Notice2026-18476
Agency Information Collection Activities: Generic Clearance for Improving Customer Experience (OMB Circular A-11, Section 280 Implementation); OMB Control No. 1601-0029
Primary source
Metadata and text below are from the Federal Register, a public-domain U.S. government work. Always verify the official published version before relying on it for any legal matter.
Published
September 10, 2026
Issuing agencies
Homeland Security Department
Abstract
The Department of Homeland Security will submit the following Information Collection Request (ICR) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.
Full Text
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<title>Federal Register, Volume 91 Issue 174 (Thursday, September 10, 2026)</title>
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[Federal Register Volume 91, Number 174 (Thursday, September 10, 2026)]
[Notices]
[Pages 57646-57648]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [<a href="http://www.gpo.gov">www.gpo.gov</a>]
[FR Doc No: 2026-18476]
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DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
[Docket Number DHS-2026-0892]
Agency Information Collection Activities: Generic Clearance for
Improving Customer Experience (OMB Circular A-11, Section 280
Implementation); OMB Control No. 1601-0029
AGENCY: Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
ACTION: 60-Day notice and request for comments.
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SUMMARY: The Department of Homeland Security will submit the following
Information Collection Request (ICR) to the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) for review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1995.
DATES: Comments are encouraged and will be accepted until November 9,
2026. This process is conducted in accordance with 5 CFR 1320.1
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments, identified by docket number Docket
#DHS-2026-0892, at:
[cir] Federal eRulemaking Portal: <a href="http://www.regulations.gov">http://www.regulations.gov</a>.
Please follow the instructions for submitting comments.
Instructions: All submissions received must include the agency name
and docket number DHS-2026-0892. All comments received will be posted
without change to <a href="http://www.regulations.gov">http://www.regulations.gov</a>, including any personal
information provided.
Docket: For access to the docket to read background documents or
comments received, go to <a href="http://www.regulations.gov">http://www.regulations.gov</a>.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On September 11, 1993, Executive Order
12862, ``Setting Customer Service Standards'' was issued. This
Executive Order expressed the vision that Federal agencies will put the
people first. Executive Order 12862 directs Federal agencies to provide
service to the public that matches or exceeds the best service
available in the private sector. Section 1(b) of Executive Order 12862
requires government agencies to ``survey customers to determine the
kind and quality of services they want and their level of satisfaction
with existing services'' and Section 1(e) requires agencies ``survey
front-line employees on barriers to, and ideas for, matching the best
in business.''
On March 30, 2016, the Core Federal Services Council was
established. The Council emphasized the need to deliver world-class
customer service to the American people. The Council,
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composed of the major high-volume, high-impact Federal programs that
provide transactional services directly to the public, were encouraged
``to improve the customer experience by using public and private sector
management best practices, such as conducting self-assessments and
journey mapping, collecting transactional feedback data, and sharing
such data with frontline and other staff.''
ensuring `excellent service' as a focus in future agency strategic
planning efforts. The PMA included a CAP Goal on Improving Customer in
March 2018; the President's Management Agenda (PMA) and new Cross-
Agency Priority (CAP) Goals were launched. Excellent service was
established as a core component of the mission, service, stewardship
model that frames the entire PMA, embedding a customer-focused approach
in all of the PMA's initiatives. This model was also included in the
2018 update of the Federal Performance Framework in Circular A-11,
Experience with Federal Services, with a primary strategy to drive
improvements within 25 of the nation's highest impact programs. This
effort is supported by an interagency team and guidance in Circular A-
11 requiring the collection of customer feedback data and increasing
the use of industry best practices to conduct customer research. From
2021-2023, Executive Order 14058, Transforming Customer Experience and
Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government, Memorandum M-22-10,
Improving Access to Public Benefits Program Through the Paperwork
Reduction Act, and an OIRA Memorandum titled Strategies for Reducing
Administrative Burden in Public Benefit and Service Programs were
issued. The Executive Order and memoranda, taken as a whole, direct
agencies to take specific actions to improve customer experience and
enhance public participation and community engagement. Furthermore, the
President's Management Agenda contains a Priority titled Delivering
Excellent, Equitable, and Secure Federal Services and Customer
Experience, which, among other things, seeks to improve the service
design, digital products, and customer-experience management of Federal
High Impact Service Providers by reducing customer burden, addressing
inequities, and streamlining processes.
These Presidential actions and requirements establish an ongoing
process of collecting customer insights and using them to improve
services. This new request will enable the Department of Homeland
Security (hereafter ``the Agency'') to act in accordance with OMB
Circular A-11 Section 280, Executive Order 14058, and the OMB memoranda
on burden reduction, to ultimately transform the experience of its
customers to improve both efficiency and mission delivery and increase
accountability by communicating about these efforts with the public.
The Agency will collect, analyze, and interpret information
gathered through this generic clearance to identify services'
accessibility, navigation, and use by customers, and make improvements
in service delivery based on customer insights gathered through
developing an understanding of the user experience interacting with
Government. For the purposes of this request, ``customers'' are
individuals, businesses, and organizations that interact with a Federal
Government agency or program, either directly or via a federal
contractor.
``Service delivery'' or ``services'' refers to the multitude of
diverse interactions between a customer and Federal agency such as
applying for a benefit or loan, receiving a service such as healthcare
or small business counseling, requesting a document such as a passport
or social security card, complying with a rule or regulation such as
filing taxes or declaring goods, utilizing resources such as a park or
historical site, or seeking information such as public health or
consumer protection notices.
Under this request, three types of activities will be conducted to
generate customer insights:
Customer Research (e.g., User Persona and Journey Map Development):
A critical first component of understanding customer experience is to
develop customer personas and journey maps. This process enables the
Agency to more deeply understand the customer segments they serve and
to organize the processes customers interact with throughout their
engagement with the Federal entity to accomplish a task or meet a need.
In order to adequately capture the perspective of the customer and the
barriers or supports that exist as they navigate these journeys, it is
necessary to directly interact with customers rather than relying
solely upon the Agency's stated policy of how a process should work or
employees' interpretation of how services are delivered. This can occur
through a variety of information collection mechanisms that include
focus groups, individual intercept interviews at a service site,
shadowing a user as they navigate a Federal service and documenting
their reactions and frustrations, customer free-response comment cards,
or informal small discussion groups.
Regardless of the format, the Agency will apply Human Centered
Design (HCD) Discovery methods to generate personas and journey maps,
ultimately identifying customer insights. An approach to recruiting
participants, resources for preparing and structuring interviews, and a
consent form for interviewees can be found at <a href="https://www.gsa.gov/cdnstatic/HCD-Discovery-Guide-Interagency-v12-1.pdf">https://www.gsa.gov/cdnstatic/HCD-Discovery-Guide-Interagency-v12-1.pdf</a>. This document is
also included in the package.
Insights documented, summarized and presented in customer personas
and journey maps can then be shared across the program, the Agency,
other Federal, State, and Local government stakeholders and even with
the public to validate and discuss common themes identified. These
products can be used as ``indicator lights'' for where more rigorous
qualitative and quantitative research can be conducted to improve
Federal service delivery.
Publicly shared personas and journey maps will include language
that qualifies their use (see question #16), and high-level, non-
identifying descriptive statistics of the population(s) interviewed to
develop it (ex. ``25 Service members that transitioned to civilian
employment within the last decade, 14 female, 11 male, 21 enlisted and
4 officers) to ensure that the perspective represented is understood.
Quotes or insights will never be associated with an actual individual
unless they have signed a release form (see link above for template)
and this was included in the specific collection request.
Customer Feedback (Satisfaction Survey): Surveys to be considered
under this generic clearance will only include those surveys modeled on
the OMB Circular A-11 CX Feedback survey to improve customer service by
collecting feedback at a specific point during a customer journey. This
could include submitting a form online on a Federal website, speaking
with a call center representative, paying off a loan, or visiting a
Federal service center.
In an effort to develop comparable, government-wide scores that
will enable cross-agency or industry benchmarking (when relevant) and a
general indication of an agency's overall customer satisfaction, High
Impact Service providers must refer to OMB Circular A-11 Section 280
for required survey question wording and organization.
As part of the Customer Experience CAP goal's strategy to increase
transparency to drive accountability, the
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feedback data collected through the A-11 Standard Feedback survey is
meant to be shared with the public. This collection is part of the
government-wide effort to embed standardized customer metrics within
high-impact programs to create government-wide performance dashboards.
Data collected from the questions listed above will be submitted by the
Agency to OMB at a minimum quarterly for updating of customer
experience dashboards on <a href="http://performance.gov">performance.gov</a>. This dashboard will also
include the total volume of customers that passed through the
transaction point at which the survey was offered, the number of
customers the survey was presented to, the number of responses, and the
mode of presentation and response (online survey, in-person, post-call
touchtone, mobile, email). This will help to qualify the data's
representation by showing both the response rate and total number of
actual responses.
User Testing of Services and Digital Products: Agencies should
continually review, update and refine their service delivery, including
communication materials, processes, supporting reference materials, and
digital products associated with a federal program. This often requires
``field testing'' program informational materials, process updates,
forms, or digital products (such as websites or mobile applications) by
interacting with past, existing, or future customers and soliciting
feedback. These activities can include cognitive laboratory studies,
such as those used to refine questions on a program form to ensure
clarity, demo kiosks at a service center where customers can provide
informal feedback while waiting for a service, or more formally
scheduled in-person observation testing (e.g., website or software
usability tests). These information collection activities are more
specific than broad customer research and related to a particular
artifact/product of a federal program. As such, there will be a more
structured interview/set of questions than more open-ended customer
research. Findings from these activities are meant to support the
design and implementation of Federal program services and digital
products and may only be shared in an anonymized/in aggregate if a
particular insight is useful to include as part of a customer persona,
journey map, or common lesson learned for improving service delivery.
The Agency will only submit under this generic clearance if it
meets the following conditions:
<bullet> The collections are voluntary;
<bullet> The collections are low-burden for respondents (based on
considerations of total burden hours or burden hours per respondent)
and are low-cost for both the respondents and the Federal Government;
<bullet> The collections are non-controversial;
<bullet> Any collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions
from respondents who have experience with the program or may have
experience with the program in the near future;
<bullet> Personally identifiable information (PII) is collected
only to the extent necessary and is not retained;
<bullet> Information gathered is intended to be used for general
service improvement and program management purposes
<bullet> The agency will follow the procedures specified in OMB
Circular A-11 Section 280 for the required quarterly reporting to OMB
of trust data and experience driver data from surveys.
<bullet> Outside of the quarterly reporting mentioned in the bullet
immediately above, if the agency intends to release journey maps, user
personas, reports, or other data-related summaries stemming from this
collection, the agency must include appropriate caveats around those
summaries, noting that conclusions should not be generalized beyond the
sample, considering the sample size and response rates. The agency must
submit the data summary itself (e.g., the report) and the caveat
language mentioned above to OMB before it releases them outside the
agency. OMB will engage in a passback process with the agency.
This clearance will help the Agency to establish a process where
customer experience is regularly monitored and measured. The results
will assist the Agency in the planning and decision-making processes to
improve the quality of the Agency's products and services. Results from
feedback activities and surveys will be used to measure against
established baseline standards and for measuring the Agency's progress
toward defined goals. There are neither legal nor technical obstacles
to the use of technology in these information collection activities.
The determination to use technology, and which technology to use, will
be based on the type of information collected and the utility and the
availability of specific technology to each respondent in a proposed
customer research activity or feedback survey.
The information collected in these surveys will represent the
minimum burden necessary to evaluate customer experience with the
Agency's programs and processes. The Agency will minimize the burden on
respondents by sampling as appropriate, asking for readily available
information, and using short, easy-to-complete information collection
instruments.
Without regular mechanisms for collecting and generating customer
insights, the Agency is not able to provide the public with the highest
level of service. These activities will be coordinated to ensure that
most individual respondents will not be asked to respond to more than
one survey instrument per transaction or to participate in more than
one qualitative feedback or testing activity.
Activity and survey instructions will provide all necessary
assurances of confidentiality to the respondents. Although there is no
requirement for such an assurance in statute, the quality of this type
of information requires respondent candor and anonymity.
There is no change in information being collected or the burden.
The Office of Management and Budget is particularly interested in
comments which:
1. Evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is
necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency,
including whether the information will have practical utility;
2. Evaluate the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of
the proposed collection of information, including the validity of the
methodology and assumptions used;
3. Enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to
be collected; and
4. Minimize the burden of the collection of information on those
who are to respond, including through the use of appropriate automated,
electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or
other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic
submissions of responses.
Analysis
Agency: Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Title: Generic Clearance for Improving Customer Experience (OMB
Circular A-11, 280 Implementation).
OMB Number: 1601-0029.
Frequency: Annually.
Affected Public: Individuals or Household.
Number of Respondents: 2,001,550.
Estimated Time per Respondent: N/A.
Total Burden Hours: 101,125.
Suzanne Komara,
Deputy Executive Director, Enterprise Business Management Directorate.
[FR Doc. 2026-18476 Filed 9-9-26; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 9112-FL-P
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</html>Indexed from Federal Register on September 10, 2026.
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