[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CONSTITUENT SERVICES: BUILDING A MORE
CUSTOMER FRIENDLY CONGRESS
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE
MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS
OF THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 14, 2022
__________
Serial No. 117-21
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Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Modernization of
Congress
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via http://govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48-594 WASHINGTON : 2022
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS
DEREK KILMER, Washington, Chair
ZOE LOFGREN, California WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina,
EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri Vice Chair
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado BOB LATTA, Ohio
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
NIKEMA WILLIAMS, Georgia DAVE JOYCE, Ohio
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
COMMITTEE STAFF
Yuri Beckelman, Staff Director
Derek Harley, Republican Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
OPENING STATEMENTS
Chairman Derek Kilmer
Oral Statement............................................... 1
Vice Chairman William Timmons
Oral Statement............................................... 2
WITNESSES
Ms. Anne Meeker, Director of Strategic Initiatives, POPVOX
Foundation
Oral Statement............................................... 3
Written Statement............................................ 6
Ms. Nina Olson Executive Director, Center for Taxpayer Rights
Oral Statement............................................... 13
Written Statement............................................ 15
Mr. Matt Lira, Partner, Hangar Capital
Oral Statement............................................... 25
Written Statement............................................ 27
Discussion....................................................... 32
CONSTITUENT SERVICES: BUILDING A MORE CUSTOMER-FRIENDLY CONGRESS
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THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2022
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on the
Modernization of Congress,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in Room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Derek Kilmer
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Kilmer, Cleaver, Phillips,
Williams, Timmons, Davis, and Latta.
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time. And I now recognize myself
for 5 minutes for an opening statement.
So whenever the topic of how Congress can do a better job
comes up, I often think about my weekly or mostly weekly
experience at the airport where I unfortunately spend a lot of
my time.
After I go through security, I immediately get a text from
CLEAR, which is our expedited airport security service, asking
me how they did. And I can give positive or negative feedback
instantaneously, and they can use that information to figure
out pain points and improve services.
So Congress doesn't have anything like that, but perhaps it
should. Any Member will, of course, tell you that we get plenty
of constituent feedback in the form of phone calls and emails
and social media posts. Our job as Representatives is to give
voice to our constituents, and we need to hear from them in
order to effectively represent their views in the policymaking
process.
This form of feedback is an important and necessary feature
of representative democracy, but I am talking about a different
kind of feedback. In addition to representing the views of our
constituents, our offices also help them navigate the Federal
bureaucracy. We facilitate constituent requests to the
executive branch agencies, we assist in scheduling tours of
various government buildings, and we help them secure official
documents and flags flown over the Capitol Building. These are
really important services, and we have no idea if we are doing
a good job providing them.
So often this work involves sending constituent requests on
to another entity. And then, depending on that entity, to
follow through, tracking requests can be incredibly difficult,
if not impossible, in some cases. And privacy protection rules
can make it tough for us to follow up with Federal agencies in
getting additional information that might assist our
constituents in getting a simple status update. This is an area
where I think feedback, as well as systems for tracking
requests and detecting common patterns, would be immensely
helpful.
For example, we might learn from constituent feedback that
a particular agency's response time is unusually slow. Tracking
systems might show us where requests are getting held up, and
those systems might also help us detect patterns in the number
of requests we are getting related to a particular government
program.
This kind of data can inform Congress' oversight activities
and help us get ahead of problems before they do real damage.
These kinds of customer feedback loops are pretty standard in
pretty much every business, and there is a reason for that.
They help companies improve their customer service, which then
improves customer trust in the business.
We know that Congress isn't a business, but it does work
for the American people. And when it comes to the services our
offices provide, constituent feedback can help us do a better
job. The American people expect competent customer service, and
I think we owe it to our constituents to meet, if not exceed,
that standard.
So the good news is that technology solutions exist, and
today we are going to hear from some experts who have thought a
lot about how Congress can take advantage of feedback and
tracking systems that are standard across the private sector.
The committee will use its rules that allow for a more
flexible hearing format that encourages discussion in the civil
exchange of ideas and opinions.
Here comes the good, wonky part.
In accordance with clause 2(j) of House rule XI, we will
allow up to 30 minutes of extended questioning per witness.
And, without objection, time will not be strictly segregated
between the witnesses, which will allow for extended back-and-
forth exchanges between members and the witnesses.
Vice Chair Timmons and I will manage the time to ensure
that every member has equal opportunity to participate.
Additionally, members who wish to claim their individual 5
minutes to question each witness pursuant to clause 2(j)(2) of
rule IX will be permitted to do so following the period of
extended questioning.
I feel like I really nailed that.
So, with that, I would like now--I would like to now invite
Vice Chair Timmons to share some opening remarks.
Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to begin by thanking our witnesses for joining us
today. Your combined years of public service and your ongoing
work to improve the effectiveness and responsiveness of
government will surely provide unique and helpful perspectives
from which we can draw in evaluating Congress' own performance
in identifying the areas of improvement.
I am very excited for today's hearing on improving
constituent services and opportunities to make Congress a more
customer-friendly and helpful institution.
I is often said that this is a people business. More
accurately, it is a service business.
I cannot tell you how rewarding it is to deliver top-rate
constituent services to people in my district. It is one of the
best parts of this job, helping people get something from the
Federal Government that they are owed, whether it was during
the pandemic with PPP loans and then COVID relief or veteran's
benefits, Medicare, you name it. We deliver the best customer
service possible, and we love doing it.
And if each office can improve just a little bit because of
this hearing, it will have a huge impact on the American
people. And, more importantly, as the chairman referenced, if
we can get better feedback on what are the difficult parts of
the Federal Government that are coming up short across the
country, we can improve processes. And we can use those
processes to make the whole system better.
So we are going to really make some progress in this
hearing, and I cannot wait to hear your recommendations.
Again, I am sorry I am not there. I wish I was. Looking
forward to being back with you all next week.
But, Mr. Chairman, look forward to this hearing. Thank you
so much. Thank you to the witnesses.
And I will yield back.
The Chairman. Terrific.
I would now like to welcome our three witnesses who are
here to share with us their experiences in working to make
Congress a more responsive institution.
Witnesses are reminded that your written statements will be
made part of the record.
Our first witness is Anne Meeker. Ms. Meeker is director of
Strategic Initiatives at POPVOX Foundation, a nonpartisan
platform for civic engagement tools. Prior to this, she was the
technology, science, and data project manager for POPVOX. Ms.
Meeker previously served as the director of Constituent
Services for Congressman Seth Moulton and managed the
Technology, Science, and Data Orientation Session at the U.S.
House of Representatives New Member Orientation for the class
of 2020.
Ms. Meeker, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENTS OF MS. ANNE MEEKER, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC
INITIATIVES, POPVOX FOUNDATION, CLEVELAND, OH; MS. NINA OLSON,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR TAXPAYER RIGHTS, WASHINGTON,
D.C.; AND MR. MATT LIRA, PARTNER, HANGAR CAPITAL, WASHINGTON,
D.C.
STATEMENT OF ANNE MEEKER
Ms. Meeker. Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, members of
the select committee, and staff, thank you for holding today's
hearing on constituent services and for your continued hard
work to make Congress more resilient.
I had the privilege of serving as Director of Constituent
Services for the Office of Congressman Seth Moulton until
December of 2019. Working with constituents of the
Massachusetts 6th as part of that team was one of the greatest
honors of my life.
I would also like to say I have been a long-time Taxpayer
Advocate Service fangirl, and I have spent the last few years
professionally bothering Matt Lira in my current role as
director of Strategic Initiatives for the POPVOX Foundation. So
it is an enormous honor to appear with them today.
One of the things that has stayed with me from my work as a
caseworker is how many constituents facing incredible
challenges had the grace to ask how their experience could be
used to prevent similar problems from happening for others. For
me, answering that question is at the heart of building a more
constituent-friendly Congress. And in that spirit, it is my
privilege to offer four recommendations today.
First, the Chief Administrative Officer should establish
House-wide unified analytics to identify and monitor casework
trends. Every day, congressional offices receive rich input
directly from constituents attempting to access vital services
and information from Federal agencies. These cases often
illustrate bottlenecks or a lack of clarity in language or
procedures and can be a valuable source of insight for
committee oversight or legislative action. However, Congress
does not take advantage of this information because this data
is siloed across 541 individual offices.
To make that data useable, this committee should consider
recommending that the House Chief Administrative Officer work
with caseworkers to develop a case-tagging system that better
captures the details of individual cases, require technology
vendors to incorporate the new tagging system into approved
casework software, and develop an opt-in advanced programming
interface, or API, allowing offices to share anonymized case
data to a central repository.
Aggregated casework data could allow support agencies,
committees of jurisdiction, and individual offices to track
casework trends and identify emerging problem areas. These
statistics can also help lawmakers identify regional or State-
specific problems and help new offices understand their
districts' needs.
For constituents, this would mean a more effective casework
system overall and the reassurance that Congress is learning
from their individual experiences.
Second, expanded contact information for relevant agency
staff. So in our office, we spent an enormous amount of time
tracking agency contacts beyond CRS' basic liaison list and had
horror stories of casework inquiries lost and abandoned in
boxes. Finding correct agency contact information is also one
of the most significant challenges for new offices.
To address this challenge, this committee could recommend
that CRS maintain an updated contact list of agency liaisons,
including field office staff, processing center staff, ombuds
or advocate staff, and other contacts, as appropriate, for each
agency.
Third, expand opportunities for caseworkers to share best
practices, including through in-person professional
development. One case that has always stayed with me was a
retired middle school math teacher who came to our team when
her Social Security retirement benefits were suddenly and
dramatically reduced due to the Windfall Elimination Provision.
When we could not help her reach a favorable resolution, we
worked with our local Code for America Brigade to create a
benefit calculator that we hoped would help other constituents
affected by this provision avoid the same surprise.
Casework teams around the country develop their own
innovations to help constituents, but these innovations often
remain limited to one district because there is no way for
offices to share their work.
I would encourage this committee to recommend that CAO
expand the online training and information hub associated with
its new coaching program to allow casework teams to share their
own case studies and resources, giving all offices access to
the institutional knowledge required for good casework.
I also want to emphasize the importance of in-person
training and networking opportunities. Providing a way for
caseworkers to form relationships and learn from colleagues
benefits all offices, especially because casework topics often
transcend partisan divides and open pathways for bipartisan
collaboration.
Lastly, expand support services for district and casework
staff. While seeing the courage and the selflessness and the
resilience of ordinary Americans through casework is uniquely
rewarding, casework is also uniquely taxing. Caseloads remain
far above pre-pandemic averages, and constituent interactions
are increasingly mistrustful and combative. Recent issues like
the pandemic and the Afghanistan withdrawal have also
challenged casework teams' capacities like never before.
Caseworker burnout impacts Congress' ability to serve
constituents, and I encourage this committee to recommend the
House Office of Employee Assistance consider a series of site
visits to district offices to understand the current working
environment for casework and assess whether additional support
recourses are warranted.
My written testimony contains further details on each of
these recommendations.
Thank you again for your attention to this important topic,
and I look forward to your questions.[The statement of Ms.
Meeker follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Meeker.
And our next witness is Nina Olson. Ms. Olson is the
executive director and founder of the Center for Taxpayer
Rights. From 2001 to 2019, she served as the National Taxpayer
Advocate of the United States, whose office assists taxpayers
in resolving their problems with the IRS and in making
administrative and legislative recommendations to mitigate
systemic problems.
Ms. Olson, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF NINA OLSON
Ms. Olson. Thank you, Chairman Kilmer, Vice Chairman
Timmons, and members of the select committee. Thank you for
inviting me today to speak about the Congressional Affairs
Program of the Taxpayer Advocate Service, or TAS, and the
constituent services it provides to local and Washington, D.C.,
congressional offices.
The first prong of TAS' statutory mission is to help
taxpayers solves their problems with the IRS. This is the focus
of TAS' case advocacy function. To deliver that mission,
Congress required the National Taxpayer Advocate, or NTA, to
establish at least one local office in every State. Today, TAS
has 75 local offices, including the District of Columbia and
Puerto Rico. Each office is headed by a local taxpayer
advocate, or LTA, and staffed with case advocates who work on
taxpayer cases.
Case advocates maintain an inventory. That is, they own
their caseload. Every case advocate has their own toll-free
line extension so taxpayers have a freeway to get directly in
touch with their case advocate.
To get a case accepted into TAS, taxpayers have to
experience significant hardship, which is defined as a
significant privation, or imminent threat of harm or adverse
impact, or a delay over and above normal processing times. TAS
assistance is available to all taxpayers, individuals, small
and medium business, large entities, nonprofit entities, even
municipalities, States, and Tribal governments.
Between 2001 and 2019, TAS received over 4 million cases.
For each of those cases, TAS assigned at least one issue code,
describing what was involved in the case. For example, an
earned income credit audit or a request for a Federal tax lien
released or a frozen tax refund flagged for identity theft.
With over 100 issue codes available, TAS cases paint a clear
picture of where taxpayers are struggling and where IRS
procedures seem to be confusing or deficient.
The Congressional Affairs Program grows out of TAS'
geographic approach to its casework. TAS' local offices are
responsible for working all case-related issues that
congressional offices send to the IRS. Every congressional
district and State are assigned to one local taxpayer advocate
office. In this way, relationships and trust between the LTA,
case advocates, and local congressional staff build up over
time.
The importance of congressional cases is reaffirmed by the
requirement that all correspondence with the congressional
office must be signed by the LTA. It cannot be delegated. LTAs
are required to visit each congressional local office at least
once each year. When local congressional offices hire new
staff, the LTAs are required to reach out to the staff and
explain how best to interact with TAS.
The hundreds of thousands of cases TAS receives each year
are a gold mine of data with which to identify systemic
problems, problems that are affecting not just the specific
taxpayer involved in the case but a group of taxpayers or all
taxpayers. TAS staff analyze TAS case data to identify trends
in IRS program areas and identify whether problems are
occurring at a local, regional, or national level.
TAS constituent case data also helps TAS advocate
internally for improvement to IRS procedures and employee
guidance. In this way, through TAS predecisional advocacy, it
can prevent problems from occurring or recurring, thereby
minimizing burden and harm to constituents.
By requiring the NTA to issue two reports to Congress
annually, Congress gave the NTA a very important vehicle with
which to independently raise her uncensored concerns about
taxpayer problems and directly make administrative and
legislative recommendations to Congress. The reports are
grounded in both the case and systemic advocacy work that TAS
does every day.
The annual Congressional Affairs Program conference held in
February each year completes the cycle of TAS' systemic
advocacy and constituent service. Prior to the conference, LTAs
contact the Members of Congress aligned with their offices and
schedule meetings with Members or staff. During these visits,
LTAs are able to share their firsthand experiences, the results
of their casework originating from that office, and thereby
bringing TAS' recommendations close to home.
After their congressional visits, they share their
comments, they shared their--they would share their comments
with me and expressions of interest from the Members, and I
could follow up with the Members or staff. These visits often
resulted in legislation being introduced.
So I just thank you today for the opportunity to share with
you my perspective on constituent service provided by the
Office of the Taxpayer Advocate, and I look forward to working
with your committee on this matter so critical to improving the
operation of government and establishing trust.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Olson follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Olson.
And last but not least, we are joined by Matt Lira, who is
a partner at Hangar Capital. Prior to that, he most recently
served as Special Assistant to the President for Innovation and
Policy Initiatives during the Trump administration. Mr. Lira
has had a unique career working in the political, government,
and private sectors to improve digital platforms to make a
smarter, more efficient and more effective government. He has
also served as senior advisor to House Minority Leader Kevin
McCarthy and as a deputy executive director of the National
Republican Senatorial Committee.
Mr. Lira, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MATT LIRA
Mr. Lira. Thank you.
Chairman Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, and members of the
committee, thank you for holding today's hearing and for
inviting me to discuss this important topic.
We all know the feeling, what it is like to be delighted by
customer interaction. Review any list of the most popular, most
trusted, and often the most successful brands in the United
States and you will see a list of organizations that treat
their stakeholders well.
Throughout every touch point, in ways both large and small,
the user experience is prioritized. It is more than a mere
luxury. It is a feeling of respect, it is a feeling of being
valued, and it creates trust.
At the core, this is what constituent service is all about.
Delivering a modern approach for constituent services has the
potential to reinvigorate the legislative process, streamline
casework requests, and rebuild the public's trust in their
national civic institutions.
In my discussions with Members and staff, there has rarely
been resistance to the idea of modernization in principle. In
fact, it is an idea that is typically met with enthusiastic
support. However, in practice, implementation efforts are often
inhibited by capacity limitations within their offices.
To confront this reality, the House should prioritize
improvements that unlock the ability to improve not just a
single constituent service but the overall capacity to improve
all constituent services. These can be outlined across three
broad categories: ensuring executive sponsorship, enhancing
House-wide capabilities, and expanding the capacity of
individual Member offices.
Towards that end, I recommend the following initial steps
be taken. One, the House should designate and empower a senior
official with responsibility for coordinating improvements to
House-wide capabilities in constituent experience. In support,
each House officer should designate a point person for
improving constituent services impacted by their agency.
For most Americans, the only direct interaction they will
have with their elected representatives is via constituent
services. Yet institutional responsibility for the baseline
quality of those experiences is somewhat amorphous. While there
are several dedicated public servants who care about this issue
working in the House and doing phenomenal work, these concerns
are typically only one aspect of a broader portfolio, rather
than their primary focus and responsibility.
Two, the House should publish a core set of secure
standards-compliant application programming interfaces, or
APIs, for the most common constituent services provided by
House offices. Similar in this respect to the Communicating
with Congress service, these constituent service APIs would
enable approved developers and vendors to use their expertise
to improve the constituent experiences provided by the House.
Three, the House should leverage existing commercial
technologies that will remove the extensive inefficiencies that
have long faced the daily operations of individual Member
offices, particularly those which are currently handled by
entry-level and junior staff. Time, energy, and resources spent
performing repetitive, manual processes can be shifted to
higher-value work. There is perhaps no greater opportunity for
rapidly expanding the ability of every Member office to improve
their engagement with their constituents.
Ultimately, however, the House should do more than
streamline existing processes. It should incorporate modern
technology into the overall congressional workflow. In this
single week, Congress is expected to consider 26 separate
pieces of legislation, conduct 14 hearings, and host countless
engagements on a full range of topics. Each event is important
to certain constituencies. Yet most of those same
constituencies will never know they occurred. In this regard,
Congress is often like a student who completes their homework,
yet neglects to actually turn it in. This is more than the
communication challenge it is often confused to be. It reflects
a fundamental disconnect between congressional capabilities and
the public's expectations.
Over a half century ago, faced with the rapid emergence of
television, the House embraced new technology and fully
incorporated television into its routines. Congress did more
than simply add an easel to the corner of a room or allow
individual Member offices to experiment with the camera. The
House floor and committee hearing rooms, including the one we
are sitting in today, received stage lighting, control booths,
becoming elaborate television studios in effect. These
capabilities were more than vanity. They enabled the Congress
to succeed in an era dominated by television.
Today, it is once again critical that Congress as an
institution modernize its capabilities to meet the public's
expectations in a digital world. Every day, somewhat quietly in
the background, thousands of constituent actions--or
interactions are happening throughout congressional offices.
How many of those interactions have delighted people? How many
of those have made people feel heard by their government? How
many have created trust?
I commend the committee for hosting this important
discussion. I have more extensive recommendations in my written
statement, and I look forward to our discussion.
[The statement of Mr. Lira follows:]
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The Chairman. Thanks very much.
I now recognize myself and Vice Chair Timmons to begin a
period of extended questioning of the witnesses, and any member
who wishes to speak should just signal their request to either
me or Vice Chair Timmons.
So, Mr. Lira, I kind of want to start where you ended. You
know, it seems like there is the capacity for technology to
improve the engagement of Members of Congress with their
constituents. So I think in your written testimony you
mentioned the analogy of Congress being like a student who
completes their homework and then forgets to turn it in. You
know, that is, to me, a great description of the disconnect
that exists between congressional offices and constituents.
Congress actually does some of this important work that our
constituents care about, but we hear from our constituents that
they don't know about it.
You know, so just as an example, a constituent may write in
about a topic about which they care passionately, and they may
get a response letter at that time. But then, if something
actually happens to that bill, it passes the House or, you
know, maybe we have a system where eventually we figure out a
499 or something like that in response, but it seems like
technology exists that would enable something to happen more
directly and immediately to address a constituent's concern.
How hard would that be?
Mr. Lira. Well, thank you, Chair. That is a fantastic
question.
I think--so you nailed, I think, the essential point, which
is that people are expressing proactively their interest in a
given issue, oftentimes in a specific piece of legislation, you
know. And yet, you know, they get their response, the generic
form letter. Maybe in some offices it is fast and some offices
it is a little slower, but it ultimately doesn't keep up with
the work that Congress is actually doing.
So from a technological perspective, it is actually quite
easy to build platforms which would enable even automated
responses and updates to say, well, if someone has written in
about--I will make it easy--like H.R. 1, that they receive
updates on their preferred method of communication--which may
not be a letter; it could be a text message or a social
update--that, oh, H.R. 1 has moved through committee. H.R. 1
has passed the House. H.R. 1 has become law.
And the reas--if you were to task an individual office with
doing that with today's capabilities, it would be daunting----
The Chairman. Yeah.
Mr. Lira [continuing]. Because it would be a manual process
and people are underwater, just keeping their head afloat with
all the inbound communication.
But this is again where the technology plays a critical
role. By automating not only that capability but other
capabilities that they are currently spending manual work hours
on, it enables that kind of communication to happen
programmatically.
I think historically there have been Member offices that
have experimented with these kinds of approaches on an
individual level, some of which with a certain measure of
success. But the challenge is--and, again, I draw the analogy
back to television, you know, 50 to 70 years ago. The
expectation that an individual Member office with their level
of resource should build this infrastructure I think is
unrealistic. This needs to be something that is provided by the
entirety of the House to all offices so that they can all be
positioned to provide these sorts of updates.
One other extension on that, if you will indulge me, is, in
addition to--I think providing updates as to what Congress is
doing is the baseline and that once you are able to do that
programmatically, you actually unlock the ability to do true
authentic engagement on top of that.
So if someone writes in a letter about H.R. 1, and it is in
the committee, that you would have the opportunity as a Member
to have, you know, a live-streamed Q&A session or a
teletownhall about that specific bill with people who have
expressed interest, with constituents who have expressed
specific interest about that legislation. And, again, I view
this as an area of tremendous opportunity for the House.
The Chairman. Yeah, I do too.
Let me stick on this theme of how we might use technology
better. And, Ms. Meeker, I wanted to get a sense from you, and
you touched on this in your testimony.
Right now, the technology tools that are used by
congressional offices are mostly focused on incoming and
outgoing correspondence but are also used for casework. Are
there tools available that are better suited to intaking and
tracking and processing casework?
And beyond that, I could not agree with you more about the
importance of, as we get casework, as we do casework,
aggregating some of that information and identifying problems
that are consistent across Member offices. Is there a way to do
that now? Is there any way with the tools that are in place now
to use anonymized data for constituent management system and
address some of these concerns?
Those are my two questions.
Ms. Meeker. Sure. So to take those questions in order, so
as you mentioned, the current constituent relationship
management platforms are not necessarily custom built for
casework. I will say I am aware that there are other software
platforms that are built more for analogous interactions. Like,
I know that there are tech--there is technology available for
like social work interactions and medical interactions that may
be closer analogies to casework. I haven't personally used
them, so I can't speak to how effective they are or how much
they would translate into a congressional office.
To your question on whether it is possible to gather and
use casework data right now, I think individual offices are
doing that. So in our office, we did develop a more extensive
system of case tagging that was incredibly helpful for our team
for assigning case portfolios, for tracking trends at the
district level.
But as far as using it on a national scale, to my
knowledge, there is no way to do that right now. And there are
kind of two things that are in the way there. The first is
that, as I said, each office tags differently. And most offices
develop tags that go above and beyond the ones that come
standard with CRMs. But that means that each office develops a
different set of tags that aren't analogous and can't be
transferred between offices right now. And then, as you say,
there is no way to bring all of those together.
The Chairman. Yeah.
Ms. Meeker. There is no way to just bring them all into one
aggregate data set.
The Chairman. Yeah.
Let me invite Vice Chair Timmons to weigh in with
questions.
Mr. Timmons. Thanks, Chairman.
I want to build on what we just finished on. Matt, you were
talking about APIs. That is essentially what we are talking
about here, trying to get the data aggregated and then
anonymized so we can learn from it. Is that what you were
referencing in your opening?
Mr. Lira. Yes, sir, to a certain degree. Inclusive of that,
I would go beyond that one specific task, but I think that is
one element of it. You know, I think when you think of the
privacy act implications or the, you know, the constituent
relationship realities of Members wanting to retain ownership
over that, the way that I like to think about it is, rather
than bring data to questions, I bring questions to data.
And so the data can remain within the repository of the
Member office and under the Member's control and, therefore,
respect the confidences of their constituents, but you are
still able to do the broadscale analysis that Anne referenced
through APIs.
I would go further with APIs to say I think that APIs can
be used for all constituent services, not only casework data.
But, yes, there is the potential there.
Mr. Timmons. Do you know of any State, local, or foreign
government that is doing this effectively?
Mr. Lira. I don't know of any State and local, though I am
sure they are out there by sheer numbers. Internationally, I
mean, everyone speaks of Estonia, but I think of the United
Kingdom. They have been able to leverage APIs to connect their
legacy back-end infrastructure, which is often out of date, to
enable modern, front-end user experiences.
I was in discussion with the United Kingdom in my previous
role, and they have fairly good front-end user experiences for
the Parliament. And I was asking, well, how do you do this, and
how did you shift to new servers, and how did you to the cloud
and sort of all these mammoth, you know, technology migration
tasks.
And they were, oh, yeah, we still have to do that. We
haven't done that yet, but we have been able to use APIs to
make sure that our constituents are having a modern experience.
So they are prioritizing the end user experience even as
they pursue back-end technology.
Mr. Timmons. Sure. One more question. Speaking of improving
services overall, as you recall, Congress passed the Creating
Advanced Streamlined Electronic Services for Constituents Act,
which is a great name, the CASES Act. And, I guess, my question
is--theoretically, we should be fully transitioned to digital
signatures and it should be somewhat mandated, I guess. It
doesn't seem like that is the case.
Could you talk about--Matt, could you talk about
implementation of the CASES Act, how it would improve services,
and whether it has been implemented universally or whether we
still need to work on that?
Mr. Lira. Yes, sir. That is a fantastic question. First of
all, I will say, as a former staffer, I always appreciate a
great acronym for any piece of legislation. So CASES is on that
list.
The implement--so CASES, I think, is critically important.
You have the--I believe it was inspired by disaster response
where people whose homes had been destroyed were waiting to get
a wet signature before they could get disaster process
underway. So it is fantastic legislation.
You know, Congress did its job. OMB has issued its guidance
to do implementation, but the agency implementation is varied,
that while some agencies have moved forward on cases, not all
agencies, including some A-level, high-impact service
providers. So the 26 or so agencies that provide the highest--
the most touch points services out there have yet to do it.
And for me it is a question of prioritization. The
legislation, you know, passed in 2019. We then went into the
crisis era. And as we come out of that era, I think it is
important for Congress to reiterate that that is a priority for
agencies to do their migration and ensure that it happens.
It would be enormous benefit for constituents. And, again,
if you go for--it may not be the top problem facing an agency's
internal operation. It may not be the top problem facing the
average congressional office, but it is one of the top problems
facing constituents. And so if you face--if you use a user-
first mindset, it should be one of the top priorities to
update.
Mr. Timmons. So would you say that this is bureaucratic
resistance? Do we need to change laws? What can we do to push
this forward?
Mr. Lira. So given the CASES Act itself provides the
statutory authority and, I believe, the mandate to do it, I
don't believe it is a question of statutory authorization. My
experience with agencies would indicate that there is--there
are excuses and there are reasons. And so if they are giving
you the need for a statutory change to implement this,
particularly when other agencies have already done it, I would
file that under the category of an excuse and something that
Congress should provide oversight energy against.
If there is an authentic reason--and I suspect the reasons
will look like, you know, budget levels and just general
priorities for their authorization--then, again, that lends
itself to oversight to say, well, we appreciate that the agency
has different priorities, but the Congress has established this
as the priority and it should, therefore, move its way up the
agency's priority list.
So I really, to be succinct, think it is an oversight
issue. You know, some of your fellow committees have had
scorecards. And, you know, I think of the MEGABYTE Act in the
sort of the similar vein of updating at the back-end technology
system. And it dragged for years before it was implemented
until, in this case, House Oversight established a simple
report card as to whether or not an agency had done it or not.
And within a year, all agencies were in compliance.
So I believe some sort of oversight vehicle would be
appropriate.
Mr. Timmons. Chair, thank you. I really appreciate it.
Ms. Olson. If I might add something, I think that every
agency has an inspector general. And one thing you could ask
the inspector generals to do is to, you know, report on the
conformity of the agency with the, you know, mandates of the
act. I think that that would give you data and even uncover,
you know, some of the reasons why the agency, or the excuses as
you say, may or may not be complying, or what the barriers are.
And that would be good information to receive.
The Chairman. Mr. Phillips.
Mr. Phillips. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think you will all agree that Congress is an institution
that has somewhat of a singular mission to legislate and serve,
but yet it is an institution in competition with itself.
So as you reflect on the notion of sharing best practices,
which is integral, I think, to this conversation, how should we
look at creating incentives to share information? Because, of
course, right now, the culture is to protect it. It is a
competitive advantage, even within delegations and within
caucuses and conferences, I think it is fair to say.
So, certainly you, Ms. Meeker, based on your experience,
give us a sense of what you think it would take to inspire and
reward sharing best practices.
Ms. Meeker. Sure. It is a fantastic question. And I will
just say, from my experience as a caseworker, I was always
really surprised and heartened by how much collaboration there
was among caseworkers. If anything, I think the collaboration
was kind of stalled because there weren't good avenues for
caseworkers to connect and share those best practices. There is
a Listserv with no permanent archive that makes it very
difficult to share resources in a way that is long-term and
lasting.
But as far as encouraging collaboration, you know, I think
every office wants to be known as the innovator, the office
that has the best ideas, the best new ideas, the best tools,
the best experiments to serve their constituents. I think
recognizing some of the work that offices--individual offices
put in to innovate, to try new things, to impress their
constituents with how much work and time and effort they put
into constituent services would go a long way.
It wouldn't need to be a huge accolade. But I think the
CAO, you know, recognizing, hey, here are this month's top five
innovative practices for casework would be something that I
think would go a surprising way toward moving the needle on
encouraging collaboration.
Mr. Phillips. I love that notion.
Mr. Lira, any thoughts on that?
Mr. Lira. Yes, thank you, sir.
So I think of Senator Hickenlooper, now-Senator
Hickenlooper, when he was governor, he said something along the
lines of there is no intellectual property for good ideas in
public policy. I think that was it.
So if governor A comes up with something, then governor B
should shamelessly steal that idea. And so building that
culture of, you know, shamelessly stealing or being inspired by
fellow offices I think would be helpful.
To Anne's point, I think that the spirit is there. When you
talk to a lot of caseworkers, but even beyond that at the staff
level, there just isn't as much--the pathways for that
collaboration are not institutional, and so they are often ad
hoc. You know, a well-motivated Member or a well-motivated
staffer will pull a group together in an ad hoc way and it will
do some good, and then eventually they will move on to another
role or the Member will move on to other priorities, and then
it sort of falls apart. So institutionalizing that
collaboration, I think, would be helpful.
And to your point on competition, I actually feel that
healthy competition, I have found, to be one of the most
effective ways to drive change inside the House of
Representatives.
Mr. Phillips. Sure.
Mr. Lira. Members can be known to be somewhat competitive
with one another in a healthy way, staff as well.
And so, you know, I think like the whip organizations and
the respective conference and caucus and others have hosted
these sorts of competitions in the conference and the caucus
themselves. And it would be interesting if the institution were
to take on some of that, not in a way that would make any one
office look bad, but in a way that can celebrate those that are
doing good, I think to build on Anne's point, would be really
helpful and, again, make competition work for change rather
than inhibit it.
Mr. Phillips. So as simple as just creating space and place
to share and inspire.
And, you know, it makes me think, Mr. Chair, about the
notion of like Shark Tank, you know----
The Chairman. Yeah.
Mr. Phillips [continuing]. Whether it is offices sharing
what they are doing for some kind of reward and correspondingly
to invite outside, you know, entrepreneurs to share ideas with
us and have a competition and adopt best practices.
Ms. Olson, the conversation prompts me to wonder what the
responsibility of agencies are in this question. You know, we
are liaisons. You know, we can't solve the problem typically.
We are simply the brokers between frustrated constituents who
can't get answers from the IRS or the SSA or the VA.
So, you know, in your testimony, you recommended that
constituents would benefit from having similar advocates at the
SSA and VA. Why do you think this hasn't occurred yet,
considering how fundamental it is?
Ms. Olson. You know, I have talked to some folks that
were--are advocates for Social Security disability folks----
Mr. Phillips. Uh-huh.
Ms. Olson [continuing]. And veterans. And I think that some
of it is maybe that, when conversations about such--creating
such an entity would come up, the agencies, these agencies view
themselves as providing service----
Mr. Phillips. Yeah.
Ms. Olson [continuing]. To their beneficiaries. And they
may feel like that is a judgment on them that they are not
doing enough.
Mr. Phillips. Sure.
Ms. Olson. On the other hand, there are external groups
that, whose jobs it is, you know, to support those
beneficiaries, all of the veterans groups. And they may view it
as saying also you are not doing your job well.
And I think it just hasn't been explained that the--an
advocate, an internal advocate complements those
responsibilities, those groups. It doesn't replace them,
substitute for them.
I think a very interesting statistic in the Taxpayer
Advocate Service caseload is that about 35 percent of the
cases, actually the taxpayers are represented by an attorney or
a CPA. It is because that professional has gotten stuck----
Mr. Phillips. Yeah.
Ms. Olson [continuing]. You know, or some real harm is
going to happen, and speed is required and somebody to cut
through the internal bureaucracy. And I think if it is
explained in that way----
Mr. Phillips. Un-huh.
Ms. Olson [continuing]. It may be viewed differently. But
those conversations really haven't happened yet.
Mr. Phillips. Okay. Do any of you disagree with my
contention that Congress should enhance its role and
responsibility to provide oversight to the various agencies and
ensure that they provide better customer service, if you will?
Does anybody disagree?
Ms. Olson. No.
Mr. Phillips. With that, Mr. Chair, I rest my case.
The Chairman. All right. Mr. Latta.
Mr. Latta. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And
thanks to our witnesses today.
In some of your testimony, not directed to you, but what
you have in there hit raw nerves with me, because of the work
that we do.
Just kind of background, I am one of these that I have got
to see everything that is going on in my office. I sign every
constituent letter that goes out. I get a monthly report as to
every department that we have worked with, every county that we
are having an issue in. And then with the leg letters, I read
every letter before they go out, because I think it is
important for me to know, but because there is a lot of work
and not enough time and not enough staff.
But if I could just start and--because, again, things that
really hit nerves. Ms. Meeker, not--nothing on you but what you
stated, when you were working on WEP, I have been working on
that since I have gotten here. This is my eighth term. I have
had the IRS in my office saying that they need to put in a
statement in large print when they send out their notices every
year or month or whenever they send it out to an individual
taxpayer, that if they are in a dual system, like the State of
Ohio that has five different systems for the State employees,
that at the end, you are going to get your Social Security
reduced.
And so, you know, how--you know, because, again, you know,
in your testimony, you talk about, you know, that what your
work and how, you know, you had to reach out to them. But I
guess my thing is, is how do we get to these people beforehand
to let them know that, before they go from one system to
another, they better make a hard decision on that, because in
the end, it is going to affect them in their retirement?
So I am just curious. And not picking on you right off the
bat, but I tell you, some of your testimony today hit raw
nerves of what we are working on all the time, but this is
something since 2007 I have been involved with. I have been
involved and--even though I am on Energy and Commerce, working
with the folks on Ways and Means. But I am just curious, how--
you know, how can we get that information out to taxpayers
early on in their careers that we don't hear it?
I just had a courthouse conference through my counties
during the 4th of July work period, and it came up again.
People have--this is something that is happening all the time.
But I would love to hear from you.
Ms. Meeker. Yeah, absolutely. And I certainly hear you on
that raw nerve. Those cases were some of--as I mentioned, some
of the ones that stayed with me because--the feeling for the
constituent of surprise, of that, I could have made this
decision and no one told me I had to, is brutal. It is, I
think, one of the most alienating experiences from your own
government that you can have is that feeling of just awful
surprise and of information not being provided timely.
So I mentioned some of the things that we did in our
district to try to get the word out early, including building
that calculator that helped people accurately predict their
benefits. But I think, stepping back for a second and thinking
about it in a big picture, I think one of the things that may
come out of professionalizing the contacts between caseworkers
and agencies, I would hope, would be a more proactive
partnership between agencies and caseworkers.
As Nina mentioned, one of the unusual things about TAS is
having a local, accessible field office. And Congress has
local, accessible field offices.
So what I would love to see would be a more professional
working relationship that solves cases faster between
caseworkers and agencies, but then also more of a two-way
street, also more of agencies partnering with congressional
offices to give proactive information, to say, hey, our policy
is changing. Here is how you can help get the word out, or here
is how we can tap into your local knowledge and your local
expertise, your networks of county councils and, you know,
local retirement advocates to help people make that decision. I
would love to see Congress kind of take more of a service-
minded approach to communication and preact--proactive
constituent services in that way.
Mr. Latta. Okay. Well, thank you.
Ms. Olson, again, on your testimony, especially what you
do, here is something, especially with all, not just picking on
the IRS, but with all agencies and departments, this is one of
the things that when we get involved in these cases that I have
said, why does it take a Member of Congress to have to contact
an agency or department to do a job for a constituent that they
need to be doing?
And, again, you know, we reach out to the taxpayer
advocates all the time because, again, when I look at our
caseload right now, it had been veterans. But after what has
happened in the last 2 years, our--the massive part of our
caseload runs right back into IRS.
And so, you know, how do we--because I found it
interesting. In your testimony, you said: Moreover, as the IRS
relies more and more on the historical data to train its
models, filters, and artificial intelligence algorithms, TAS
case data should be used to train AI models to overcome
historical bias.
Could you explain that?
Ms. Olson. So in our cases we had, in general, when I was
there, about a 70 percent relief rate. Sometimes in some issues
it was 80--one year for identity theft it was 90 percent,
meaning that the taxpayer had tried to solve their problem with
the IRS before coming to us and it wasn't resolved. And in 90
percent of those cases, when they came to us, we got the relief
the taxpayer was asking for.
And so, you know, in an audit, for example, if we have a 60
percent relief rate, and the IRS is using its case data to
program a computer to select cases for future audits, if you
don't plug in our case data that showed you selected the wrong
person for audit, in 60 percent of the cases that came to us,
we got a different result, you should plug that information
into the machine to see whether there are any trends, any
pieces of information about our cases that would inform the
machine it could learn from and not select that wrong person
the next time.
And, you know, I have been after the IRS about that for
years to do that, because we are sitting there with 4 million
cases, you know, that they could really learn from our results
and our, you know, and our experience.
Mr. Latta. Not to interrupt. Why isn't the IRS listening to
you? Because, you know, you are the ones out that there that
are actually talking to people.
Ms. Olson. I know.
Mr. Latta. And so I am just curious, why aren't they
listening?
Ms. Olson. Well, I would say in the last, since I have been
outside the IRS and fussing at people there, they--they have--I
have had better conversations about this, partly because people
are more focusing on artificial intelligence and they are
asking those questions.
I can't--I think there is just a culture in the IRS that it
just has so much work that it just--it is easier to just
continue doing the work the way you have been doing than take a
step back and look at how you could maybe improve it.
That is partly what the job of the Taxpayer Advocate
Service was inside the IRS was to constantly be there at the
table, saying take that step back. And we would have successes,
but it is a big organization and it takes a lot to do that.
Mr. Latta. It sounds to me like it is an act of Congress.
Ms. Olson. Yeah.
Mr. Latta. If I could ask--you have been very kind in
indulging me here, Mr. Chairman.
You know, one other, Mr. Lira, that also, you know, you
brought up about the inefficiencies, again, about our--for our
staffs and our offices. Again, we get a lot of work. We don't
have enough people to get this done.
But I am just kind of curious, again, just here again,
how--what is the best way that, you know, staff can get as much
work done? Because, again, you know, we are talking all the
time as to making sure we are not reinventing the wheel. And I
have always said this. You know, imitation is the greatest form
of flattery. And so if somebody is doing something great, let's
do it. You know, let's find out from other offices.
But, you know, again, how do we get--again, making sure
that--I know you were talking about whip and everything else,
but we want to make sure that, you know, everyone is operating
efficiently, because our biggest enemy is time and we don't
have the staff to be able to get it done. So, you know, it is
important that we don't have burnout.
Mr. Lira. Thank you, Congressman. That is a great, a
fantastic question.
I think--when I think about the average individual Member
office, you kind of break down the working hours of that
office. And it is almost as like a pyramid, if you will forgive
the analogy. There is--some of the best opportunities are at
these entry-level and junior positions, because even though
they are not as high up on the org chart, they possess so many
of the working hours that could feed into more capabilities for
the overall office.
And so most of the inefficiencies in the average Member
office, in my experience, are things to be endured. So, you
know, if you are an intern or you are an LC, and you pay your
dues, and then you come out of it, and now I don't have to
worry about that anymore and now I can focus on, you know,
other things. And maybe I oversee these processes, but the
inefficiency is no longer my problem.
And this is not true of all Member offices by any stretch
of the imagination. But prioritizing solving for the
inefficiency of these entry-level and junior offices, again, I
am talking as an institution here, I think possesses enormous
opportunity.
So to be specific, I think when you break down the workload
by tasks, what are those tasks which are manual and repetitive?
Because that is through--I mean, whether it is robotic process
automation or machine learning, the software exists to automate
those tasks today without losing any semblance of the accuracy
and enabling the shift from low-value to high-value work.
And so in so doing, let's say, you know, conceptually that
you free up one working hour a week for 10 people. Well, that
is 10 working hours a week. And that is a very conservative
estimate about what RPA or the technologies could do.
And so identifying topics of letters or sorting is this
casework, is this an issue request, is this a tour request,
these sorts of manual, repetitive tasks could, again, unlock a
lot of working hours, which not only enhances the capability of
the office, but to the tail end of your question, I think could
deal with recruitment and retention issues as well as people--
everyone wants to do that higher value work.
It is a convenient truth. So I will say it. But, you know,
your office is known to be one of the more innovative offices.
It has been since my time on the Hill. So I don't now how much
of that applies to Team Latta, but it is certainly an
opportunity for Congress as an institution, I think, writ
large.
Mr. Latta. Well, one of the things--and, you know, I am
very proud of our staff, but also the interns we have in the
office. I will just finish with this. When the interns come in,
they come back the next day. Say, oh, good, they came back. I
don't think we ever had one quit. But they--you know, they do a
great job.
But thanks so much for your testimony. I really appreciate
it.
Mr. Chairman, thanks so much for your indulgence.
The Chairman. You bet.
All right. Mr. Cleaver.
Mr. Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here. This is one of the most
significant issues, I think, that we deal with, or maybe that
we do not deal with, and that is, you know, customer/
constituent relations.
And so, you know, it goes back to some of the most basic
things because, you know, people don't expect government to
work. I mean, I think we have created that, albeit
unintentionally. But our people, you know, just believe that,
you know, no matter what happens, that they are not going to
get an answer, that they are going to get put on hold, no
matter what happens to them.
And Maya Angelou said that people will never forget--people
will forget what you say, people will forget even what you do,
but they will never forget how you made them feel. And so I
think that, you know, there is good way to even say, you know,
we can't help you.
And so, because of that, I am sitting here thinking, Mr.
Chairman, that we don't--I am not sure that there is any
training for people who work on this Hill to respond to
constituents. I mean, they are good people. They want to do--
but they don't--they don't--I mean, there is nothing--it is not
their fault. They come in. You know, we give them orientation
in our office, and there is your desk.
So I am not going to criticize the Members, because I think
the pace here is hectic. But that is even more reason that we
are to deal with that. Or do you agree that maybe we could
better respond if we knew how to respond to make people feel
that we were responding? Is that--am I----
Ms. Olson. You know, if I may, I mean, overseeing the case
advocates, you know, their day is they get yelled at by
taxpayers who are frustrated. Then they turn to IRS employees
to do something, and they get yelled at by IRS employees who
don't want to--you know, that are just busy and don't want to
hear from them.
And we really early on realized the emotional toll that
that took, and asking our case advocates to be empathetic, you
know, with the taxpayers that they were talking to was a heavy
lift if we didn't give them the tools.
And we really have tried, we really had tried to develop
training. Now, I happen to think that that is an endless
process. You cannot ever stop doing training----
Mr. Cleaver. Yeah.
Ms. Olson [continuing]. And recognizing the burden and the
need to have downtime and time to just regroup and not
constantly be on the phone and carve that in.
And we also really tried to do training for our employees
to really think about the taxpayer side, how they were feeling.
And so we would do role plays literally where one of the
employees would be the taxpayer and would have to navigate, you
know, a bureaucracy, just to remind themselves of what it felt
like, so that when somebody was yelling at you, you could learn
to diffuse the situation. And there are tools for diffusing.
I am also reminded, when I ran my low-income taxpayer
clinic before I became the taxpayer advocate, I had a student
intern, and I was listening to him do intake. And I was in my
office, listening to him for 5 minutes, trying--he had this
taxpayer who just was--wanted to rant. And I could hear this
person just try to control him and get him off onto, well, what
is the real issue. And, of course, it took 5 minutes.
And I said to him, after the call, I said, you need to give
taxpayers 5 minutes to rant and then get them down to business,
because they are going keep coming back to that rant if you
don't let them rant. They have to say it because it is about
their feelings, and then you can get them down to business.
They are tools.
Ms. Meeker. If I can jump in as well. I definitely agree.
There isn't--there isn't a standard manual that someone hands
you when you become a caseworker. There is no one standard,
Congratulations, you are a caseworker now. Please attend this
training at 9 a.m. on Tuesday.
Caseworkers do an amazing job with ad hoc resources, and a
lot of them are catch-as-catch-can. Some external organizations
offer caseworker resources and training. I know the
Congressional Staff Academy has some wonderful classes now that
were not available when I started. I am a little bit jealous.
But just to kind of put a finer point on the problem there,
casework is high stakes. I mean, everything that Congress does
is high stakes, of course. But if--for an untrained caseworker,
if you make a mistake, not knowing what the rules are, if you
make a mistake that harms a constituent, that reflects on the
Member. So I would absolutely just double-click on that point
that the training is really vital and necessary and it is not
standard.
Mr. Lira. Yeah. If I may add, I think the process either
respects someone or it doesn't. And by the time someone has
called their Member of Congress about a casework concern in
particular, that is very rarely the first call they have ever
made. So they are typically calling or writing an email from a
point of desperation, from a point of feeling disrespected.
And so that only increases the need for Congress to be that
much better in handling those requests, because they are
starting in deficit with the person's feelings towards their
government as a whole. However, those are the moments when
meeting those standards can actually reshape someone's
perspective the most dramatically.
To borrow a crude analogy, when you are feeling
disrespected at the airport but then the gate agent actually
makes it better, you actually start to love the airline.
And so that is my view. That safety valve is where Congress
can uniquely play a role. Say, look, you wouldn't have come to
your congressional office unless you felt disrespected or
ignored or something is not working. But now that you are here,
let's be that person that makes you understand why government,
and particularly representative government, plays such a
valuable role for you as a constituent.
Mr. Cleaver. I wonder how difficult it would be for us, I
mean, for us to think a bit more deeply about what happens when
we hire people and how little preparation they have. My
paranoia says that Members say we don't have time for that. We,
you know, we got to--we are on three committees and they are
meeting at the same time, and we, you know, we got people
calling on the phone. We got people to--we need people to
respond.
And I know there is no simple answer, but I think this--
this may be one of the most significant issues that our
committee could deal with because of what I have heard all
three of you saying about, you know, people, you know, are
angry.
And I think a lot of people make calls to us, anticipating
a negative response. You know, they are going to send me to,
you know, water department, you know. And I wish there was a
way we could get it--get this, you know, incorporated into this
system, you know, when you get hired.
I mean, one of you said, you know, I mean, it is not a
program, it is a culture. So we would have to--there should be
something going on all the time, and I don't know how--I mean,
you guys are smart. So you are probably going to figure it out
before we have the adjournment.
Mr. Cleaver. But, I mean, I think it is critically
important. I can't tell you how many people have talked to me--
probably all of us--you know, I called IRS. You know, they put
me on hold, and I got a voice, and the voice was not human. So
I think this is an important subject, and I also think we ought
to figure out how to respond to it just because, during these
times, it may be more important than an error. So thank you for
being here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lira. If I may?
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Mr. Lira. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You are exactly right. And I think when most staff come in,
if there is any training at all, it is either for people who
opt into it because they are kind of go-getters, and so
therefore it is not everybody, or they just mimic the culture
of the office that they got hired into.
Mr. Cleaver. Yes.
Mr. Lira. And which works great when things are going
great. But the problem is, especially with technological
change--and I think it is a unique opportunity for this
committee in particular to say, well, if we are going to drive
cultural change in offices and teach them the new way forward,
then starting with people, literally, on their first day, and
how does orientation work to help them reimagine how their
offices then operate.
And as the other witnesses have indicated, continuing with
that throughout their career as staff and then, ultimately, you
know, for Members as well. But even chiefs of staff, you know,
will say that when you would talk to them about changing a
system, or let's change the way the correspondence is done, I
mean, this is a mammoth task. And so they often will say, well,
I don't know if it is the right fit for our office because, you
know, we have got enough, you know, things to do. And so really
prioritizing that training to show people how it can be done I
think would add a lot of value.
Mr. Cleaver. I am through, but we ought to--we probably
need some--I mean, you know, some kind of operation that, you
know, is operating all year long. And when a new hire comes in,
you know, one of the very first things they do is they go spend
whatever time in this classroom. But the conundrum is always
the voters, you know, well, you guys are spending too much
money on, you know, on your offices, you know, not realizing
that we are trying to respond better to them. And that also
points out the problem we have that, over time, people build up
these ideas about, you know, how inefficient we are and how
mean we are.
Ms. Olson. You know, if I may, it is not just Congress'
responsibility here. The agency--you know, as I put in my
testimony, my local taxpayer advocates, when they knew there
was a new constituent services person in a local office, we
made it a point they were required to go over to that office
and meet with the new constituent services person to talk about
how we do--what they need to do in order to get cases to us;
the authorization that we need to get and how it needs to look.
We didn't just expect the congressional offices who are busy
and had tons of stuff to do to train their people on our
processes. And I think that is something that the executive
branch can do if they are more alert.
I mean, they have got a role in constituent services. They
are taxpayers. So we took that very seriously. And that can be
reproduced and make it much easier. It wasn't a long
conversation, but it was enormously helpful.
Mr. Cleaver. Thank you.
Ms. Meeker. And may I jump in on that? As someone who is on
the receiving end of their local taxpayer advocate service
training, that was so unusual, and so, so, so valuable. And I
definitely agree it is part of the agency's responsibility.
There are two halves to casework training. There is how do you
interact with constituents? As you said, Mr. Cleaver, there is,
you know, the kind of trauma-informed care in the, how do I
make you feel hurt? How do I make you feel seen and
appreciated? And then there is how do I actually solve your
problem, and that is on the agency side.
So I think a solid base on how do you interact with
constituents and create that experience, maybe Congress'
responsibility, but I definitely agree the agencies have a role
to play as well. And some agencies do this, and they are knock-
on effects--knock-on benefits for caseworkers on that first
bucket as well.
So I know the Army runs a regular conference, I believe it
is every 2 years. USCIS runs a regular conference every few
years. And those are enormously valuable, A, for training their
caseworkers, but, B, for bringing their caseworkers together in
person to learn from each other. That is where I built some of
the kind of peer mentorship relationships where, you know, I
was director of constituent services and a new director of
constituent services who didn't know what to do. But I knew
there was someone I had met from a regional office that I met
at the Army conference, so I could give her a call and say,
hey, I have got this weird case, have you seen this before? So
kind of the opportunity for caseworkers to learn from each
other is also hugely valuable.
Mr. Cleaver. Thank you.
The Chairman. I have got like five questions, but let me
try to boil them down a little bit.
You know, one of the things that had struck me--and maybe
you can speak to whether this exists in Congress--if I had my
predisposition--you know, I mentioned, you know, when I go
through the airport, CLEAR sends me a text, and I am able to
give them feedback on how it went. I would Yelpify the heck out
of this place.
Now, the challenge is, in a political context, like, there
is practitioners of the dark arts who might use that tool for
ill, but is there a way to do it? I mean, I am just trying to
think through, are there recommendations our committee could
make that would make more standard feedback that can improve
the performance of the institution when it comes to casework
and constituent interaction?
Mr. Lira. Mr. Chairman, so, absolutely. I think that the
political realities being what they are, I don't necessarily
know if you want to go full Yelpify----
The Chairman. Right.
Mr. Lira [continuing]. Per the gamification risk. But you
have the ability to collect consumer experience metric--you
know, feedback metrics at the end of every transaction.
The Chairman. Yeah.
Mr. Lira. Some government agencies do this in a way that is
almost, you know, comical, but I guess it is--their heart's in
the right place, where they----
The Chairman. Does anyone do it well? Is there anyone we
should look at.
Mr. Lira. Well, I tend to be at the perspective that you
look to the private sector, as CLEAR being an example. But as
you indicate, at the end of every single transaction--you know,
even something--I often think of, you know, on receipts, at the
bottom of a receipt there will be surveys that will say, you
know, we will give you a gift certificate if you fill out a
survey on your experience. So what that says is that the
company is willing to pay people for their opinion about how
well they are doing.
In Congress, you don't typically have to pay people because
they want to share their opinion with this institution. And so
it is really about collecting that information in a structured
way. And I think this is--thematically, the most important
thing I can say on this topic is so much of that is ad hoc and
actually creating those capabilities at an institutional level.
So it is not incumbent on an individual Member office who will
conceptualize and then implement a system like that. It should
just be a standard CX package where at the end of every
single--you can be as extreme as, at the end of every single
phone call there is a quick, you know, audio survey; at the end
of every email there is a link. And, again, I would look to the
private sector for best practices.
The Chairman. Yeah.
Ms. Olson. You know, in my--Congress required the IRS back
in 1998 to come up with balanced performance measures. You
know, not just look at quantitative, how many audits you did,
et cetera, but also measure it with--balanced with employee
satisfaction and customer satisfaction. So the IRS has a robust
customer satisfaction survey process.
In my organization, you know, we would take representative
samples, and it would be down to the office. So we knew of
those 75 offices, we could project results back to either the
area or to the actual office of customer sat, and we would do
it on a quarterly basis. And what I always found really
interesting was one of--we would ask a whole bunch of
questions, but one of the questions that we asked,
particularly--and we didn't just do customer sat of the people
who got results that they wanted, we also sent surveys to the
taxpayers who we weren't able to assist for one reason or
another.
The Chairman. Sure.
Ms. Olson. We didn't get the result they wanted. And in
about 35 percent of the cases where taxpayers didn't get--we
couldn't get them the result they wanted, they still said that
after their interaction with the Taxpayer Advocate Service,
they felt better about the IRS as--on a whole.
And I think that goes, you know, Congressman Cleaver, to
your point about feelings, that they had somebody with the case
advocate who actually listened to them, and they felt like the
case advocate did what they could, and they were heard. And I
think that kind of survey, you know, of your constituents can
show all sorts of really interesting stuff.
And there are good examples in private sector about the
questions that you ask, but also in some of the agencies, the
questions to ask to get at more root issues about what is
really going on with your relationship with your customers,
your constituents, or whatever you want to call it.
The Chairman. Yeah. I actually think your suggestion of
having that become sort of standard practice makes a lot of
sense. I don't know that individual offices can develop that on
their own. So I think one of the things this committee could
think about is, does the institution create a module for your
office where you can, you know, use it or not? But I think
there are some offices that would want to learn how they are
performing and how to improve their performance.
Along the lines of learning things from private industry--
this may seem like a dog and cat kind of question--but when I
order pizza, I can track when it gets put in the oven and when
it is leaving the pizza joint and where it is on its way to my
home. One of the most common interactions in a congressional
office is people order flags, and there is no, currently,
portal to track flags. This seems like something we can fix.
You know, is that something that you think we ought to be
thinking about? Is that something that would require--do you
think it is a smarter thing to do, institutionwide, House and
Senate? Any thoughts on that?
Ms. Meeker. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the flag pizza
tracker would be just a small thing, but such a huge way to
show trust and demonstrate transparency.
This kind of comes back to, where does innovation come from
in Congress? I believe--and I apologize, I don't have specifics
today--but I believe it may be Code for D.C. is working on a
pilot project to figure out a workable sample for how to do a
flag tracker. And that is fantastic. We really appreciate--you
know, I worked with Code for Boston. And when I was working
with Congressman Moulton's office, it is amazing to kind of
have the energy and the insight and the volunteer hours to
educate Congress on how technology should work from these local
civic tech groups. But it is interesting that the input is for
that, and the work comes from an outside group rather than the
impetus taken within Congress. I think that this kind of
telling about where innovation is coming from in Congress
today. But Matt may have more thoughts.
Mr. Lira. Yeah, absolutely. I love this question, Chairman.
One of my friends actually created the first pizza tracker. So
I will be sure to send him this clip, and he will be very
excited.
You know, the powerful thing about the pizza tracker, which
incidentally led to when--Domino's was the first to do it, and
they led to four quarters of over a hundred percent sales
growth, like quarter of a quarter, which is a remarkable sales
growth. And there is a lot of components there. But one of the
key issues is that transparency of the process takes the
uncertainty out of it.
I was once stuck in a snowstorm in the middle of the night
in North Carolina on the way back to D.C., and the traffic came
to a complete standstill at like 1:00 in the morning. And it
was obviously really frustrating. And then I heard over the
radio that there was a power line down and the road was going
to reopen at like 1:45 a.m. And even though I knew it was going
to take 45 minutes for the highway to reopen, my comfort level
immediately went up. Because the transparency over the process,
you know, brings comfort to any process. And the pizza tracker
is emblematic of that.
So I absolutely believe that, even if it is going to take
time--to your point earlier, Mr. Cleaver--even if the answer
sometimes is no, the transparency over that process is going to
build a lot of satisfaction. And so I think that the Congress,
the House in particular, has for some of the constituent
services that are more transactionable in nature, whether it is
a tour request or a flag request, has the ability to build
these sorts of platforms.
And then, again, not to go back to my same, you know, hobby
horse, I would say that you could even build APIs to enable
other people to build applications that show the same
information in different formats. But it is an area of
tremendous opportunity. And, incidentally, it would likely
reduce the number of incoming call volumes following up on what
is the status of my tour request or my flag request, whatever
it may be, which therefore means the remaining calls could be
more efficiently handled at, again, higher value.
The Chairman. Let me ask one more, and then Vice Chair
Timmons may have additional questions too. I know President
Biden recently signed an executive order directing Federal
agencies to improve the customer experience, and dealt
specifically with what is referred to as the time tax, the
undue burden that Americans face. And we have seen that with
folks having to navigate confusing websites and fill out
duplicate forms and often answering invasive and confusing
questions, and just the time for someone who may often be in
crisis, if they are dealing with food insecurity, or trying to
get care for a loved one, and having to be their own advocate,
and having it take a lot of time.
So as we look to improve constituent services in Congress,
any thoughts on how we can ensure that our internal operations
are not imposing a time tax on our constituents?
Ms. Meeker. Sure. I would love to jump in on that one.
Yeah, absolutely. And I would just like to flag also,
caseworkers have incredible expertise into that time tax. I
mean, that is such a huge part of what we handle in casework is
constituents who--that that time tax is not payable for one
reason or another. They don't have the time. It is a crisis
situation. So thank you for bringing that up.
As far as what we can do to eliminate the time tax for
constituents who work with congressional offices, the Privacy
Act release form is a huge point. I know we talked earlier
about the CASES Act and making sure that we are not chasing
constituents over and over for different copies of the Privacy
Act release form that have different information, because the
agency won't take one that has a Social Security number on it,
but it will take one with your alien number. There is a lot
there that could be really streamlined if it was entirely
digital. So that is a huge point.
The other point that I would like to raise, thinking back
about our own casework operations, the biggest movement when we
put a time tax on a constituent that I was uncomfortable with--
or I wish we could have avoided is when we had turnover in
casework staff. So when, for one reason or another, whether it
is staff turnover or we had to shuffle portfolios for one
reason or another, we had to transfer a case between different
caseworkers. And that was the point where, no matter how good
our handoff was, no matter how warm that handoff was, no matter
how extensively the outgoing caseworker briefed the incoming
caseworker, the constituent would have to explain things over
again. They would have to start from zero on building up trust
with the new caseworker.
So anything that Congress can do to improve staff retention
for caseworkers would really eliminate that particular segment
of time tax.
The Chairman. Excellent.
Mr. Timmons.
Mr. Timmons. Mr. Chairman, this has been great. I think we
got a lot of meat that we are going to be able to make some
recommendations on. I do not have any follow-up questions.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Do you have questions?
Mr. Davis. No.
The Chairman. You sure? Okay.
Did you have any other questions?
Mr. Cleaver. No.
The Chairman. Okay. I think this was terrific. I really
appreciate the specificity of the recommendations. You gave us
a lot to run with, I think. And my hope is that our committee
will be able to make some recommendations in this space.
So I want to thank our witnesses for their testimony, and
also thank our committee members for their participation. As
always, I want to thank our staff for pulling together such
amazing witnesses. And it was such a value-adding hearing. And
to our stenographer for putting up with how fast we talk. And
to the Armed Services Committee for letting us use their room,
thank you.
Without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days
within which to submit additional written questions for the
witnesses to the chair which will be forwarded to the witnesses
for their response.
Mr. Davis. I object. I don't know if that has ever happened
before.
Watch that trigger, Emanuel.
The Chairman. I ask all witnesses to please respond as
promptly as you are able.
Here we go again. Without objection, all members will have
5 legislative days within which to submit extraneous materials
to the chair for inclusion in the record.
And, with that, this hearing is adjourned. Thanks,
everybody.
[Whereupon, at 11:19 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[all]