Office of Management and Budget Updates Circular A-11 Budget Guidance

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently introduced their annual update to Circular A-11 guidance for preparing, submitting, and executing the federal budget. This update makes changes to Section 280, which relates to improving customer experience and service delivery.

As reported by NextGov, the definitions of “customer” and “service delivery” have been revamped and “customer” now includes individuals, businesses and organizations that interact with a government agency or program. The definition also includes federal employees themselves.

OMB’s definition of service delivery is also more detailed and adds two additional services- data and research and regulatory-to the five types of government services outlined last year, which were administrative, benefits, compliance, recreation and informational.

Stephanie Thum, who formerly served as the vice president of customer experience at Export-Import Bank, commented on the changes, saying, “OMB is meshing these concepts together, and we’re seeing crossover and a fusing together in practicing customer experience…what I sense here is that we’re moving away from guidance that acts as a compliance checklist and toward a language that is queueing us toward a business discipline. These are things that make a lot of sense.”

The Section 280 update also changes how customer experience ought to be measured. Each agency will be required to formulate an overall trust score depending on data collected in real time.