More than aesthetics, good design across websites, apps, and even those arduous government forms, drives efficiency that saves time and taxpayer money
by Intelliworx
The U.S. government maintains an estimated 23,000 websites. Many are outdated, expensive to operate, and difficult to navigate.
For example, less than one in five “federal websites use code from USWDS [United States Web Design System], contributing to inconsistent and varying user experiences.” Further, nearly half (45%) are “not mobile friendly” and only 6% earned a “good” rating for performance on mobile devices.
Yet mobile devices are ubiquitous. It’s been ten-plus years since Google searches on mobile devices surpassed those on a desktop. That illustrates how reliant people are on these tools for communication, including communication with their government.
That’s the crux of the problem the America by Design initiative aims to solve. A new Executive Order authorizing the initiative sets it up this way:
“America has long led the world in innovation, technological advancement, and design. But with a sprawling ecosystem of digital services offered to Americans, the Government has lagged behind in usability and aesthetics. There is a high financial cost to maintaining legacy systems, to say nothing of the cost in time lost by the American public trying to navigate them. It is time to fill the digital potholes across our Nation.”
The order puts several things into motion, including:
- Requires federal agency heads to “prioritize improving websites and physical sites that have a major impact on Americans’ everyday lives.”
- Creates a National Design Studio (NDS) to orchestrate and perhaps enforce modern design requirements;
- Appoints an administrator with the title of Chief Design Officer reporting to the White House Chief of Staff; that position has been filled by Joe Gebbia;
- Requires agencies to “consult with the Chief Design Officer to update the United States Web Design System consistent with the policies” established; and
- Directs agencies “to comply with the 21st Century Digital IDEA Act, a bipartisan law signed by Trump in 2018 and aimed at improving the digital experience for government customers.”
Modern design should include government forms
That last bit on bipartisan support is important because Administrations from both sides of the aisle have worked to enforce that existing law. The challenge, it seems to us, isn’t the policy; it’s in the execution and follow-up.
As we noted in a 2023 blog post with takeaways from OMB’s 21st Century IDEA guidance, the prior Administration cited the same numbers:
- 45% are not mobile-friendly;
- 60% have potential accessibility issues;
- 80% do not use the U.S. Web Design System code; and
- A mere 2% of government forms are digitized.
In other words, across two administrations and more than six years since the 21st Century IDEA became law, little has changed in the way of CX.
Why? Martha Dorris, who earned the moniker ‘godmother of CX’ for her work at the General Services Administration (GSA), explained in an interview with us that it’s the “stovepipes” of information across agencies. Every agency “wants to run their own little thing,” she said.
“But that’s not the way the public interacts with government,” she elaborated. “They don’t care if one interaction comes from a different agency or a different part of the agency. They think of the whole experience as ‘it’s just the government.’”
Design isn’t just about form; it’s for efficient function
From our perspective, this new order is an extension of customer experience (CX), which has been a center of gravity for government modernization. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines CX as the collection of “interactions between an individual and an organization.”
In other words, CX is the totality of cumulative interactions, wherever they take place, whether that’s online, through an app, or on the phone with customer service. When technology, such as websites, apps, messages and government forms, are intuitive, things simply get done faster.
The private technology sector makes significant investments in CX because it’s crucial to keep customers coming back. If a business application or website is confusing or hard to understand, customers will leave for a rival. While the government doesn’t have to worry about competitors, per se, the intuitive performance of private sector tools has raised expectations.
The “time tax” and government forms
Government forms shouldn’t be overlooked in this mandate either. When citizens interact with the government’s digital services, chances are high that they are looking for a form. Permits, benefits, loans, and scholarship applications, for example, all require some sort of form.
Further, there are tens of thousands of government forms, many with instructions for completing that are longer than the form itself. These forms take time to complete – a lot of it. OMB has previously called this a “time tax.” It estimates Americans spend 10.5 billion hours annually on the task of completing government forms.
This tax isn’t just time – it grows staffing costs too. For example, when constituents don’t understand what’s required, phone calls asking for help on that agency’s hotline skyrocket.
Unfortunately, as the data above shows, the vast majority of government forms are still driven by paper-based processes. This is labor-intensive for citizens to complete and for civil servants to process. That’s why we often propose that modernizing the look and feel of digital media should be mapped to the backend process.
Armed with that map, such forms can be converted to “intelligent interviews” – effectively the same way off-the-shelf tax software walks the average person through tax filing.
More than just beauty, CX drives efficiency
The business case for CX is very strong. More than aesthetics, good design drives efficacy and has several benefits for citizens and government:
- Cuts the time it takes to complete task;
- Reduces the back-and-forth that drives up customer service costs;
- Lowers the cost of supporting legacy technology;
- Streamlines the transmission, review and approval of benefits, permits, etc.; and
- Helps to rebuild trust in the government.
Dorris, the aforementioned subject matter expert, shared one of the best examples of the efficacy that CX can bring: If tax forms were intuitive, citizens would file their taxes faster and, in turn, the U.S. Treasury would accrue its tax revenue faster. That analogy, we contend, works across the whole of government.
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Intelliworx has 20 years of proven experience that started with helping the federal government modernize forms. Today we offer a range of solutions, including application management, government workflow and financial disclosure.
Our platform is FedRAMP-authorized and certified by the SBA as SDVOSB. We’d welcome the opportunity to show you rather than tell you – request a no-obligation demo.
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