上周一，白宫出版了行政命令明确关注改善方式联邦政府为美国人民工作。从为WIC（针对孕妇，新妈妈和幼儿的联邦营养计划）启用在线食品和配方奶粉，到实施安全的在线护照续订，该订单充满了非常实用的步骤，以使数百万的生活更轻松美国人。
In its practicality, it has the chance to be truly transformative.
该行政命令正式命名为“将联邦客户体验和服务交付转变为重建政府的信任”，针对17个联邦机构的36个客户体验改善。至关重要的是，它建立了一个程序，使机构不仅要对政策成果负责，而且还要负责为美国公众服务的方式。
使公民发表声音使他们的政府工作的想法并不新鲜。林肯总统本人会打开门去白宫举行早餐会议，以更好地了解如何为一个刚刚刚刚刚出生的3100万个国家服务。
But as the distance between the White House and the people has grown over the years, so has the space between policy makers and the American people. This executive order is the first step in what will likely be a multiyear (or even decade-long) effort to shorten that distance and regain the nation’s trust in our government.
This isn’t the first effort of its kind. From the Clinton-Gore administration’s重塑政府倡议to several Obama-era executive orders designed to削减繁文tape节或建立信任在联邦政府和社区之间，政府以前曾尝试过。但是，该行政命令确实包括一些非常具体的承诺和官僚机构的澄清命令：专注于客户服务。
想象一个与政府互动的世界很简单，无缝，甚至令人愉悦。这是行政命令不仅要求我们想象的世界，而且还采取了定义联邦机构将如何到达目的地的关键步骤，尤其是在接下来的六个月的计划和初步实施中。有很多好主意从哪里开始。一个例子：目前，具有某些终身状况的人，例如自闭症 - 条件不会改变 - 必须重新确认其维持SSI资格的条件。消除或改变这一要求是该命令刺激的早期想法之一。
刺激动作实际上是第一步。尽管该订单没有附带的美元，但它确实确定了对行政优先级的强烈改进的需求，并且为问责制规定了途径。
Here are just a few ways the order could bring令人兴奋的变化to everyday experiences for many of us:
Online and On-Time Services
- First-time users of many government systems are surprised by what the government requires in order to access benefits and services. In our work, we’ve found that many assumed that claiming Social Security retirement benefits, renewing passports, shopping for groceries with government assistance, or finding discounted medications through Medicare were already things you could do easily and fully online before the pandemic. In actuality, many of these services require partial or total in-person engagement. Even after the pandemic began, some of our nation’s most critical programs still required going to the post office to submit documentation, applying or making changes in person, or making trips to county offices to pursue loans or assistance.
- The EO takes the extraordinary step of prioritizingthe needs of the people over the needs of federal agencies’ stated purposes—in essence, allowing agencies to catch up and digitize processes that, in 2021, feel anachronistic to do in person. If you asked someone at the State Department what their most urgent issue is, it’s unlikely they’d say online passport renewal. But for most Americans, renewing their passport is the sole interaction they’ll have with that agency. The executive order recognizes this, and gives the department the space to prioritize a project that otherwise would be long shoved to the side.
- It also smartly focuses on customer service, rather than digitization. Sometimes an answered phone call might be just what someone needs, rather than a spiffy website or app. For example, consider that the IRS agency currently has the capacity to answer only3％的电话它收到。在公共部门，如果没有总统授权，代理机构就没有优先级的空间。值得注意的是，当代理商不优先考虑客户服务时，其他有问题模型的演员经常会从需要帮助的美国人那里赚钱。据报道，一家公司通过付费模式做到了这一点：将订阅销售给本质上allow line-jumping在国税局中，队列和可能限制了个人和税务准备者的电话访问。
- The order does emphasize the potential use of technology yet prioritizes customer needs over “shiny new things.” This matters because digitization, without a clear goal, can lead to worse service. As we wrote in对人民的力量，，，，digitizing a broken system gets you a数字化损坏的系统。此外，有些美国人将继续需要离线访问政府，使用现金或纸质支票进行续订或缺乏网络访问或技术使用自动化系统。改善能够使用它的人可以为那些缺乏技术访问或需要其他直接帮助的人释放资源。这也可以提供带宽，以应对其他服务障碍，例如金融系统中的识字，过境差距，种族主义和偏见以及宽带。
Bills, Bills, Bills
最常见的学生，企业主和失业工人（尤其是在Covid-19期间）的挫败感之一是可以轻松申请政府帮助和跟踪其申请状况的能力。行政命令考虑了这一现实：直接贷款借款人的学生现在将在sudentaid.gov上拥有一个偿还门户；农民将能够以数字方式申请农业部的贷款；像小型企业管理局这样的机构可能能够减少小型企业主的呼叫中心等待时间。
Fewer Trips, Fewer Trip Wires
A common trip wire among Americans seeking disaster relief or using multiple public benefits is a very practical one: They simply have to be in too many places at once. People often have to work with multiple agencies at the same time—some of which require in-person interaction, mailing or faxing verifications, and collecting forms like birth certificates. This results in frequent trips to a government agency, post office, or clerk; travel time and transit costs; and, at times, missing work. Consider someone trying to get assistance after a natural disaster has leveled their home. Or a parent between jobs, trying to claim a tax credit and applying for unemployment benefits. The people doing all the right things are drained of time and resources for too little payoff.
你搬了吗？曾经？考虑一下您必须报告多少次地址的变化，也许是您的难以置信，这些系统似乎都没有传达。根据命令，“移动住所的个人可以一次与联邦政府更新地址，并选择他们想要的其他联邦或州实体。”哈利路亚，阿们。
Tara Dawson McGuinness is the founder and director of the New Practice Lab at New America. Hana Schank is a senior advisor for public interest technology at New America. In 2021 the pair releasedPower to the Public，一本关于政府如何通过直接与社区合作来解决数字时代公共问题的书。