Evan Vucci/AP Photo
President Joe Biden signs an executive order to improve government services, in the Oval Office of the White House, December 13, 2021, in Washington.
Interacting with the government usually feels like a slog for no good reason. Many programs require beneficiaries to verify income or work status. The government websites people rely on to get adequate information are frequently clunky and antiquated. To access benefits, eligible individuals and families must become experts in bureaucracy, using their free time to do unnecessary paperwork.
But last week, President Biden announced an executive order entitled “Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government.” In his remarks on the order, Biden said he’s directing 17 agencies to focus on making it easier to apply for services and benefits, because “bureaucracies assume that people understand how they function.” The order aims to cut the more than nine billion hours federal agencies spend on burdensome paperwork, which the public feels through delayed services, eroding their trust and faith in government to get the job done. In short, your time matters.
The White House vision satisfies progressives who insist that the government must act now for everyday people, as well as outsiders like Andrew Yang, who have pointed out that government response lags because its technological capabilities remain decades behind. As Harold Meyerson has argued in the Prospect, Democrats’ fate in 2022 and 2024 depends not just on passing infrastructure and social welfare legislation, but on how quickly Americans see their efficiency in practice. Recent history leaves a lot to be desired.
For example, recall the disastrous, glitch-riddled launch of Healthcare.gov, fulfilling the worst caricatures of “big government.” Or the pandemic-era delays in administering unemployment benefits, rental assistance, tax returns, small-business loan processing, Child Tax Credits, and so on. When such benefits were administered, they saved millions of lives. The problem was the hassle it took to get there, which not only frustrates people but can deny needed benefits simply through making them impossible to access.
The order pledges to enroll applicants and beneficiaries into programs they may be eligible for by using Social Security Administration data.
In a 1996 interview with Wired, Steve Jobs said, “Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” Jobs was obviously speaking about the Mac and software revolution at large. But there’s a universal truth in this message: What’s delivered matters more than what’s promised.
Among the executive order’s key areas, it promises to create a “Federal Front Door,” in the form of a revamped USA.gov that consolidates information normally found on other .gov sites. It also modernizes data-sharing between the federal government and state and local governments to speed service delivery.
The order pledges to enroll applicants and beneficiaries into programs they may be eligible for by using Social Security Administration data. This auto-enroll feature would save beneficiaries from the need to separately determine the eligibility requirements for each program, assemble the needed documents, and fill out the applications. It’s a potentially powerful tool.
The order also aims to boost customer support across the Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services Departments. It orders the U.S. Department of Agriculture to experiment with allowing SNAP benefits for online purchases (Amazon currently accepts SNAP benefits for select food products in 46 states). It simplifies applying for disaster relief through Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And it expands electronic filing options through the Treasury for direct-deposit refunds.
While there are a lot of good commonsense reforms in this order, almost a year into the Biden presidency, it’s hard to imagine a smooth implementation. And it’s hard to reconcile these reforms with some of the administration’s other efforts, which serve only to burden people further.
Earlier this month, when Mara Liasson of NPR asked at a White House press briefing, “Why not just make [COVID tests] free,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki cynically replied, “Should we just send one to every American?” Instead, the White House’s plan is for private health insurers to reimburse at-home tests, and those who are uninsured can pick one up from health centers and other clinics. But who is really going to bill their insurer each time they spend $25 on a two-pack of tests? Even insurance industry giants like Tegria warn that “claim denials and delayed reimbursements are a fact of life” in health care delivery. (Belatedly, the White House on Tuesday announced a plan to mail out at-home tests beginning in January.)
This fight has long played out between the hospital and insurance industries. Currently, the nation’s second-largest health insurance company, Anthem, is behind in billions of dollars owed to hospitals and doctors. The COVID test plan brings that dysfunction to millions of Americans. The Biden order prioritizes streamlining the delivery of services that everyday people and federal workers need, but with the other hand the administration is entrenching the worst elements of what Americans already endure.
The fate of the Build Back Better Act is in serious doubt, over ongoing disputes between Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and his party. But if it miraculously manages to pass, the bill’s signature programs would also suffer from cumbersome delivery, most of which Manchin required as a condition for his vote. For example, paid family and medical leave could be delivered through the Social Security Administration, as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s FAMILY Act urges. But House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Richard Neal’s framework cements the role of private insurers by reimbursing employers to deliver the benefits. Similarly, there’s Manchin’s insistence on phasing out Child Tax Credit benefits after $60,000 of a family’s yearly income and imposing work requirements for eligibility, which also feature in the child care and other programs.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on how the executive order would alleviate insurance reimbursement delays or if delivering paid family and medical leave would be facilitated through the order’s newly integrated Social Security Administration data.
As the Prospect has reported, even the current expanded CTC misses over 85 percent of non-filers, impacting the families who need the extra cash most. People’s Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig described the original website for non-filers as looking “like a scam website.” To the administration’s credit, they did fix that original website, and under the executive order it should be accessed more easily through the new USA.gov. And the fact that the administration has now decided to send out 500 million at-home COVID tests—yes, for free—offers hope that the new directive for simplicity is infusing the thinking behind all federal policy, not just specific services.
For all the havoc wreaked by Silicon Valley on our daily lives, they sure got one thing right: frictionless design.
