Focus Groups for Pension Practitioners April 2010

MODERATOR’S TOPIC GUIDE

PROJECT: PEN0901

DATE: April 11 and 12, 2010

LOCATION: Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC

TOPIC: Evaluation of PBGC.gov Web Site

INTRODUCTION AND WARM-UP (10 minutes)

Paperwork Reduction Act notice: This session has been approved by the Office of Management and Budget under OMB Control No. 1212-0053 (expires 12/31/2012). We need to obtain OMB approval and to tell you we obtained that approval in order to conduct this session. Your participation is voluntary and should take about 90 minutes..

Confidentiality: Your responses will be used by PBGC solely for customer service improvement and will be treated with the confidentiality provided by the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

• Explanation of purpose of the group and how information will be used (To obtain your feedback on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s Web site, www.PBGC.gov, so that the site can better meet the needs of pension professionals)

• Explanation of ground rules

• Explanation of audio and videotaping

• Respondent introductions:

  • Your name

  • Title/function

  • Type of organization (i.e., corporation with pension plan, consulting firm, third party plan administrator, etc.)

  • Type of pension plans work with (i.e., defined benefit, defined contribution, multi employer, single employer, etc.)

SOURCES OF PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION (10 minutes)

• List resources for obtaining information related to professional duties regarding pension plans

• Government resources

• Consultants (Probe: Types of consulting firms used, role of consulting firms, etc.)

• Web sites

• Others

• List Web sites used for professional purposes regarding pension plans

• Sites used on a regular basis

• Reasons for using those sites

• What practitioners specifically like and dislike about these sites. (Probe: Content, Format, Navigational tools)

DETERMINE USAGE AND IMPRESSIONS OF PBGC.GOV (15 minutes)

• Determine overall familiarity with Practitioners page (and links from that page) of PBGC.gov

• Discuss usage behavior including frequency and reasons for use

  • Probe for uses (premium filings, reportable events, information about interest rates and mortality tables, etc.) ( Our focus here is not on premium filings.)

• Identify reasons for not using PBGC’s Web site more often

• Discuss perceptions of/experiences with PBGC.gov

• Overall reactions to Practitioners page

• Visually appealing/inviting

• Ease of navigating, in particular, how practitioners move around PBGC.gov: Searching? Clicking links? Using bookmarks?

• Type and extent of content

• Brainstorm as a group what practitioners expect from/what they would like to see on the Practitioners page

• The types of information respondents expect to find on the site

• Actions they expect to be able to take (functionality)

• As a group, develop the “ideal” practitioner-focused pages of the site based on their needs

• Understand ways the Practitioners page currently meet expectations and ways they do not

OBTAIN REACTIONS TO PAGES OF THE WEB SITE (45 minutes)

• Project each page to the group for review and evaluation. Ask respondents to initially rate each page on its overall appeal (using a 1 to 5 rating on a handout) before discussion begins:

  • Practitioners page (www.pbgc.gov/practitioners/index)

  • Home page (www.pbgc.gov)

  • About page (www.pbgc.gov/about/index)

  • My PAA introductory or bridge page (www.pbgc.gov/practitioners/premium-filings/content/page13265)

  • What’s New for Practitioners page with listserv sign-up (http://www.pbgc.gov/practitioners/whatsnew.html)

  • Interest rates (www.pbgc.gov/practitioners/interest-rates/content/index)

  • Mortality tables (www.pbgc.gov/practitioners/mortality-table/content/page 16629 or www.pbgc.gov/practitioners/mortality-table/content/page 16633)

  • Laws, regulations, and guidance information (www.pbgc.gov/practitioners/law-regulations-informal-guidance/content/page13189)

• Obtain overall reactions to/first impressions of the Practitioner page

• For each page:

  • Describe where the eye travels

  • Discuss the visual appeal

  • Probe reactions to type and extent of content

  • Discuss ease of understanding the content on the page

  • Assess expectations for ease of use

  • Determine ease of finding links to each page from PBGC.gov home page and/or Practitioner page

    • Ease of finding Practitioner page

    • Ease of finding My PAA from the Practitioner page

    • Ease of finding My PAA login from the Home page

    • Ease of finding Frequently Asked Questions

• Obtain reactions to Frequently Asked Questions

  • Discuss whether practitioners know about this section, use and helpfulness of the section; are these really your frequently asked questions? Need for the FAQs, organization of FAQs, other desired FAQ content

• Obtain reactions to the Practitioner filing reminders section (www.pbgc.gov/practitioners/filingreminders)

  • Discuss whether practitioners know about this function, do they use it, do they like it or not, is it easy or difficult to use, suggestions for making the section easier to use

• Discuss how users would like to be able to communicate with PBGC through the site

  • Such as via e-mail, online chats, access to phone numbers, subscription services (automatic information e-mails or feeds), social media (blogs, Web 2.0), multimedia (videos), navigation, etc.

IDENTIFY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVING/ENHANCING THE SITE (15 minutes)

• Brainstorm suggestions for improving/enhancing;

• The display of the Practitioner’s Page and related links/information

• Ease of use and display of the My PAA page

• Clarity of premium instructions, due dates and mailing instructions

• What’s New page

• Corporate FAQs to make them more helpful

FALSE CLOSE/FINAL COMMENTS (5 minutes)

• Check with back room for additional questions. While moderator is in the back room, ask respondents to think about the one thing that they would want PBGC to know to better meet their needs via the Web site.

• Spend a couple of minutes discussing this question when moderator steps back in the room.

• Thank respondents