An overview of customer feedback data collected and reported throughout FY2023 and FY2024, as directed by the 2023 OMB Circular A-11 Section 280 and displayed in the Customer Feedback Data dashboard
What is post-transaction customer feedback?
Post-transaction customer feedback is generated when a service provider offers their customers the opportunity to provide information and feedback about their service experience following a transaction. For the American public, these touchpoints may occur after visiting a government office, calling a help desk, or learning about a program on a government website. It is common practice in the private sector for companies to survey their customer after a service interaction to measure the customer experience. High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) are similarly asked to “listen” to their customers to inform and prioritize service improvements that incorporate customer insights.
What are the requirements for post-transaction feedback surveys?
OMB Circular A-11, Section 280 requires High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) to collect customer feedback on the services they have designated as the focus of their customer experience (CX) improvements. In an effort to achieve comparable data across HISPs, OMB Circular A-11, Section 280 requires HISPs to include a question on trust (e.g., “This interaction increased my trust in XZY”) and relevant questions on drivers of experience, such as effectiveness, ease, efficiency, transparency, and if applicable, the employee interaction. Often, these questions use a Likert Scale of 1-Strongly disagree to 5-Strongly agree for responses.
What is new for Fiscal Year 2024?
The August 2023 update to OMB Circular A-11 Section 280 streamlines survey guidelines and reporting requirements for agencies and further underscores trust in government as the focal measure of the American public’s experience with government.
Improving the public’s trust in government happens transaction by transaction. All HISPs must act to ensure that interactions between members of the public and their government are simple, seamless, and secure—on par with leading private consumer experiences or other appropriate comparison.
Since October 2023, HISPs have been working in the background to adopt the revised customer feedback survey guidelines. To date, two HISPs, U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, have developed and deployed customer feedback surveys for the period from October 2023 through the end of December 2023 (FY2024 Q1) that meet the revised guidelines. The majority of the remaining HISPs will meet the revised guidelines for the period from January 2024 through the end of March 2024 (FY2024 Q2). Therefore, for FY2024 Q1, HISPs are reporting customer feedback survey data under the same criteria and process as they have done in all of FY 2023 (see below). Starting in FY2024 Q2, HISPs will be asked to report customer feedback datasets for each of their current designated services, in order to meet the new data reporting requirement. Accordingly, Performance.gov will publish a new customer feedback data visualization to demonstrate the progress of each HISP in improving customer experience and service delivery.
The responses to the frequently asked questions below correspond to the data reporting activities in FY2024 Q1. They will be updated at the end of FY2024 Q2 to reflect the new survey guidelines, new customer feedback data reporting requirements, and new data visualization.
How do HISPs report their data?
Within 30 days of the end of each fiscal year quarter, HISPs are required to report their quarterly post-transaction customer feedback data. While the business processes of each HISP may vary, they all are required to report the number of customers they serve during the quarter, the number of customers provided with a post-transaction survey, the number of customers who completed the survey, the question text for each question on the survey, and the tally of responses (often relying on a Likert scale measurement of 1 for strongly disagree to 5 for strongly agree) for each question.
Additionally, the Service Provider Catalog has tagged each HISP with their current reporting status as of FY24 Q1 with:
|
Status |
Description |
|
Reporting Data |
These HISPs reported customer feedback data for the quarter for any of their designated services. |
|
New HISP |
These agencies are newly designated as HISP starting in FY24 Q1. They have up to 12 months to develop, deploy, and report customer feedback survey data. Most agencies are able to do so before the 12-month grace period expires. |
|
New Service |
These HISPs have designated two new high impact services starting in FY24 Q1. They have up to 12 months to develop, deploy, and report customer feedback survey data for the new services. |
|
New Survey |
These HISPs have transitioned their customer feedback surveys to the new format outlined in the 2023 OMB Circular A-11 Section 280. These agencies are being tagged as reporting customer feedback data for FY24 Q1; however, their data will not show up until the new data visualization for FY24 Q2 is in place. For the FY24 Q1, the only HISPs to have achieved this transition are the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. |
|
No Data |
These HISPs did not report customer feedback data for the quarter for any of their designated services, including if one of their services is newly designated. |
How is the feedback data aggregated for performance.gov?
The OMB CX team publishes customer feedback data each quarter aiming to drive transparency and accountability of HISPs to improve customer experience and service delivery. The data visualization on performance.gov performs a percent positive calculation for all reported surveys, aggregated up to the designated service and the HISP. Percent positive is calculated as the number of 4s for agree and 5s for strongly agree responses over the total number of responses to each CX driver question. The data visualization allows for users to explore the customer feedback data for each reported service, each HISP, and across the Federal government. There are currently two feedback data visualizations on performance.gov:
Both visualizations draw from the same set of customer feedback data reported by the HISPs each quarter.
What does the “Measuring Trust and Confidence” dashboard show?
“Measuring Trust and Confidence” is a data visualization specific to Priority 2 on Delivering Excellent, Equitable, and Secure Federal Services and Customer Experience of the President’s Management Agenda. OMB Circular A-11 requires HISPs to ask a question about respondents’ trust in the agency. Before the August 2023 updates to OMB Circular A-11, the Circular allowed agencies to use either the word “confidence” or “trust.” As of August 2023, OMB Circular A-11 uses only “trust” and not “confidence,” though in some cases, HISPs have been permitted to continue to use the word “confidence” rather than “trust.”
Agencies are provided two sample statements and are instructed to make only minor edits. If a HISP would like to modify the statement, they must discuss the change with OMB. The sample sentences are:
- This interaction increased my trust in [HISP name].
- I trust [HISP] to fulfill our country’s commitment to [relevant population].
The dashboard displays the relative position of each reporting HISP against the 75% benchmark for the percentage of respondents agreeing (4s) or strongly agreeing (5s) to the statement on trust or confidence. It also allows for users to review survey results by service and by HISP. Lastly, it provides a Data Confidence Measure to help us understand the quality of the customer feedback survey and data that HISPs report each quarter.
What does the “How we’re doing” dashboard show?
“How we’re doing” focuses on all seven drivers of customer experience as reported by respondents in the post-transaction customer feedback surveys. The dashboard starts with a look at the response metrics across all reporting HISPs, provides an overview of the percent positive (4s and 5s) for all drivers, and allow the users to rotate through each driver for FY2023. Users may also switch to the “Details” view for the quarter, response, and comparative breakdowns of each driver, by HISP and by service.
Beginning in FY2023, OMB instituted a new data quality review process for all customer feedback data reported by the HISPs. OMB works towards uniformity in reporting so these data can be aggregated up to a government-wide performance metric. OMB uses this data to learn about pain points and strengths in agency services as indicated by the sample that responded to the surveys. To that end, OMB provides technical assistance to HISPs to meet the survey guidelines and reporting requirements in OMB Circular A11, Section 280. Consequently, the current dashboard only displays customer feedback data from FY2023 and onward that were reviewed and accepted for publication. Data from FY2021 and FY2022 are available in the listed datasets below.
Where can I access the customer feedback data?
You may access the data collected from each HISP in two formats, as a JSON file and as a CSV by using the links below. Currently, the data is a tally of the responses by designated services for all data collection and reporting since FY2021.
There are four tables for download:
In addition, you may consult our data dictionaries, which provide detailed description of each of the fields in the tables above.
