Loading issue research
Make hours imposed and hours returned a formal public metric: major public services, rules, forms, grants, permits, taxes, benefits, and appeals should report the time they take from people and the time they give back through simplification.
Verification Status
AI-researched, unverifiedLast Reviewed
Jul 6, 2026
Cited Sources
9
What is failing, what we would change, and the conclusion we are willing to defend.
Time is prosperity. A government form that takes 30 minutes from 20 million people has taken 10 million hours of life. A benefit renewal that saves a parent two appointments, a veteran three document hunts, or a small business a week of compliance guesswork has created public value even if no line item changes that day.
The Innovation Party supports a Time Ledger for public institutions. Every major public program, rule, benefit, tax form, permit, grant, procurement process, health-coverage process, and appeal path should report hours imposed and hours returned. Paperwork, waiting, learning the rule, proving the same fact twice, correcting errors, sitting on hold, traveling to an office, tracking a case, and fighting a denial are public costs.
Require high-impact public services and major information collections to publish a time burden ledger: learning time, application time, documentation time, wait time, correction time, appeal time, renewal time, and recurring reporting time.
Add an "hours returned" statement to major service redesigns, rules, forms, grants, permits, tax changes, and automation projects. The public should see who gets time back, how many hours are expected, and how the estimate will be checked.
Expand Paperwork Reduction Act practice beyond form-completion estimates so agencies also account for learning costs, psychological costs, duplicate proof, travel, translation, hold time, and status-chasing where those burdens are material.
Publish time dashboards for High Impact Service Providers: cycle time, wait time, abandonment, repeat contact, denial correction, appeal duration, and burden by channel, geography, disability status, language access, and income where lawful and privacy-safe.
Make burden reduction an outcome in grants, procurement, and public technology contracts. A vendor or grantee should not get full credit for a new portal that moves work from the agency onto the applicant.
Tie the ledger to Law as an API and citizen agents: machine-readable rules, reusable evidence, status APIs, appeal packets, and delegated agents should report hours saved alongside features shipped.
Protect due process: agencies cannot count time saved by discouraging applications, rushing wrongful denials, cutting hearings, hiding eligibility, or shifting work onto unpaid caregivers, nonprofits, states, or frontline workers.
Use the same time logic in the private productivity economy: productivity gains should be enjoyed as wages, stability, time, and higher output.
The Time Ledger is not anti-government. It is pro-public value. People will accept some burden when it protects privacy, safety, program integrity, civil rights, or public money. They should not accept ritual paperwork, duplicated proof, missing status, avoidable travel, or denial mazes because nobody put the hours on the balance sheet.
The platform already has the pieces. RegInfo tracks approved information collections under the Paperwork Reduction Act. OIRA's burden-reduction work uses the language of the "time tax." Performance.gov and A-11 Section 280 already make customer experience part of federal service delivery. GAO has warned that OMB instructions still do not fully capture the burdens people face when trying to obtain benefits. The Innovation Party's next step is to make time returned a headline metric, not an appendix.
Turn frustration into useful pressure.
If this position misses evidence or a lived consequence, challenge it. If it holds up, help test it locally and connect it to the issues around it.