Focusing on Implementation to Drive Continued Progress

A little over a year ago, the Administration committed to several ambitious improvements in Government services and better outcomes for the American public.  Building on successful data-driven efforts that have helped reduce veterans’ homelessness, increased renewable energy, and the speed up the approval of disaster loans for families in need, we established 15 new Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goals and every Federal Agency published a limited number of Agency Priority Goals (APGs).  Our framework of clear priorities and data-driven decision making enables Federal leadership to accelerate efforts to deliver Government services more efficiently and effectively and drive real positive change for the American public.

In the final year of the Administration it will be more important than ever for the senior leadership team to focus on implementation to lock in progress on Administration priority issues.  As we begin to establish this Administration’s final set of APGs for Fiscal Year 2016-2017, we have asked each agency to accelerate progress on those areas that will have the greatest impact.  In this week’s guidance to agencies, we have required agencies to identify a senior career leader, in addition to a goal leader, to support implementation throughout the goal period.  We will also be publishing the new priority goals at the start of Fiscal Year 2016, instead of waiting until the President’s 2017 budget is released in February. 

Over the course of my career, in sectors as diverse as mobile telecom, the leisure industry and financial services, I’ve seen how efforts to streamline and re-design processes and put new technologies to work can have genuine impact on improved service delivery and customer service – and the bottom line.  Since joining government for the first time a year and a half ago, it is clear that the private sector does not have the monopoly on using these approaches to drive better results.  The APG and CAP Goal efforts are a clear testament. In particular, in reviewing progress on our APGs and CAP Goals this quarter, there are several areas where streamlining processes and deploying new technology is delivering better services for the American people. 

For example:

• The Department of State’s Excellence in Consular Service Delivery Agency Priority Goal measures the time required to process passport applications for U.S. citizens and appointment wait times for nonimmigrant visa (NIV) applicants.  The Department of State uses a data-driven approach to implement process improvements and dynamically shift resources in order to improve customer service and processing speed while preserving the integrity of the passport and visa adjudication processes.  Throughout FY 2014, State exceeded the target of ensuring that 80 percent of NIV applicants were interviewed within three weeks of requesting an appointment.  In addition, State processed 99.9% of passport applications in a timely manner.

• The Social Security Administration set a goal to deliver a world-class customer experience by expanding the use of video technology to hold hearings. This technology provided the opportunity for claimants to have their cases heard in many of SSA’s 1200 field offices instead of only their 162 hearing offices, thus cutting down on claimant travel time and burden. Video hearing technology gave SSA the ability to balance workloads when shifting demographics and changing economic conditions created a large influx of cases in a particular hearing office. Before video hearings, SSA didn’t have a way to manage this change in workload. Now, with national video hearing centers (first piloted in Baltimore, MD), any office with a substantial backlog can redirect their hearings to reduce that backlog. SSA now conducts 28% of their hearings by video, over 170,000 more than last fiscal year. 

In the final year of the Administration it will be more important than ever for the senior leadership team to focus on implementation to lock in progress on priorities like those highlighted above. As we work with agencies on these Goals and others, we are consistently looking for places where there are promising, innovative approaches or proven tools that have the potential to be spread to other areas or regions to deliver maximum impact. 

Beth Cobert is the Deputy Director for Management at the White House Office of Management and Budget.