UPDATED 22:19 EDT / DECEMBER 13 2021

POLICY

President Biden signs executive order to improve government services

The Biden administration signed an executive order today to modernize and streamline government services.

The order will affect 17 different federal agencies, so it should make life easier for Americans filing taxes, claiming Social Security, waiting in long lines at the airport, applying for a new passport, starting businesses, paying back student loans and more.

“Bureaucracies assume that people understand how they function but it’s really a very complicated web for the vast majority of people, whether they have Ph.D.s or high school education,” President Joe Biden said. “And so today I’m signing an executive order to ensure that the federal government puts you, the American people, at the front of the line.”

He added that while the order is aimed at a number of key areas, everything that will change will do so for only one reason: “To make it easier to apply for services and benefits that they’re entitled to, they paid for, it’s theirs.”

The White House said the government needs to be accountable for the services it provides, making those services easy to navigate, fast and effective. Biden said all departments of the government will be held responsible for creating such services and will be required to report on their progress.

“The bottom line is we’re going to make the government work more effectively, so it’s not as confusing and it’s straightforward,” said the President. “This will go a long way to restoring faith in government, and I know it sounds like a simple thing, but I think it’s pretty consequential.”

As many Americans will know, what Biden referred to as “administrative hurdles and paperwork burdens” as well as “time taxes” can be the bane of existence at times. Biden said that with the new order, the government was making a “digital Federal front door” to services that should make dealing with certain services less of a Kafkaesque task.

Jason Miller, the Office of Management and Budget’s deputy director for management, told reporters that the new order wasn’t only about improving day-to-day services for the public, but helping them when crises and difficult experiences occur, such as losing your house after a flood or having a child.

“Those are moments where people … may need to interact with the federal government in a really critical way and a really critical moment, but also may need to interact with multiple agencies,” he said. “It’s a process that should be simple and seamless. We’re one enterprise and we should operate accordingly.”

Photo: Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash

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