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Federal News Radio
5 steps for the
government to regain trust
Tuesday - 3/31/2015
Commentary By Tom Temin
Last month the Obama administration rolled out something called the
federal feedback button. Officials describe it as a Yelp-like way for
people to give feedback on the service they get, including online. That
is all well and good. People visiting federal websites should have a
good experience, easy to navigate and returning the results they seek.
I think for the most part they do. Still, you can never have too much
feedback. Sites vary. Some are still tough to navigate. Others are
right up there with the best of them. Some adapt perfectly to mobile
devices, others have yet to be redone with responsive, mobile-aware
coding. But on the whole, people responsible for federal websites care
a lot about their work.
One goal of the federal feedback button puts a little too much on the
shoulders of Web managers. Specifically, the notion that better digital
service and gimmicks like a website button can help restore faith in
government. A lousy Web experience might reinforce the notion that
government is incompetent if a visitor is inclined to think that way.
Most people take a poor Web experience for what it is — a poor Web
experience. To make an analogy, I'm highly loyal to the brand of car I
drive. The company's website is over-engineered and precious to the
point of being annoying and hard to figure out. But that shakes my
faith in its Web people, not in the car.
Distrust of government stems from problems way deeper than digital
service. All you have to do is scan the last few weeks' headlines to
see examples of what makes government sink in citizens' estimation.
None of these sources of mistrust will be remedied with the federal
feedback button. Nor will they be fixed with simple- minded assertions
about the efficiency or motivation of the federal workforce. Good
people working in bad systems will produce bad results. The way to
better, more trustworthy government is through fixing the systems and
processes, and funding them adequately. Then you've got the tools
necessary to hold people accountable.
Here are my five picks for systems that need fixed to restore faith in
government.
Fulfill FOIA requests. How many more decades must pass before federal
agencies figure out a way to answer Freedom of Information Act requests
within days or hours, and then fulfill most of them? A default to
secrecy and withholding clings stubbornly. Just a month ago, the Center
for Effective Government came out with another dreary accounting of
agency FOIA performance. The open data movement, exemplified by
data.gov and the hiring of a chief data officer at the Commerce
Department are fine moves for helping untrap the government's vast
stores of data. But FOIA performance is a powerful indicator of how
open the government is with respect to information people demonstrably
want.
Get serious about not wasting money. The government spent $124 billion
on improper payments in fiscal 2014. That's two years' worth of
Overseas Contingency Operations budgets, or three years of operating
the Homeland Security Department, or four years of the Energy
Department. It's around $350 for every American. The administration
deserves credit for diligent efforts over the last few years to push
improper payments down. But it's like trying to suppress in your hands
a balloon that's connected to an air source...
Read the rest of the article at Federal News Radio
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