Request for Approval

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for Improving Customer Experience: OMB Circular A-11, Section 280 Implementation”

(OMB Control Number: 1090-0012)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION:

Customer Journey Mapping qualitative information collection for Bureau of Trust Funds Administration (BTFA), formerly the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians – Trust Beneficiary Call Center.

PURPOSE OF COLLECTION:

What are you hoping to learn / improve? How do you plan to use what you learn? Are there artifacts (user personas, journey maps, digital roadmaps, summary of customer insights to inform service improvements, performance dashboards) the data from this collection will feed?

OMB Circular A-11, Section 280 requires agencies that provide significant services directly to the public to identify and survey their customers, establish a customer experience program, establish service standards and track performance. On July 5, 2018, the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians – Trust Beneficiary Call Center (TBCC) was designated by OMB as one of the government’s “High Impact Service Providers (HISP).” https://www.performance.gov/cx/HISPList.pdf.

High Impact Service Providers are those Federal entities designated by OMB to have the highest impact customer facing services. (A HISP is one that interacts with the public to provide a transactional service or perform a regulatory function in which time, money, or information is used to receive a good, service or authorization. As a HISP, the TBCC must comply with the new Customer Experience (CX) framework in A-11 by December 31, 2018. These requirements include:

1.) Collecting customer feedback following transactions using, at minimum, a set of seven government-wide questions;

2.) Submitting the data to OMB quarterly via data dashboards;

Designation of the BTFA – TBCC as a HISP brings distinction to the Department as the TBCC has been recognized for the critical role it plays in the delivery of trust fund management services to Indian trust beneficiaries. While the TBCC already significantly contributes to the Department successfully meeting its Strategic Plan (Mission Area 4: “Fulfilling our Trust and Insular Responsibilities”), the additional requirements for the TBBC as an HISP will result in further improvements that will increase beneficiary satisfaction and the Department’s ability to meet its fiduciary trust responsibility.

Currently, BTFA maintains approximately 3,000 accounts for 250 Tribal entities with assets exceeding $3.8 billion, and over 387,000 IIM accounts with assets of approximately $597 million. Annually, more than $4.4 billion passes through the Tribal and IIM accounts. This income is generated from the sale or rental of Indian-owned land and natural resources such as timber, and royalties from oil and natural gas exploration and production. Funds are also derived from interest earned on invested funds, as well as awards or settlements of tribal claims.

The Trust Beneficiary Call Center (TBCC) plays a critical role in the delivery of trust fund management services to Indian trust beneficiaries. The TBCC was implemented in 2004, and for the first time ever, Indian trust beneficiaries were provided with an easy-to-access primary point of contact for making inquiries about their trust assets, (i.e., fractional owner interests, account balance and lease activity), checking the status of a requested service or requesting a disbursement from, or an update to an IIM account administered by BTFA. In addition, the TBCC serves as the primary point of contact for the Department’s Land Buy Back Program, where Landowners can request information about the program and receive assistance with updating IIM accounts and completing purchase offer packages.

In an effort to improve the services that the BTFA is providing to our Indian trust beneficiaries - we have initiated a qualitative research project to: a.) better understand how the IIM accounts, and BTFA’s management of the accounts, fits into the lives of our Indian trust beneficiaries, and b.) how we can improve the customer experience.

• Research effort will collect information from Indian trust beneficiaries with IIM accounts and current home telephone numbers who have made contact with the TBCC.

The goal of this project is to tell a compelling story about what our beneficiaries go through when they interact with BTFA. To compile the overall story - we are conducting focus groups with Indian trust beneficiaries who would like to tell us their story about how they interact with BTFA.

The stories we collect from beneficiaries on reservations and from those located in urban locations, across Indian Country, will be combined into a “journey map”. The resulting story told by the “journey map”, will give BTFA insight into the perceptions and goals of our Indian trust beneficiaries and allow BTFA to find and fix problems with our services or processes.

The overall goal is to use the experience stories and insights, as seen through the eyes of our Indian trust beneficiaries - to then create the best possible customer experience that you can ever have - when you interact with BTFA.

TYPE OF ACTIVITY: (Check one)

[ X ] Customer Research (Interview, Focus Groups)

[ ] Customer Feedback Survey

[ ] User Testing

ACTIVITY DETAILS

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[ ] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[ X ] Telephone

[ X] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

2. Who will you collect the information from?

Explain who will be interviewed and why the group is appropriate for the Federal program / service to connect with. Please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and if only a sample will be solicited for feedback, how you will select them(e.g., anyone who provided an email address to a call center rep, a representative sample of Veterans who received outpatient services in May 2019, do you have a list of customers to reach out to (e.g., a CRM database that has the contact information, intercept interviews at a particular field office?)

To ensure that this qualitative research effort results in a comprehensive beneficiary journey that is representative of the majority of beneficiaries, information will be collected from a mix of age groups, account status types and in several locations throughout the US.

Information will be collected from the following demographic segments of the IIM accountholder universe:

•Millennial/Gen X (30-44)

•Middle Age (45-59)

•Older (60-75)

•Veterans

Information will also be collected from beneficiaries’ representative of the following account classification types:

•WAU (Whereabouts Unknown)

•Mineral Owners (Oil and Gas)

• New Beneficiaries (just inherited account within past few months)

•Supervised Account-holders.

•IIM account holders with Unrestricted and Voluntary Hold account status.

Sample listings were created by querying the BTFA Field Operations Tracking (Service Manager) for beneficiary contacts between October 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020. Following is a sample query:

From Service Manager:

Need List of Rosebud (345) accountholders who have been documented by TBCC and Agencies between October 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020.

• Re-select or filter by 57555,57572,57570,57579,57573,69201 Zip Codes.

• If possible filter out Supervised, Adult Non Comp and Minors using Minor Account Type field.

• Remove duplicate contacts.

• Produce spreadsheet list with the following variables:

a. Name

b. Address

c. Telephone number

d. E-mail

e. DOB

f. Minor Account Type

g. Date of last, or mBTFA recent, Interaction.

3. How will you ask a respondent to provide this information?

(e.g., after an application is submitted online, the final screen will present the opportunity to provide feedback by presenting a link to a feedback form / an actual feedback form)

Using trust beneficiary contact information provided by BTFA the contractor support (CFI through DOI Federal Consulting Group RSA’s) will first identify sample groups matching the population segmentation requirements from the government.

For both in-depth interviews and focus groups, the contractor will first make contact, via telephone, to invite individuals to participate, and then provide them with an appointment date and time.

4. What will the activity look like?

Describe the information collection activity – e.g. what happens when a person agrees to participate? Will facilitators or interviewers be used? What’s the format of the interview/focus group? If a survey, describe the overall survey layout/length/other details? If User Testing, what actions will you observe / how will you have respondents interact with a product you need feedback on?

Contractor support (CFI through DOI Federal Consulting Group RSA’s) will collect quantitative information from IIM accountholders using the following techniques:

In-depth interviews (IDIs) with beneficiaries will be used to obtained detailed information about the beneficiary experience among specific groups including: a.) account holders that are considered (WAU – whereabouts unknown), b.) beneficiaries receiving oil and gas royalties and new beneficiaries. There may be 16 one-on-one in-depth interviews (45 minutes)

Group Discussions (focus groups), will be used to obtain qualitative information regarding the beneficiary journey including all touchpoints and pain points. To ensure the documented journey/journey map represents all types of beneficiaries, group discussions will be conducted with the mix of age groups identified above and Indian trust beneficiaries who are also military veterans. There may be 8 Focus Groups, 6-8 participants per group with a total of 48-64 participants (90 minutes each)

BTFA Fiduciary Trust Officers may travel to observe the group discussions, make the beneficiaries comfortable and respond to IIM account specific question which may arise. If there a not any FTOs available, the Chief Beneficiary Officer will attend the sessions.

● The Chief Beneficiary Officer and TBCC Manager will attend sessions in Albuquerque, NM.

● Field Operation will have to identify FTO to attend Denver, CO sessions.

● The Chief Beneficiary Officer and Acting FTO will attend sessions on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Rosebud, SD.

5. Please provide your question list.

Paste here the questions or prompts presented to participants in your activity. If you have an interview / facilitator guide, that can be attached to the submission and referenced here.

Participants will be asked:

• what matters to you,

• what are your goals when you contact BTFA

• where do you go for information about your IIM account,

O do you feel it is a trusted source,

• what is your preference for making contact with BTFA,

• what is it about our management of your trust account that is confusing,

• What do we make difficult that could be made easier?

Please make sure that all instruments, instructions, and scripts are submitted with the request.

See: “BTFA Journey Mapping telephone discussion guide. September 2020”.

6. When will the activity happen?

Describe the time frame or number of events that will occur (e.g., We will conduct focus groups on May 13,14,15, We plan to conduct customer intercept interviews over the course of the Summer at the field offices identified in response to #2 based on scheduling logistics concluding by Sept. 10^th, or “This survey will remain on our website in alignment with the timing of the overall clearance.”)

Originally, the customer journey mapping data collection was to begin in December 2019. Unfortunately, there were multiple delays. The first delay was getting approval from OMB for the contractor’s fast track data collection clearance to include the ability to provide incentives to participants, (OMB Control 1090-0007). The second delay was BTFAs decision to postpone all surveys and interviews due to the pandemic. BTFA made the decision not to impose any burdens on Indian trust beneficiaries especially since most Indian Reservations were experiencing lockdowns.

Customer Journey Mapping individual interviews resumed in October 2020 and a virtual focus group is being piloted on December 21, 2020. If successful, information collection will expand the number of virtual focus groups. Individual and focus group information collection is expected to continue until February 2021.

Note: Due to the pandemic a decision was made to cancel all in-person focus groups, especially on reservations.

7. Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants?

[ x ] Yes [ ] No

If Yes, describe:

The Focus groups will offer "industry standard" refreshment and compensation.

• 16 one-on-one in-depth interviews (45 minutes) - $50 incentive for participants

• 8 in-person discussion groups (90 minutes) – 6 to 8 participants per group - $75 incentive for participants with light refreshments available

BTFA’s Indian Trust beneficiaries would be attending these Focus Groups, not federal employees. There may be 8 Focus Groups, 6-8 participants per group with a total of 48-64 participants. Compensation would be a gratuity to cover travel costs and time spent providing information to the government.

In regards to Travel, participants will be local. They were selected using addresses within zip codes that are in close proximity to the city or Indian Reservation locations selected for research site. At the reservation location, there is no public transportation system that can be used and walking is out of the questions. In the cities, public transportation is available and walking is probably not possible.

BURDEN HOURS

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden Hours
Customer Interviews	20	30/60	10
Focus Groups	64	90/60	96
Totals	84		106

CERTIFICATION:

I certify the following to be true:

1. The collections are voluntary;

2. The collections are low-burden for respondents (based on considerations of total burden hours or burden-hours per respondent) and are low-cost for both the respondents and the Federal Government;

3. The collections are non-controversial and do not raise issues of concern to other Federal agencies;

4. Any collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the near future;

5. Personally identifiable information (PII) is collected only to the extent necessary and is not retained;

6. Information gathered is intended to be used for general service improvement and program management purposes

7. Upon agreement between OMB and the agency aggregated data may be released as part of A-11, Section 280 requirements only on performance.gov. Summaries of customer research and user testing activities may be included in public-facing customer journey maps.

8. Additional release of data will be coordinated with OMB.

Name: Bryan Marozas – BTFA Chief Beneficiary Officer

All instruments used to collect information must include:

OMB Control No. 1090-0012

Expiration Date: 12/31/2023

HELP SHEET

(OMB Control Number: XXXX-XXXX)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Provide the name of the collection that is the subject of the request. (e.g. Comment card for soliciting feedback on xxxx)

PURPOSE: Provide a brief description of the purpose of this collection and how it will be used. If this is part of a larger study or effort, please include this in your explanation.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: Check one box. If you are requesting approval of other instruments under the generic, you must complete a form for each instrument.

CERTIFICATION: Please read the certification carefully. If you incorrectly certify, the collection will be returned as improperly submitted or it will be disapproved.

Personally Identifiable Information: Agencies should only collect PII to the extent necessary, and they should only retain PII for the period of time that is necessary to achieve a specific objective.

BURDEN HOURS:

Category of Respondents: Identify who you expect the respondents to be in terms of the following categories: (1) Individuals or Households;(2) Private Sector; (3) State, local, or tribal governments; or (4) Federal Government. Only one type of respondent can be selected per row.

No. of Respondents: Provide an estimate of the Number of respondents.

Participation Time: Provide an estimate of the amount of time required for a respondent to participate (e.g. fill out a survey or participate in a focus group)

Burden: Provide the Annual burden hours: Multiply the Number of responses and the participation time and divide by 60.

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