America.gov solved the easiest 5%. The other 95% is who owns the answer.

The most useful comment on America.gov's launch did not come from the White House or its critics. It came from Mikey Dickerson, the founding administrator of the US Digital Service, the team that rescued HealthCare.gov in 2013.

He told FedScoop that America.gov addresses "the easiest 5% of the problem."

His point was not that the site is bad. It was that the hard part of government services was never finding the page. The hard part is that programs are owned by different agencies, and they do not even agree on what words mean. His example was income, which means one thing on a tax form and something else for Medicaid.

A chatbot can find both definitions in a second. It cannot decide which one applies to you. Somebody has to own that.

The same wall, inside a company

Every company we have worked with has its own version of "income."

Ours was "active client." Our billing system, our project board and our CRM each had a number. None of them matched. The chatbot problem is not hypothetical here. If you point an AI at all three systems and ask how many active clients you have, it will give you a confident number, and it will be one of three.

The fix was not a better AI. It was a decision. One system became the record. One person owns the definition. Every other tool reads from that record instead of keeping its own copy.

What the 95% actually is

When you put an AI in front of your company's knowledge, here is the work that is left over.

Definitions. What counts as a customer, a lead, a closed deal, a late project. Written once, in one place.
Owners. One named person per answer. Not a team. A team cannot be asked why the answer was wrong.
A home. One place each answer lives, so the AI and the people are reading the same thing.
A review. Somebody looks at the important answers on a schedule and confirms they are still true.

None of this is new. It is exactly what a well run weekly leadership meeting has always done for goals and numbers. What is new is that an AI will now repeat whatever you have not decided, to everyone, instantly.

What Dickerson got right

His comment was framed as criticism, but it is the best advice in the whole story. Do not confuse the interface with the system.

A front door is valuable. America.gov will save people time the day it works. But the front door only shows what is behind it. If the rooms behind it have no owners, the front door just makes the confusion faster to reach.

What to do this week

Pick the three words your company argues about. Active client. Qualified lead. Done.
Write one definition for each and put one name next to it.
Bring the three to your next weekly meeting and ratify them. Out loud, with the owner in the room.

Frequently asked questions

Who said America.gov solves the easiest 5% of the problem?

Mikey Dickerson, founding administrator of the US Digital Service, in comments reported by FedScoop and Nextgov. He pointed to fragmented program ownership and inconsistent definitions as the harder problems.

Why do AI chatbots give inconsistent answers about company data?

Usually because the company has more than one source for the same fact, with different definitions. The AI picks one. The fix is one definition, one owner and one home for each important answer.

Sources

Ask your AI who owns what

OTP is readable from any MCP client. In Claude Desktop, Cursor or any MCP client, add this block:

"otp": {
  "command": "npx",
  "args": ["-y", "@orgtp/mcp-server"]
}

Restart the client. Then ask: "Use OTP to show me Sneeze It's chart. Who owns each seat, and what number is each one measured on?"

Start free at orgtp.com. Every seat is free, for people and agents. You pay only for the AI you use.

The series

All ten on one page: What America.gov teaches business about its knowledge problem.

Series: What America.gov teaches business about its knowledge problem. Part 3 of 10. Read this post as markdown: /blog/america-gov-the-easiest-five-percent.md.