Federal Chief Performance Officer and Deputy Director for Management of the Office of Management and Budget Jeff Zients released a memo Monday outlining guidelines for implementing the Obama Administration’s customer service mandate.
The six-page memo looks at four key areas (Improve Customer Service Delivery, Advance Customer Service through Innovative Technology, Solicit Timely Customer Feedback and Improve Online Services).
The memo also called for the government to freeze the creation of new .gov domains for 90 days. GSA has been given the authority to approve new domains, but only if they receive a written waiver from Federal CIO Vivek Kundra.
Also, Kundra in collaboration with GSA, will establish a task force to solicit and develop recommendations to update Federal executive branch .gov policy and guidelines and best practices for managing government websites.
As for the agencies, they have two assignments for the next few months.
Publish Customer Service Plans – Within 180 days, each agency will post a customer service plan (“plan”) to its Open Government website. The plan will identify implementation steps for the customer service activities outlined in EO 13571 , including a high-level discussion of the process by which a “signature initiative” to use technology to improve the customer experience will be designed and executed. The plan will prepare agencies to integrate specific customer service goals into am1Ual agency performance plans and rep0l1s, as called for by the Goverm11ent Performance and Results Modernization Act (GPRA) of2010.
Establish a Customer Service Task Force – To facilitate the exchange of best practices and the development of agency customer service plans and signature initiatives, OMB will coordinate a Customer Service Task Force (“Task Force”), comprised of agencies that provide significant services, that will meet regularly until agencies publish their plans. By June 30, 2011, each agency should identify a senior official, who will be responsible for the customer service plan and related agency goals, to represent the agency on the Task Force and submit the appropriate contact information on the MAX customer service initiative site, https://max.omb.gov/community/x/200ZIg. Before final publication in October, participating agencies will conduct a peer review of their customer service plans.
