Americans are more satisfied with services provided by the U.S. federal government than they were a year ago, according to a report released today by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
ACSI results show that citizen satisfaction with federal government is up 2.3% to 66.9 (on a 0-100 scale) for 2011. The improvement, however, comes on the heels of a large decline for federal services, when citizen satisfaction tumbled nearly 5% to 65.4 between 2009 and 2010.
There are a number of benefits to high satisfaction with e-government, including increased trust, higher participation, and greater usage of the web channel, which leads to more efficiency.” – Larry Freed
Citizens remain considerably more satisfied when they interact with the government online than they are with their government experiences overall.
“While people generally distrust federal government as a whole, they are much more positive towards the job that individual agencies are performing,” says Claes Fornell, ACSI founder and author of The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference.
He added: “Paradoxically perhaps, these findings suggest that the more people come into contact with government service, the more they actually like it. The lack of trust has much more to do with politicians than it does with federal workers and the services of the federal government.”
Today’s release of ForeSee’s quarterly report of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Government Satisfaction Index provides a look back at the state of citizen satisfaction with e-government over the last quarter and the last year. This report is released in conjunction with the ACSI’s annual U.S. Federal Government Report, which analyzes citizen satisfaction with the overall federal government.
The ACSI’s 2011 study on government satisfaction reports that satisfaction with the federal government rebounded slightly while citizen satisfaction with e-government remained near its all-time high. Of particular note, the General Services Administration’s main website (gsa.gov) has seen a dramatic 18-point improvement in citizen satisfaction since ACSI began measuring federal website approval ratings in 2003.
While citizen satisfaction with the federal government as a whole is sometimes affected by the actions of elected officials or personal beliefs, citizen satisfaction with e-government can be largely credited to federal webmasters and their support staff.
During 2011, the .gov reform effort, part of the Campaign to Cut Waste, took some important steps toward achieving the ultimate goal of reducing costs and improving the quality of service federal websites deliver to the American public. In April, President Obama issued Executive Order 13571, “Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service.” This Executive Order requires federal agencies to save taxpayers money and time by eliminating or consolidating redundant websites and improving outdated, difficult to use, or poorly maintained sites.
In December, the .gov Reform Task Force issued a report on the State of the Federal Web which presented a summary of data and findings collected in compliance with Executive Order 13571. The Task Force and its partners say they will use this data to develop a federal Web Strategy and create tools, best practices, and other resources that will make Federal websites more efficient and useful for citizens.
On Friday, President Obama announced that he would call on Congress to reinstate the authority past Presidents had to reorganize the government, stating his first proposed use of that authority would be consolidating six federal agencies (the U.S. Department of Commerce’s core business and trade functions, the Small Business Administration, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency) into one more efficient department with one website, one phone number, and one mission – helping American businesses succeed. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are among other agencies that will also be affected.
Though e-government still lags private sector e-commerce and e-business, several federal government websites score as high or higher than the best companies and websites measured by ACSI. Two websites from the Social Security Administration top all websites and companies measured by ACSI. SSA’s iClaim website scores 91 and its Retirement Estimator scores 90. The highest scoring company on ACSI is H.J. Heinz (89), while the highest scoring private sector website is the online behemoth Amazon.com (87).
“While the federal government still trails the lowest-scoring private sector segment in the ACSI, some agencies, such as the National Weather Service and the Small Business Administration, prove that government can equal or even exceed the private sector,” Fornell said.
Improvements for e-commerce/transaction sites could have a huge impact on e-government efficiency and cost savings overall, and some benefits have already been realized. The “Report to Congress on the Benefits of the President’s e-Govermnent Initiatives Fiscal Year 2011,” shared some examples: more than 80% of reservations at Federal recreation sites are made online (resulting in savings of time, money, paper, printing, and other expenses related to conducting transactions via more costly channels) .
Items sold through the GSA’s GovSales site generated proceeds totaling nearly $5 billion. In addition, the Government Accountability Office noted in their December, 2010 report that the IRS estimated savings of $3.10 per return for returns filed electronically versus paper in fiscal year 2009. This directly translates into cost savings for taxpayers: 70% of 142 million individual returns were filed electronically in 2010, up from only 20% in 2000.
ACSI is the only uniform, national, cross-industry measure of satisfaction with the quality of goods and services available in the United States. In 1999, the federal government selected ACSI to be a standard metric for measuring citizen satisfaction. Over 100 federal government agencies have used ACSI to measure citizen satisfaction with more than 200 services and programs. The Index was founded at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and is produced by ACSI, LLC. ForeSee, a customer experience analytics firm, sponsors the E-Government Satisfaction Index.
“There are a number of benefits to high satisfaction with e-government, including increased trust, higher participation, and greater usage of the web channel, which leads to more efficiency,” noted Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee.