Recent guidance from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) finally clears up long-standing confusion that has prevented service designers from testing government forms and websites with users and making appropriate adjustments based on that research. The updated guidance on the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), established in 1980 and reauthorized in 1995, is a welcome development that will have an enormous positive impact, as it will help agencies reduce burdens from the government. Still, commonsense PRA legislative reform is needed for the government to make data-driven decisions at the speed necessary to actually deliver great public services.
The confusion and frustration many experience when completing government forms highlights how agencies have too often failed to adopt private-sector strategies for improving the user experience. Ironically, one of the obstacles to improving these interactions is the PRA, a law originally designed to minimize the burdens of government on the public.
Over time, implementation of the PRA has been subject to the cascade of rigidity, in which the effect of well-meaning legislation changes as it filters through layers of bureaucracy. At each point over time, both narrow, literal interpretations of guidance and overly broad interpretations build up, often resulting in outcomes entirely different than intended. As a result, the delivery of government services becomes less effective and efficient.
The PRA has been descending through this cascade for over forty years, and one result of that is that agency PRA officers and others have wrongly assumed that usability testing to improve government forms and websites was itself subject to PRA approval. The ambiguity around the ability of agencies to test their designs with users without going through the lengthy and burdensome PRA approval process deterred agencies from these practices. Consider: even asking potential users if they could understand a prospective government website or form could take months of approvals. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the office tasked with PRA approvals, tried multiple times to issue clarifying guidance and created innovative fast track processes, but agencies continued to struggle with what was actually allowed. The result was often more box-ticking — and, ironically, more paperwork.
This time, though, something remarkable happened. The team at OIRA worked with the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) to test the guidance about usability testing for its own usability. They put the early versions of the guidance in front of the people in agencies who would interpret and operationalize it and asked what they thought it said. In response to the first version, users did not think they would have clear authority to do usability testing without going through approvals. This surprised the authors of the guidance, who absolutely intended to make that authority clear.
Internalizing this feedback, OIRA and USDS workshopped it with actual users and, over the course of several iterations, changed the wording entirely. The final result is an outstanding piece of guidance that not only removes the PRA as a barrier to usability testing, but actually encourages agencies to adopt private sector best practices for improving user experience.
This success is cause for celebration and OIRA’s approach should serve as a model for similar efforts across the government: test, learn, and repeat for better outcomes. Even with improved guidance on usability testing, however, the job is not done.
The PRA, written in 1980, was designed for a pre-internet world. The “10 or more rule” that requires PRA clearance for information collections impacting more than nine people goes all the way back to the 1942 Federal Reports Act, a time in which we had less than half of today’s population. We need a faster, more nimble process than routing even minor collections through a small office in the White House with less than 50 staff if we are to achieve data-driven policy implementation that consistently delivers successful public programs. Legislative reform is necessary to set new, commonsense requirements to enable agencies to act efficiently and responsively. The 119th Congress should act to update the PRA.