A year ago, President Obama issued an Executive Order directing Federal agencies to apply behavioral science insights—research insights about how people make decisions and act on them—to the design of Federal policies and programs to better serve the American people.  

So, how is behavioral science helping make the government more effective?

J.D. Wheeler III shared a powerful example. He returned home from prison this year, undergoing a transition that is often filled with great challenges—from obtaining health insurance, to finding housing and employment, to building and rebuilding personal relationships.

Over 2.2 million individuals are in American prisons and jails, and the vast majority of them will return to their communities. Improving education and job opportunities has a recognized effect of reducing crime, making our communities safer and reducing barriers to success. 

To support people like J.D., this past year the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) developed a “re-entry handbook.” The Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST)—a cross-agency group of applied behavioral scientists, program officials, and policy makers—contributed to the content and structure of this report using research insights about the best ways of presenting information to people in order to inspire action.

For example, SBST and BOP developed checklists of discrete steps that individuals can take at three distinct points in time: immediately before release, within one week of returning home, and within one month of returning home. Providing individuals who are re-entering society with the proper timing and sequencing of steps is helpful for preventing setbacks—for example, obtaining a birth certificate prior to release can accelerate applying for work upon release. SBST also recommended that individuals be addressed as “members of their community,” and provided ideas for how to de-stigmatize subjects such as mental health.

After using the handbook, J.D. shared that:

"I did 12 years and two months in prison. Before getting my re-entry handbook, it felt like I was in the Flintstone era. With the handbook, though, it rocketed me into the Jetsons' era. I found that I was able to adapt to this entirely new world—especially given all of the new technology—with more awareness and insights into what I needed to do to become a member of my society.

I was removed from the world for so long, I thought my transition was going to move at a snail's pace. But the handbook’s structure helped move things along at a moderate pace. Every inmate should get a copy of this handbook at least 30-45 days before they leave prison so they can already know what is going on, what to expect, and have time to really dig in and understand what steps they can take before and after release. I am an ambitious person and I want something out of my life, and the handbook gave me the knowledge I needed."

JD’s story demonstrates why this work matters, both for him and for the broader community. Designing government programs with people in mind can help to ensure that those programs meet people’s needs, and serve their broader societal goals.

To learn more about this collaboration, and the more than 40 collaborations SBST has had with Federal agencies from the past year, read here. And watch the Summit below.

Read the Report

Research insights from behavioral science focus on how people make decisions, and contain important lessons for how to design Federal programs to make them easier for the American people to engage with. For example, commonsense steps — such as simplifying communications and making choices more clear and user-friendly — can have a meaningful impact on who participates in a Federal program, whether that program is focused on applying for financial aid for college, saving for retirement, or something else.

Take the example of applying to college. Just yesterday, as part of his visit to Des Moines, Iowa, President Obama highlighted new steps the Administration is taking to help more low-income families gain earlier, easier access to Federal financial aid, including giving students filling out the FAFSA the ability to electronically retrieve tax information filed for an earlier year, rather than waiting until tax season to complete their applications. Steps like these will make the process of applying to college simpler and easier, helping thousands of students. Many other Federal programs could benefit from similar updates to make those programs more user-friendly.

That’s why today, the President is signing an Executive Order that directs all Federal agencies to use insights from the behavioral sciences to make government programs easier to access, more user-friendly, and more effective. As part of the Executive Order, agencies are directed to look for opportunities to streamline access to programs, improve the way they communicate and present critical information, and deepen their relationships with the behavioral science community. To support the new Executive Order, the Administration is issuing guidance on how agencies can use behavioral science insights to make Federal forms simpler and easier for Americans to complete.

In addition, the Administration is making permanent the first-ever Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST), a cross-agency group of experts from human-centered design, behavioral economics, and related fields, which will provide advice and guidance to help agencies implement the Executive Order.

A recently released report features the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team’s first year of projects, which have made government programs easier to access and more user-friendly, and have boosted program efficiency and integrity. As a result of these projects, more Servicemembers are saving for retirement, more students are going to college, more Veterans are accessing their benefits, more farmers are obtaining credit, and more families are gaining healthcare coverage.

Here are just a few examples of how these insights have led to real benefits:

• Sending service members a single email that highlighted the three steps needed to enroll for the Thrift Savings Plan (a workplace savings plan for Federal employees), and that conveyed the potential value of making even small contributions to the plan, nearly doubled the rate at which service members signed up for the plan.

• Sending eight text messages to college-accepted high-school graduates, which reminded them to complete required pre-matriculation tasks, led to a nearly 9 percent increase in college enrollment among low-income students.

• Highlighting to Veterans that they had earned an education and career-counseling benefit, relative to just notifying them of their eligibility, led to a nearly 9 percent in Veterans accessing the application for this benefit.

• Sending personalized letters to farmers that included a tailored set of action steps to apply for a loan as well as contact information for the recipient’s local loan offer increased the number of farmers who obtained a loan by 22 percent.

Building on the past year of successes, the SBST is launching 20 new projects in the upcoming year, focused on everything from helping children retain access to nutritionally-balanced, low-cost or free lunches, to providing unemployed workers with enhanced job-search support. You can read about these new projects here.

This is just the start.

We in the Administration are eager to hear ideas from the public and the academic community of additional ways in which behavioral sciences can help in improving Federal programs. To stay updated on the work of the SBST and offer ideas for new projects that incorporate behavioral science insights, visit the new online resource page at www.sbst.gov.

This is what we call the “word gap,” and it can lead to disparities not just in vocabulary size, but also in school readiness, long-term educational and health outcomes, earnings, and family stability even decades later.

It’s important to note that talking to one’s baby doesn’t just promote language development. It promotes brain development more broadly. Every time a parent or caregiver has a positive, engaging verbal interaction with a baby – whether it’s talking, singing, or reading – neural connections of all kinds are strengthened within the baby’s rapidly growing brain.

That’s why today we are releasing a new video message from President Obama focused on the importance of supporting learning in our youngest children to help bridge the word gap and improve their chances for later success in school and in life. The President’s message builds on the key components of his Early Learning Initiative, which proposes a comprehensive plan to provide high-quality early education to children from birth to school entry.

Watch on YouTube

The President’s message is part of a week-long campaign organized in partnership with Too Small to Fail, a joint initiative of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and Next Generation, to raise awareness of the importance of closing the word gap. The video series follows the first-ever White House Summit on Working Families that explored innovative solutions to help expand opportunities for working families and businesses. The Summit explored a wide range of issues, including expanding access to affordable child care and early education opportunities for families.

Our children’s future is so important, bipartisan leaders are all doing their part to help close the word gap. Watch messages from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and Cindy McCain, and share these messages with your networks to help spread the word about this cause.  

This fall, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services will team up with Too Small to Fail and the Urban Institute to host an event designed to increase public understanding and make progress on this important issue. This event will highlight initiatives across the country focused on bridging the word gap, including:

• Too Small to Fail’s Talking is Teaching public action campaign aimed at educating parents about the importance of talking to one’s baby and testing out community-level approaches, including in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Too Small to Fail is working in partnership with the George Kaiser Family Foundation. This campaign will engage pediatricians, business owners, faith-based leaders, librarians, and others to share with parents and caregivers how simple actions (e.g., describing objects seen during a walk or bus ride, singing songs, or telling stories) can significantly improve a baby’s ability to learn new words and concepts.
• Georgia’s Talk with Me Baby, a scalable, public action strategy aimed at increasing early exposure to language and public understanding of the primacy of language. This program provides professional development to nurses, the nation’s largest healthcare workforce, who will coach new and expectant parents to deliver “language nutrition” to their kids. With funding from the Greater United Way of Atlanta, this collaborative effort brings together the Georgia Department of Public Health and Department of Education, Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, and Georgia Tech.
• The City of Providence’s Providence Talks, which provides members of the Providence community, where two-thirds of kindergarteners enroll below national literacy standards, with home-based caregiver coaching interventions. These interventions harness innovative technologies from the LENA Foundation, including word “pedometers” that record and provide quantitative feedback to caregivers on the number of words spoken and the number of conversations had with children. Providence Talks is hosted by Mayor Taveras of Providence, Rhode Island, and is supported by the Bloomberg Foundation.
• The University of Chicago, School of Medicine's Thirty Million Words® Initiative with its tiered intervention approach to optimizing caregiver-child talk at the individual, community, and population levels. Researchers recently received funds from the PNC Foundation to support a five-year longitudinal study of the program’s impact.

To learn more about the Administration’s commitment to early childhood education, click here. Stay tuned for more details on our fall event. And if you’re interested in joining this effort or sharing the great work you’re already doing, email us at wordgap@ostp.gov.