ROME Generic Clearance - Description

DOCUMENTATION FOR THE GENERIC CLEARANCE

OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEYS

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Usability Testing for Registration of Most Everybody (ROME)

SSA SUB-NUMBER: A-05

DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITY:

Background

The public expects the opportunity to communicate with SSA through the channel of their choosing. Currently, SSA provides service via our network of about 1,400 field offices, a National 800 Number, and eServices on our Internet site. SSA handles approximately 53 million eService transactions yearly. This number is increasing significantly with the retirement of the baby boomers and the growth of disability applications due to the downturn in the economy.

SSA is committed to meeting public expectation by providing secure, reliable, and efficient eAuthentication for those who want to use our eServices applications. As an integral part of providing secure and efficient eServices, SSA is seeking to expand, streamline, and consolidate the divergent enrollment processes and strengthen our ID proofing/credentialing services to allow for sophisticated and complex transactions while improving ease of use and enhancing online security. We are currently in the planning phase of the project that we hope will accomplish these goals. The name of that project is Registration of Most Everyone (ROME).

As we envision it, ROME will offer a single credential issuance, management, and authentication system that can be used by any individual seeking to conduct business online with the Social Security Administration (SSA), independent of the type of transaction and user - citizen, business, or government.

The goals of ROME are to:

• Provide real time identity proofing and credential issuance in a single session

• Eliminate redundant enrollment and authentication processes

• Authenticate all users at OMB and NIST compliant Level 2 and 3 identity assurance

• Accept a credential issued by an external entity

• Comply with ICAM federated identity model and other relevant federal standards

The scope of ROME includes:

• Credential issuance/Enrollment: the process of validating an identity and issuing a credential

• Authentication: the process of establishing confidence in user identities electronically presented to an information system

• Elevation: the process of increasing the level of assurance offered by a credential from Level 2 to Level 3

• User ID management: the process of changing information linked to a user account (including, but not limited to: e-mail address, phone number, mailing address)

• Password reset and username recall: the automated process by which a user can reset a forgotten password or recover a lost username

• Account maintenance: the process of assuring a valid and consistent state across the life of the credential (e.g., disabling accounts that are no longer eligible)

• Management information: the process of collecting (for detailed analysis by SSA) all process success and failure points and their associated diagnostic information

ROME involves the use of a third party data source and application service provider. End users include members of the general public.

ROME excludes from its end users any individual with a death or SSA fraud indicator on his or her record, and any individual without a Social Security number. For remote enrollment only, users with a SSA domestic violence indicator and those with a fraud indicator are excluded from the process; however, in-person enrollment is available for this population.

This generic clearance request covers 2 usability activities. 1) We need to conduct user interviews to identify significant user groups and to gather user needs. 2) We need to create a prototype so we can test our proposed ROME model with the different user groups to obtain feedback to ensure that we build a process that is usable and that makes sense.

Description of Actual Survey

SSA will recruit participants from the following categories:

• general public - both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, Internet users, ages 21 to 70+ (no upper age limit)

• business – users of SSA’s current Business Services Online (BSO)

• appointed representatives

• Electronic Records Express (ERE) users

1. SSA will first conduct user interviews to solicit user needs. SSA will interview at least 10 people from each user group (general public, appointed representatives, and business services users) to determine how they enroll and authenticate currently with SSA (or how they would potentially like to enroll and authenticate), and what they would like to see us do to make this process easier and better. Each interview will take no more than an hour.

2. SSA will conduct usability testing in at least three cities throughout the U.S. In each city, we will conduct at least two 1 to 2 hour sessions. Each session will be comprised of 8 to 10 participants. This testing will take place during the months of July, August, and September 2010. We may do additional testing in fiscal year 2011. The usability testing will consist of asking participants to sit at a computer and work through scenarios that we assign them. These scenarios will correspond with the bullet items listed in the “Scope of ROME” above. For example, we will give the participant this task: “You are an employee for a business and your employer wants you to report employee wages to SSA electronically. First you must enroll online as a wage reporter. Complete the following steps to set up an account for yourself and create a username and password.” The employee will work through a series of web pages we will present to them to accomplish this task.

Sharing Results of the Study

SSA will prepare detailed reports on test results and will make them available to all SSA components involved in the project.

IF FOCUS GROUP MEMBERS WILL RECEIVE A PAYMENT, INDICATE AMOUNT:

Participants will receive a payment of $75.

USE OF SURVEY RESULTS:

SSA will use the results of this testing to refine the ROME process, to nail down the screens we design to support the process, including the information we present on them, and to develop a flow that makes sense to the user and meets OMB and NIST standards.

BURDEN HOUR COMPUTATION (Number of responses (X) estimated response time

(/60) = annual burden hours):

Number of Responses: 200

Estimated Response Time: 60 minutes per session

Annual Burden hours: 200 burden hours

These numbers are cumulative for both usability activities.

COPY OF USABILITY TESTING DOCUMENTS

Attachment A: Pre-Questionnaire

Attachment B: User Consent

Attachment C: User Interview Questions

Attachment D: Facilitator Script

Attachment E: Scenarios

Attachment F: Screen Prototypes

Attachment G: Post Test Survey

NAME OF CONTACT PERSON:

Faye I. Lipsky

410-965-8783

MAJOR OFFICE, OFFICE, DIVISION, BRANCH:

DCBFM/OPLM/ODM

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