H.R. 538 (112^th): Government Customer Service Improvement Act

GovTrack’s Bill Summary

We don’t have a summary available yet.

Library of Congress Summary

The summary below was written by the Congressional Research Service, which is a nonpartisan division of the Library of Congress.

House Republican Conference Summary

The summary below was written by the House Republican Conference, which is the caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives.

This summary can be found at http://www.gop.gov/bill/112/2/hr538.

Summary

H.R. 538 would require the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to do the following:

1. Develop performance measures to determine whether federal agencies are providing high-quality customer service and improving delivery service to their customers;
2. Develop standards to be met by agencies to provide high-quality customer service and improve service delivery; and
3. Include achievements in meeting customer service performance measures and standards in agency performance updates.

The bill would require each federal agency to do the following:

1. Collect information from its customers regarding the quality of its customer services;
2. Include this information in its performance report to the President and Congress; and
3. Designate an employee as the agency's customer relations representative to be responsible for implementing customer service standards.

The bill would provide that employee compliance with agency customer service standards shall be measured in employee performance appraisals.  The bill would also authorize the president to exempt an agency from the application of this Act for national security reasons.  The bill would require agencies to implement this Act from available funds and allows agencies to reprogram funds if necessary.

Finally, the bill would require the following that any savings or reductions in expenditures resulting from this Act to be used to offset the cost of implementing this Act, and that any additional savings to be used to reduce the deficit.

Cost

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that implementing H.R. 538 would have no significant cost over the next five years.  The bill could affect direct spending by agencies not funded through annual appropriations; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures apply.  CBO estimates, however, that any net increase in spending by those agencies would not be significant.  Enacting H.R. 538 would not affect revenues.

House Democratic Caucus Summary

The House Democratic Caucus does not provide summaries of bills.

So, yes, we display the House Republican Conference’s summaries when available even if we do not have a Democratic summary available. That’s because we feel it is better to give you as much information as possible, even if we cannot provide every viewpoint.

We’ll be looking for a source of summaries from the other side in the meanwhile.