John,
One way the government can improve services, with little cost, is to improve the government's understanding of the people it affects. This came up in discussions of EPA's Second Compliance Assistance Advisor Committee, CAAC (a Federal Advisory Committee), on which I served in 2002 to 2004 as a private citizen. The CAAC recommended, among other things, that EPA build better understanding of the regulated community among the people who write and enforce regulations. The value of putting regulators "in the shoes of small business" was not and is not limited to EPA.
Of course, the CAAC focused on how to improve compliance assistance, but an expanded version of their idea would put government policy makers and implementers in the shoes of the communities they affect. All too often policies and procedures are developed by smart, knowledgeable people who have little if any experience of the reality facing the people they regulate, influence, help, or give benefits to. It should be possible create some exercises that would open eyes to the difficulty of finding out what rules apply to me, or what benefits I am eligible for, or what the Government advises given my situation. That should prompt some improvement in the writing and communicating of policies, and I hope in their implementation.