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Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris Administration’s north star has been delivering for the American people. This Administration took office and immediately began to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, drive an economic recovery, make historic investments in manufacturing and infrastructure, and address the climate crisis. To do so, it took decisive action to strengthen the underlying capabilities of Federal agencies and transform how they serve the American public through the Biden-Harris President’s Management Agenda (PMA).

The PMA’s impacts include achieving the largest four-year gain in the American Customer Satisfaction Index since 1999 (9.9%), realizing $60 billion in cost avoidance through category management, and improving critical government services for the American people.

Launched in 2021, the Biden-Harris Administration’s PMA has driven meaningful results across its three core priorities:

Strengthening and Empowering the Federal Workforce

A resilient, engaged Federal workforce is the government’s greatest asset. In response to historic legislation including the PACT Act, CHIPS and Science Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and Inflation Reduction Act, agencies made thousands of new hires to deliver on those promises. At the same time, agencies rededicated themselves to improve overall performance. As a result of these efforts, employee engagement hit an all-time high in the 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.

These actions represent significant progress in strengthening and empowering the nonpartisan, merit-based Federal workforce, while also reducing the time and effort required to hire new federal employees. Designed to ensure the Federal Government is equipped with the talent needed to serve the American people effectively, agencies aligned around shared goals through the PMA to build a seamless, modern talent pipeline. These efforts included:

  • Issuing guidance to improve the federal hiring experience for job seekers, hiring managers, and HR professionals.
  • Launching pooled hiring actions, where one job announcement is used to hire multiple people at different agencies, which has led to faster, more efficient hiring.
  • Protecting the civil service by clarifying and reinforcing long-standing protections and merit system principles.
  • Increasing opportunities for early career talent by expanding the Pathways Programs, making it easier for agencies to hire interns, improving the intern experience, and launching tools like the Agency Talent Portal and an Early Career page and Career Exploration Tool on USAJOBS.
  • Launching the AI, Cyber, and Tech Hiring Surge, recruiting 500 technologists into government and training over 40,000 federal employees on AI.
  • Creating jobs that supported the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law with a focus on equitable access to good paying union jobs.
  • Building a growing suite of data tools including the OPM FEVS, Time-to-Hire, and Cyber Workforce dashboards that empower HR practitioners, front-line managers, and senior leaders to use data to make informed decisions.
  • Enhancing hiring and retention strategies for military-connected spouses, caregivers, and survivors through the Advancing Economic Security Executive Order.
  • Enabling agencies to vet their personnel faster and reduce risk by transitioning the government’s entire national security workforce from periodic reinvestigations to continuous vetting.

Delivering Excellent, Equitable, and Secure Federal Services and Customer Experience

Beginning with the President’s Executive Order on Customer Experience (CX), the Biden-Harris Administration prioritized delivering a high-quality, seamless experience every time the American people interact with government. While the legacy of this approach will be felt for years to come, the immediate impact, the highest four-year gain in citizen satisfaction with government services ever, as measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, has already been felt.

The core of this work has been to ensure that Federal services are centered around the customer–the American public. This PMA has focused on transforming outdated and burdensome processes into seamless, more accessible experiences. Application forms and renewal processes are shorter and increasingly available online, and agencies are using feedback from their customers to continuously improve services.

By focusing on moments where government support matters most, cross-agency teams launched Life Experience projects to design and pilot innovative solutions that meet people where they are, build trust, and meaningfully improve services. Teams across these projects made significant progress in implementing trauma-informed practices by training over 350 FEMA frontline staff, distributing 10,000 Newborn Supply Kits to mothers and families in 10 states, and enabling states to automatically renew Medicaid coverage for over 5 million Americans.

Through this PMA, dozens of Federal agencies have taken actions to improve customer experience, with dozens more expanding their customer experience portfolios to deliver results for the American people. Through these efforts, agencies have increased access to services and reduced tens of millions of burden hours:

  • The State Department reduced its public commitment for routine passport processing to 4-6 weeks, down from 12-18 weeks at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and launched the first-ever Online Passport Renewal. Over 1 million Americans have renewed their passports , all from the comfort of their homes.
  • The Social Security Administration redesigned its website to make it easier to access critical information, adopted eSignature on 90% of the most commonly used forms, and reduced National 800 Number average wait times by more than 30 minutes, altogether saving Americans countless minutes and needless frustration.
  • The Department of Agriculture reduced the time required to complete a farm loan application by half with a first-ever online form, streamlining the process for 26,000 farmers and ranchers annually.
  • The Internal Revenue Service maintained an average wait time of just over 3 minutes for taxpayers calling during the 2023 and 2024 filing seasons, redesigned over 100 notices, and helped 140,000 taxpayers file taxes online via the Direct File pilot.
  • The Department of Veterans Affairs Health and Benefits Mobile app has helped over 2 million veterans successfully refill prescriptions and view and download decision letters about their benefits.
  • The Department of Homeland Security reduced security wait times despite record numbers of travelers by deploying new checkpoint technologies, improving screening processes, and expanding the use of TSA PreCheck and the Mobile Passport Control app.

Managing the Business of Government

Under the Biden-Harris Administration, agencies have improved the returns on taxpayer dollars. The Federal Government awards over $750 billion in federal contracts and, leveraging the scale of the entire federal enterprise, has effectively saved over $60 billion dollars. For the over $1 trillion in annual financial assistance each year, the PMA has also simplified the financial assistance process to ensure recipients spend less on administrative overhead and more on generating results. The PMA also expanded opportunities for small businesses and made “Made in America” real for the first time—recognizing that the strength of our ability to deliver agencies’ missions and the strength of American industry are tied.

Key achievements include:

  • Realized roughly $60 billion in cost savings and avoidance through category management strategies and smarter use of common contract solutions and practices.
  • Launched the Better Contracting Initiative (BCI) to improve Federal Government purchasing, including ensuring better terms and prices for goods and services and sharing data across 100+ federal agencies, organizational units, and programs to enhance acquisition decision making.
  • Created the Federal Program Inventory, a comprehensive, searchable database of all domestic Federal financial assistance programs. This tool ensures the effective stewardship of taxpayer funds, increases transparency, and makes it easier for potential recipients and applicants to find programs.
  • Revised the Uniform Grants Guidance, or Title 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which sets the rules for the management of Federal financial assistance, to reduce red tape and ensure effective oversight.
  • Streamlined federal grant announcements, known as Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs), that will lower the administrative burden for tens of thousands of applicants.
  • Launched two tools to connect agencies with new suppliers: the Federal Supplier Base Dashboard, which evaluates and compares the composition of an agency’s contractor base to those at other agencies, and the Procurement Equity Tool, which helps agencies provide opportunity for small businesses.
  • Established parity between civilian and defense agency certification programs for contracting professionals with a historic Memorandum of Understanding to enhance career mobility.

Looking Ahead

As this PMA chapter concludes, the next iteration of the PMA presents an opportunity to build on these successes, tackle persistent and emerging challenges, and leverage new technology to create a government that is even more responsive and resilient. This progress demonstrates the power of collective action in improving the Federal Government and its ability to serve the public.

Learn more about the many accomplishments and the work that remains on Performance.gov/pma.

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