Reducing Administrative Burdens: The U.S. Federal Government Framework

Executive Summary

Governments have long been attentive to regulatory burdens placed on private businesses, and are now increasingly considering administrative burdens experienced by members of the public. Such burdens can significantly worsen people’s experience of government, and limit access to valued resources, especially for those who most need government help. For example, an estimated $140 billion in authorized government benefits are left unclaimed each year in the United States. However, administrative burdens remain a blind spot for governments. Government efforts to systematically track and reduce burdens on an ongoing basis largely do not exist.

What would it look like if governments tried to build a policy framework that took burdens seriously? The United States federal government offers one recent example. Since 2021, it has initiated a governmentwide effort to identify and reduce the negative impact of administrative burdens. This brief explains the key components of this approach:

• New leadership mandates for change that directs attention to customer experience: Through two Executive Orders and the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act, the federal government has utilized and expanded the existing legal basis to undertake a government-wide push to reduce administrative burdens through the framework of improving customer experience.
• Modernizing existing regulatory, budgeting, and performance requirements to prioritize burdens: The federal government has revised the interpretation of existing paperwork reduction laws to better identify and cut burdens. Budget preparation and performance reporting requirements have also been revised to prioritize burden reduction. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) leads this effort.
• Implementation guidance: The federal government has developed practical guidance for agencies on tactics to reduce burdens, as well as the skills needed to make such efforts successful. As such practices are adopted, they will change the organizational cultures within the government.

Changing the approach and processes of one of the world’s largest bureaucracies takes not only political will but also time and coordination. The available evidence, however, already shows substantial progress in building customer experience culture, increasing agency burden reduction capacity, simplifying processes, information gathering, and coordination between relevant actors on data matching and sharing. For example, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reduced 21 million burden hours experienced by the public across DHS subagencies, improving customer experience, reducing administrative burdens, and making interactions with DHS more efficient. Other governments, including state governments, can therefore draw lessons from innovations by the federal government.

Why Administrative Burdens Matter

Administrative burdens are the frictions people can experience in their encounters with public services that impose learning, compliance, and psychological costs, as defined in Box 1.

A growing body of research has shown that administrative burdens:

• Are consequential: even small burdens can exert large effects when it comes to accessing public programs;
• Can reinforce or worsen patterns of inequality for people who struggle with administrative processes; and
• Are typically overlooked by government bureaucracies, requiring new administrative frameworks and skills to identify and reduce unnecessary frictions.

New Mandates for Burden Reduction

Efforts to improve customer service in public services have been a consistent theme across American Presidencies since the Clinton administration. More recent iterations have focused on improving customer experience by reducing administrative burden. By one estimate, more than $140 billion of public benefits available to the public each year is not used (OIRA 2023: 9). If the government succeeds in reducing these burdens and increasing access, it could significantly decrease public frustration with administrative processes and the perceived failure of the government to support those in need.

Politically, the building of a burden reduction agenda began with the use of executive authority. President Biden has relied on a series of Executive Orders (EOs) and Memorandums. On his first day in office, President Biden signed Executive Order 13,985 (Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government), which requires agencies to “recognize and work to redress inequities in their policies and programs that serve as barriers to equal opportunity.” President Biden also signed a memorandum on Modernizing Regulatory Review the same day, which directed OMB to recommend practices that would “ensure that regulatory initiatives appropriately benefit and do not inappropriately burden disadvantaged, vulnerable, or marginalized communities.” The EO showed presidential commitment to burden reduction and ordered equity assessments from all federal agencies, identifying burdens in their programs. On this basis, OMB provided internal cross-agency guidance on how to reduce administrative burdens in public services for the first time in February of 2021 in the document Service Equity Assessment: Getting Started. The administration then called for public comments about ways to advance equity, including “approaches and methods for assessing and remedying barriers, burden, and inequities in public service delivery and access.” This reflects one theme of the burden reduction agenda – to seek input from the public or advocates about where they experience problems arising in administrative processes.

In July 2021, a public OMB report found that “administrative burden exacerbates inequality” and provided specific guidance on how to identify and reduce burdens.

In November 2021, the White House released The President’s Management Agenda, which represents a statement of three broad management goals for his administration. One of these goals calls for “reducing customer burden, addressing inequities, and streamlining processes” and for organizing service delivery around the perspective of clients, rather than bureaucracies. The presence of burden reduction in the President’s Management Agenda reflected the consistency and priority with which the project has been pursued across different management venues.

By December 2021, the Biden administration unveiled the most comprehensive framing of burden reduction through Executive Order 14,058 Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government. This CX EO mandated that the federal administrative system “reduce administrative hurdles and paperwork burdens to minimize ‘time taxes,’ enhance transparency, create greater efficiencies across Government, and redesign compliance-oriented processes to improve customer experience”. The text box below summarizes the key elements of the EO.

In December of 2024, Congress passed the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act, a bipartisan bill that codifies basic commitments to customer experience. The Act requires each agency to designate a senior official to oversee service delivery initiatives, while requiring OMB to identify a Federal Government Service Delivery Lead. In effect then, the Act not only demonstrates a long-term commitment to customer experience; it also confirms OMB as the natural lead for these efforts, providing continuity with practice in previous years.

The Act includes language requiring that the Service Delivery Lead:

• Understands how individuals, businesses or organizations interact with an agency
• Review delivery processes, while considering values such as “ease, efficiency, transparency, accessibility, fairness, burden, and duration, including wait and processing times”¹
• Collecting both qualitative and quantitative data on service delivery
  Evaluate the quality of service delivery
• Coordinate with OMB and other stakeholders on service delivery to improve service delivery practices

The statutory basis of the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act provides some guarantee of continuity of customer experience reduction efforts but is broad enough to allow a new administration to take the initiative in a different direction.

Using Existing Legal Authorities for Burden Reduction

The burden reduction initiative has shown how much can be done with existing laws and authorities centered around agency prioritization, data collection and processing, budget preparation, data management, and simplification.²

Agency Prioritization Via Budget and Performance Reporting

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Modernization Act of 2010 provides the basic framework for strategic planning and performance reporting in the U.S. government. OMB has directed agencies to better reflect burden reduction efforts in their strategic planning and performance reporting. In 2022, OMB Circular No. A-11, which provides standard budget and performance reporting requirements for all federal agencies, was updated to include the Biden Administration’s customer experience priorities as a central theme in agency planning. The added section describes in detail the purpose of the customer experience focus, and the methods for agencies to take inventory of service delivery touchpoints, identifies agency structural and organizational methods to prioritize customer experience, suggests specific survey items to employ, and offers broad advice on how people engage with various agency services and how agencies can improve their service design. The net effect is to generate a standardized governmentwide understanding of, and commitment to, connecting customer experience, burden reduction, and agency reporting requirements.

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was passed in 2021 to help people access relief from the impact of COVID-19 on all areas of life. The Act also provides Congressional authority for burden reduction innovations to make such relief easier to access, such as modernizing unemployment compensation systems. ARPA provides necessary funding for agencies to hire and build support for better customer experience and data management. Although such funding was temporary, some of the funds have been continued through the Inflation Reduction Act. Both laws are substantial in providing agencies with the financial support needed to improve service delivery.

Reducing Paperwork Burdens

The Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) governs how agencies collect information from the public. The Act empowers the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA, part of OMB) to review the information being collected and the burden hours being asked of the public to ensure that burdens are minimized while still meeting program goals. This includes the forms and documentation requirements that people complete in support applications. However, its goal of minimizing unnecessary paperwork on the public has been interpreted narrowly. In April of 2022, OMB issued new guidance for agencies that expands how paperwork burdens by connecting to the broader burden reduction framework. For example, it encourages agencies to measure and reduce learning, compliance, and psychological costs that people encounter in their interactions with the government. Under the new guidance, agencies are told that they will be assessed on how well they:

• Simplify the request for information, while ensuring the continued utility of the information they collect
• Enhance communication, navigation, and outreach tools and processes to reduce learning costs to the public
• Improve information collection and submission processes to mitigate challenges that underserved and marginalized communities may disproportionately experience
• Use leading design practices to assess, evaluate, and then improve forms and information collection experiences

Data Management

The U.S. has strong data privacy protections that significantly restrict data sharing, even within the government. This makes it more difficult to use data as a tool for burden reduction by, for example, allowing a government agency to share information on the eligibility of a client for benefits. The Biden administration has encouraged data-matching agreements, pointing to The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act), which requires the federal government to modernize its data management practices. The Act created the Chief Data Officers Council “to establish government-wide best practices for the use, protection, dissemination, and generation of data; promote and encourage data sharing agreements between agencies; identify ways in which agencies can improve upon the production of evidence for use in policymaking; consult with the public and engage with private users of Government data and other stakeholders on how to improve access to data assets of the Federal Government; and identify and evaluate new technology solutions for improving the collection and use of data.”

Simplification in Writing and Digital Services

As more public services are experienced via digital spaces, the federal government has tied digital modernization to its burden reduction efforts. The U.S. Digital Service and 18F, which help federal agencies with their digital resources, have been actively engaged in the burden reduction agenda. The 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (“21st Century IDEA”) requires agencies to assess their digital services and prioritize those with the highest impact for usability improvements. The law requires agencies to draft plans regarding the expansion of digital forms and services, including electronic signatures, as well as website modernization to incorporate government-wide standards. Recent OMB guidance on a “Digital-First Public Experience” details how agencies must work on creating an inclusive design for all abilities, with a consistent visual design, improving the quality of information, searchability, and security. Another resource is The Plain Writing Act of 2010 which requires all federal agencies to use clear government communication that the public can understand and use. Agencies are directed to communicate clearly and concisely, establish a public-facing implementation plan, and encourage comments from the public on areas for improvement.

Implementing Burden Reduction

This report has largely focused on the creation of a new legal infrastructure, alongside strong leadership messaging, to prioritize burden reduction. Such steps are necessary, but the actual implementation of this agenda is a separate process. Some agencies are likely to be more successful than others. The implementation of this agenda will be improved with guidance on specific evidence-based tactics and interventions. The White House burden reduction initiative and customer experience guide have identified specific tools and skills to help agencies, such as the use of journey mapping or human-centered design. For example, a summary of the OMB’s official guidance on strategies for burden reduction is provided in the box below.

In addition to specific burden reduction tactics identified above, what are some broader ways that agencies can build burden reduction strategies? The Administrative Conference of the United States published a report based on interviews with federal managers about the implementation of burden reduction (Herd, Moynihan, and Widman 2023). Four key themes emerged:

• Building Culture: Put the Public at the Center. Cultural change is based on embedding the public perspective into processes. This can build on ongoing consultation with stakeholders, direct observation, focus groups, surveying the public, soliciting public comment, the use of complaint portals, and drawing from worker knowledge. Cultural change also depends on leadership commitment to burden reduction.
• Capacity: Have a Devoted Customer Experience Team. Most public organizations lack dedicated specialists with skills like human-centered design to understand and respond to public feedback. Without customer experience specialists, burden reduction efforts will struggle to find traction.
• Collaboration: Build Collaborative Teams Dedicated to Burden Reduction. This involves connecting CX teams to other parts of the agencies, including actors who might engage in potential roadblocks. It also involves collaboration across agencies or levels of government in some cases to solve problems from the citizens’ perspective.
• Simplifying: Increase Access by Simplifying Processes and Providing Support. In some cases, behavioral nudges might reduce learning costs. But more dramatic change involves finding ways to simplify processes or provide support to those struggling with administrative barriers.

Assessing the progress of a governmentwide initiative to change how it approaches citizen experiences of the state is difficult. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has committed to publishing an annual report that details the progress made. In 2023, it identified over 100 burden reduction initiatives in 100 federal agencies. In the 2024 report, it summarized 49 burden reduction initiatives in 18 agencies. Detailed descriptions of some of these efforts serve as examples of the range and type of efforts being pursued across the government. The Appendix summarizes the 14 highlighted case studies from the two reports — please download the report to view the appendix.

Conclusion

This report has summarized recent efforts to embed a new philosophical approach to managing citizen-state relations, one that prioritizes the identification and reduction of unnecessary frictions. Bureaucracies are often not naturally attuned to the negative externalities that they create in the form of friction, which implies the need for new modes of managing to better address this problem. The emerging framework has shown an approach to streamlining interactions with government, providing better experiences for citizens, and saving time for both bureaucrats and the public.

While the goals of a Trump administration are different from the Biden administration, improving customer experience and reducing burdens has broad bipartisan support as reflected in the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act. Other governments, including state governments in the United States, could examine the federal framework to identify what elements might help to improve customer experience in their governments. However, burden reduction agendas should evolve based on the sharing of lessons about what works, and what is possible. Different governments will approach the problem in different ways, depending on their environment, history, and experiences, and more research is needed to understand which of these approaches work, and under what conditions, if governments are to learn from one another.

¹ “Burden” has a specific legal meaning in federal legal code (section 3503, Title 44), which is “time, effort, or financial resources expended by persons to generate, maintain, or provide information to or for a Federal agency, including the resources expended for – (A) reviewing instructions; (B) acquiring, installing, and utilizing technology and systems; (C) adjusting the existing ways to comply with any previously applicable instructions and requirements; (D) searching data sources; (E) completing and reviewing the collection of information; and (F) transmitting, or otherwise disclosing the information.”
² This legal overview draws heavily from Pamela Herd, Donald Moynihan, & Amy Widman, Identifying and Reducing Burdens in Administrative Processes (Dec. 5, 2023), report to the Administrative Conference of the United States.