[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                 CONSTITUENT SERVICES: BUILDING A MORE 
                        CUSTOMER FRIENDLY CONGRESS

=======================================================================

                                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

                               __________

  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

                              ----------                              


                        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:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    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.]

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