Appointment scheduling

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New FY 05 Initiative

• Benchmark citizen service activities
• Establish customer service standards for the
  Federal Government
• Develop service performance metrics
• Here is our strategy...

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Strategy for Improving Agency Citizen Customer
Service
How do agencies offer citizen contact?
How agencies do it?
How does the public want to contact govt.?
BDR
Implementation
Research
How do others do it and who does it best?
How should agencies do it?
Standards
Benchmarking
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USA Services
Marketing
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Marketing USA Services to Citizens

• Print Ads
• 10,000 magazines and newspapers
• Promotes FirstGov.gov and
• 1-800-FED-INFO
• GET OUT OF LINE (current print ad)

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Marketing USA Services to Citizens

• FY2003 - 2004
• Television PSA
• In the Pink
• 9.4 million in
• free air time

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Marketing USA Services to Citizens
Print Ads Uncle Sam (new
print ad)
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Marketing USA Services to Citizens
IRS Refund Envelopes
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What can you do ?

• Get involved with USA Services
• Become a customer service champion in your agency
• Be responsive to the citizen
• Listen to the citizen