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DHS interacts with over ONE BILLION people every year, from passengers traveling through our air, land, and sea ports of entry to businesses importing goods into the country, to noncitizens applying for benefits. Right now, DHS customers experience services are a mish-mash of digital and paper-based, with lots of data entry for both the customer and government workers. Through these interactions, DHS imposes over 190 million hours of "paperwork" burden on the public each year. Reducing this burden, or eliminating "time taxes" is a key component of improving overall customer experience and rebuilding trust in our government and agencies.
But What Does “Burden” Have to Do With Equity?
A lot, it turns out. Historically underserved communities experience disproportionate levels of burden when trying to access government services. Building these services with the people who use them, or in other words, by practicing Human-centered design we can build equity and eliminate barriers to services for people who belong to underserved communities. Equity is “the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment, such as Black, Latino, Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”
When we include customers in our research and design practices, we can build more equitable, accessible and inclusive experiences. We can directly measure the effect of that work by measuring whether services to historically underserved communities have increased, whether backlogs or wait times have decreased, or by whether burden hours have been reduced.
Read more about Why CX Matters and Burden Reduction at DHS. Then, you can take your knowledge and skills to the next level with our curated CX Resources.
Do you have any ideas to share with us or the CX Community at large on how to reduce burden by improving customer experience? Send us an email at CX@hq.dhs.gov.
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