[House Report 117-658]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


117th Congress   }                                      {      Report
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
 2d Session      }                                      {     117-658
_______________________________________________________________________
                                 



   RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE CONSTITUENT ENGAGEMENT AND CONSTITUENT 
     SERVICES, BOLSTER HOUSE TECHNOLOGY, AND SUPPORT CONGRESSIONAL 
                               OPERATIONS


                               __________

                              R E P O R T

                               __________


                      THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE

                       MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                               __________

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                               

 December 21, 2022.--Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on 
            the State of the Union and ordered to be printed 
            
                             _________
                              
                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                 
39-006                   WASHINGTON : 2022
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
           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  
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                         LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

                              ----------                              

                          House of Representatives,
         Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress,
                                 Washington, DC, December 21, 2022.
Hon. Cheryl L. Johnson,
Clerk, House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
    Dear Ms. Johnson: I present herewith the Select Committee 
on the Modernization of Congress' report of recommendations to 
improve constituent engagement and constituent services, 
bolster house technology, and support congressional operations.
            Sincerely,
                                              Derek Kilmer,
                                                             Chair.  
                                                             
                                                             
                                                             
                                                             
                                                             
                                                             
                                                             

117th Congress   }                                      {      Report
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
 2d Session      }                                      {     117-658

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


 
   RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE CONSTITUENT ENGAGEMENT AND CONSTITUENT 
     SERVICES, BOLSTER HOUSE TECHNOLOGY, AND SUPPORT CONGRESSIONAL 
                               OPERATIONS

                                _______
                                

 December 21, 2022.--Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on 
            the State of the Union and ordered to be printed

                                _______
                                

Mr. Kilmer, from the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, 
                        submitted the following

                              R E P O R T

                         I. PURPOSE AND SUMMARY

    The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress 
(Select Committee or Committee) has been charged with the 
important responsibility of recommending improvements to the 
U.S. House of Representatives to help members of Congress and 
their staff better serve the American people. During the 116th 
Congress, the Select Committee passed 97 recommendations to 
make Congress a more efficient and effective institution. These 
recommendations addressed many issues within the Select 
Committees jurisdiction and were detailed in the Committee's 
Final Report for the 116th Congress (H. Rept. 116-562).
    On July 29, 2021, the Select Committee met and issued its 
sixth set of recommendations focused on increasing staff 
capacity, diversity, and inclusion, and expanding accessibility 
to Congress for staff as well as the public. On December 8, 
2021, the Select Committee met and issued its seventh set of 
recommendations focused on enhancing civility and 
collaboration, bolstering the effectiveness of the 
congressional support agencies, and promoting the collection 
and use of impartial data and analysis in the policymaking 
process. On July 19, 2022, the Select Committee met and issued 
its eighth set of recommendations focused on congressional 
oversight capacity, district operations, congressional office 
operations, the legislative process, and congressional 
continuity.
    The Select Committee met on September 29, 2022, to pass its 
ninth package of recommendations. The recommendations broadly 
focus on constituent engagement, constituent services, House 
technology, and congressional operations. The recommendations 
address issues the Select Committee took up in public hearings, 
member meetings, and discussions with stakeholders.

              II. BACKGROUND AND NEED FOR RECOMMENDATIONS

    Improving constituent engagement and constituent services, 
bolstering House technology, and supporting congressional 
operations will improve the way Congress works on behalf of the 
American people. The Select Committee identified the following 
specific issues to be addressed with recommendations:
          1. Constituent casework data and trends are currently 
        only captured by individual offices, which provides no 
        insight into wider trends that might be occurring in 
        casework services provided across House offices.
          2. Congressional offices may not be aware of and may 
        find it difficult to access and utilize new and 
        innovative outreach best practices and methods that 
        could help them respond to and more effectively engage 
        with their constituents. Individual member offices 
        sometimes work with and utilize information from civic 
        organizations that model those practices, but knowledge 
        sharing is often limited, and proper impact assessments 
        and expert guidance on the latest methods and practices 
        would aid more widespread adoption.
          3. Currently, the only way for the public to provide 
        feedback and input through official House websites is 
        through a private email to their member of Congress or 
        a committee, which ideally, and commonly, results in an 
        email response. While messages can be sent via social 
        media as well, many constituents use official websites 
        to voice concerns or ask for assistance. To meet the 
        modern expectation of customer service platforms, 
        constituents may expect more dynamic ways to voice 
        their opinion, provide input, and receive information.
          4. Member offices receive a high volume of calls, 
        emails, social media messages, and letters from 
        constituents. While offices do the best they can to 
        respond in a timely manner, the technology available to 
        assist staff and members with that process has not kept 
        pace with other state-of-the-art tools utilized in the 
        private sector for customer service and response.
          5. There is no standardized or easy process available 
        for individual committees that may wish to solicit 
        public comment and evidence on topics that might be 
        coming before the committee.
          6. Congressional offices manage constituent tour 
        requests across many federal agencies, each with 
        different processes. Some agencies require constituent 
        information to be submitted via a spreadsheet, leading 
        to situations where constituents are emailing their 
        sensitive personal information to congressional staff, 
        a process that is not as secure as it could be. The 
        process of managing requests for multiple agencies on 
        different days for hundreds of constituents also 
        requires an inordinate amount of staff time and 
        attention.
          7. The process through which congressional offices 
        request and obtain a flag flown over the U.S. Capitol 
        for constituents who request them is cumbersome and not 
        transparent enough. Specifically, after a flag request 
        is submitted, a constituent may contact the 
        congressional office to follow up on their request, but 
        staff have no insight into where the flag is in the 
        process and therefore no way to provide their 
        constituents with an update on the progress. This 
        regularly results in a poor customer service experience 
        for constituents. Additionally, flags are delivered to 
        the House office that made the request when in some 
        cases it would be more efficient to send the flag 
        directly to the constituent.
          8. Soliciting customer feedback and satisfaction 
        through surveys or questionnaires is considered a 
        standard practice in most customer-facing businesses. 
        While some House offices have deployed similar surveys 
        to receive feedback and gauge levels of satisfaction 
        with the constituent services the offices provide, 
        there is no standard tool or process provided by the 
        House to help offices that might also wish to do so. 
        Moreover, there is no data available from other offices 
        against which members could evaluate and measure their 
        own office's level of performance on constituent 
        service satisfaction.
          9. When the public visits the Capitol, they learn a 
        lot about the history, structure, and operations of 
        Congress, but not always as much about who represents 
        them, facts about their district, and the various 
        policy positions of their representative.
          10. The Congressional Hackathon, as well as other 
        technology and innovation initiatives, are currently 
        member-sponsored events and might not continue if the 
        members and/or staff who led the initiative depart the 
        institution over time. Additionally, the current 
        iteration of the Hackathon is more of an ``idea-a-
        thon'' rather than a traditional hackathon where 
        technical experts work on technology solutions at the 
        event. Technical experts should work with congressional 
        leaders as well as other participants.
          11. Systems that are widely used or mission critical 
        could suddenly become unavailable or unusable in the 
        event of House or committee staff turnover or a change 
        in leadership, or if a small vendor decides it's not 
        worth the time or investment of resources to continue 
        to maintain a tool. When that occurs, the House either 
        loses functionality or it must allocate new funds to 
        rebuild that functionality.
          12. House-developed digital applications are not 
        open-source by default. Without developing digital 
        tools in an open-source environment, the institution 
        limits the ability of other departments inside the 
        legislative branch, agencies in state and local 
        government, and outside civic groups and developers 
        from building tools that might expand functionality of 
        the House tool. Additionally, tools not developed in an 
        open-source environment often are difficult to maintain 
        if it was built by a vendor who either goes out of 
        business or who the House no longer has a maintenance 
        agreement with.
          13. While the House and Senate might have different 
        customer needs and requirements for some tools, 
        creating entirely different processes for procuring, 
        approving, and onboarding technologies across chambers 
        creates unnecessary procurement and functionality 
        inefficiencies.
          14. Potential vendors, especially small ones, often 
        find the approval process intimidating and difficult to 
        navigate. There is currently very little information 
        posted about the process and what potential technology 
        vendors can expect. Once approved, there is no clear 
        liaison to help with onboarding. All of this 
        contributes to making the House a less attractive 
        option for vendors, and especially small vendors, 
        interested in developing civic tools for use in the 
        House.
          15. Developing digital tools for House offices can be 
        difficult and expensive for outside technology vendors, 
        due in part to the unique rules and requirements for 
        doing business with the House. As a result, there are 
        fewer software developers looking to work with House 
        offices, which can impede or delay offices that are 
        looking to develop and access new digital tools. As an 
        example, this was a common problem with the development 
        of House websites until the institution lowered 
        development barriers for a group of design firms 
        willing to learn the House's unique processes and 
        policies.
          16. It is common practice for technology developers 
        to use pre-written, open-source code to speed the 
        technology development process. If the code focuses 
        specifically on technology needs of Congress, then in 
        some instances the House Ethics Committee may view it 
        as an attempt to encourage favoritism for the creators. 
        The operations of Congress are of general public 
        interest and ``civic tech'' organizations are creating 
        and publishing open-source code that could be used for 
        technology development inside Congress. Current 
        policies could be unnecessarily preventing Congress 
        from using pre-written code, something that is common 
        practice in technology development. Gift and in-kind 
        rules are designed to prevent the improper use and 
        acceptance of outside resources, but there should be 
        opportunities to allow organizations to participate in 
        the development of civic technology tools that can 
        improve the legislative process.
          17. Institutional offices in the legislative branch 
        have been able to collaborate successfully through the 
        Congressional Data Task Force and other bicameral 
        working groups but have not always been as successful 
        in setting agreed upon priorities for the development 
        of digital infrastructure outside of their offices.
          18. The House Digital Service does not currently have 
        a mechanism for receiving input on how they prioritize 
        projects and needs for their services in a way that is 
        responsive to stakeholders.
          19. The Capitol switchboard, which is currently 
        operated by the Senate Sergeant at Arms, doesn't allow 
        call information, like the phone number, to be passed 
        through during the switch from the call center to a 
        House office. Committee staff understands that Senate 
        offices, however, do receive the caller's full phone 
        number because the call is being transferred 
        internally. This makes it difficult for House offices 
        to block or avoid repeated abusive or threatening 
        callers. It also makes it more difficult to report 
        threatening callers to Capitol Police. Frustration with 
        this issue has been reported by numerous offices as a 
        drain on office time and an emotional tax on staff who 
        answer calls in an office.
          20. The current process for generating hearing 
        records has many manual components, is time-consuming, 
        and requires uploading the same information into 
        multiple systems. The cumbersome process may discourage 
        committees from submitting a record for printing. 
        Without a printed official hearing record, there is no 
        written government source for the committee's 
        proceeding beyond what may exist online or in the 
        repository.
          21. While technological advancements have been made, 
        many committees still rely on paper-based processes for 
        their hearings and markups. Paper might still be 
        necessary in some cases, but in some instances a 
        digital solution could be just as effective and 
        practical, if not more.
          22. The demands for legislative drafting services 
        have increased, and the House has, in turn, focused on 
        bolstering capacity at the House Office of Legislative 
        Counsel (HOLC). When congressional staff, especially 
        new staff, do not fully understand how the HOLC process 
        works and/or how to best present and frame policy ideas 
        to begin the drafting process, it can create time 
        inefficiencies for both the member office and HOLC and 
        exacerbate the capacity challenges. The issue may be 
        even more acute at the beginning of a new Congress 
        which may see an influx of new and/or inexperienced 
        legislative staff, including staff in roles new to 
        them.
          23. While virtual information sessions are available, 
        there are few opportunities for members and staff to 
        meet the people working behind the scenes in the House 
        of Representatives. Members meet with leadership of 
        these offices at orientation, but the sessions are 
        short and do not leave much time for making important 
        connections or learning about valuable services.
          24. Members may contribute substantially to the 
        development and drafting of legislation but not receive 
        credit (other than through a press release or other 
        public acknowledgement). Additionally, it can be hard 
        to track how much meaningful work members do across the 
        aisle.

                             III. HEARINGS

    The Select Committee has continued to use its unique 
roundtable format for the conduct of its formal hearings. In 
addition to the formal hearings, the Select Committee held a 
listening session with members of the Fix Congress Cohort which 
helped further inform these recommendations. The hearings 
included:
           ``Congress & Technology: Modernizing the 
        Innovation Cycle'', on June 23rd, 2022. The Select 
        Committee received testimony from:
                 Ms. Melissa Dargan, Co-Founder & 
                CEO, TourTrackr
                 Mr. Stephen Dwyer, Senior Advisor, 
                House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer
                 Mr. Reynold Schweickhardt, Senior 
                Advisor, Lincoln Network
           ``Constituent Services: Building a More 
        Customer-Friendly Congress'', on July 14, 2022. The 
        Select Committee received testimony from:
                 Mr. Matt Lira, Partner, Hangar 
                Capital
                 Ms. Anne Meeker, Director of 
                Strategic Initiatives, POPVOX Foundation
                 Ms. Nina Olson, Executive 
                Director, Center for Taxpayer Rights
           ``What's the Big Idea? Innovative Approaches 
        to Fixing Congress'', on July 28, 2022. The Select 
        Committee received testimony from:
                 Dr. Danielle Allen, James Bryant 
                Conant University Professor, Harvard University
                 Dr. Lee Drutman, Senior Fellow, 
                New America
                 Dr. Kevin Kosar, Senior Fellow, 
                American Enterprise Institute
                 Congressman John Larson (D-CT)

                          IV. RECOMMENDATIONS

    The Select Committee made the following 24 recommendations 
to address the problems identified above, adding to the 
Committee's 171 prior recommendations made since the beginning 
of the 116th Congress (see II. BACKGROUND AND NEED FOR 
RECOMMENDATIONS):

                 Improving Constituent Engagement and 
                          Constituent Services

          (1) Recommendation: The House should develop an 
        optional system to allow offices to share anonymized 
        constituent casework data and aggregate that 
        information to identify trends and systemic issues to 
        better serve constituents.
    Specifically. . . To provide data that is trackable and 
comparable, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) should first 
develop a system of standardized casework categories and 
tracking standards--developed and refined in collaboration with 
caseworkers--and establish-House-wide unified analytics to 
identify casework trends and potential problem areas. 
Anonymized data could be collected and shared through an 
application programming interface (API) developed by the CAO. 
The CAO could then aggregate this data to produce a 
comprehensive dashboard or report that is made available to 
offices. The system should be optional and available on an opt-
in basis for offices that wish to share and receive casework 
data. By aggregating data and utilizing unified analytics to 
identify casework trends and potential problem areas and making 
that information available to House offices and committees, the 
House could view a wider landscape of constituent concerns, 
better anticipate potential problem areas and backlogs, and 
identify issues that may need to be addressed through a policy 
change or other federal intervention.
          (2) Recommendation: The House should provide offices 
        with information related to outside organizations and 
        resources available to assist members and committees 
        that wish to enhance outreach efforts or utilize new 
        tools for constituent communication and engagement.
    Specifically . . . At a May 2022 roundtable on civic 
engagement, the Committee heard from various organizations and 
researchers about best practices and new tools for fostering 
and improving constituent engagement. These tools and methods 
for engagement could help members better understand issues 
faced by constituents, the range of different views and 
concerns, and potential solutions. For example, outside 
organizations could assist members and committees with hosting 
deliberative town halls with a statistically representative 
group of constituents. Information on organizations that can 
provide assistance and support could be available through the 
Congressional Member Leadership Development Program. Guardrails 
should be established for the information provided to ensure 
there is no undue influence by outside organizations. In 
addition, outside organizations must be vetted and approved by 
the Committee on House Administration and information must be 
provided in accordance with House Ethics guidelines.
          (3) Recommendation: The House should study and 
        present options for developing a public-facing 
        interactive platform for constituents to offer their 
        opinions and feedback on pending legislation.
    Specifically . . . To provide more of an opportunity for 
public engagement and input, Congress should evaluate the 
feasibility and practicality of developing of a new public-
facing constituent engagement interactive platform, and present 
potential options. Options could include but not be limited to 
making Congress.gov more interactive and establishing a 
separate public-facing site to allow users to submit opinions 
that will be publicly visible on pending legislation or offer 
ideas for new legislation. Interactivity could include upvoting 
and downvoting, dynamic and collaborative bill drafting tools, 
the ability to link comments to more context written by LoC 
staff, among others. This would not supplant current 
communication methods, such as emails and webforms, but rather 
would be an additional option for comments that would be made 
public. The interface could point to Congress.gov's background 
information about proposals and legislation, further enabling 
constituents to formulate and communicate their views to 
Congress. A platform could also allow the public to sign up for 
automatic email alerts when issues they care about are acted 
upon.
          (4) Recommendation: The House Digital Service should 
        evaluate and onboard industry leading correspondence 
        technology tools and platforms to enable offices to 
        improve the quality and substance of constituent 
        correspondence.
    Specifically . . . Technology is available that can assist 
offices in improving the quality and substance of constituent 
correspondence. By adopting new intelligent tools, House 
offices can enhance the process of sorting and tagging 
constituent letters, improve the quality of responses by 
utilizing AI, more efficiently process and reply to comments 
that arrive through social media, and track constituents' 
satisfaction with the responses they receive. Improved 
constituent correspondence technology and tools can help 
offices respond to constituents more quickly and efficiently, 
and in potentially new ways. In addition, automating the 
repetitive aspects of correspondence can also free up staff to 
spend more time on other projects.
          (5) Recommendation: The House should study and 
        present options for developing a platform for 
        committees that want to solicit public comment and 
        evidence on topics that might be coming before the 
        committee.
    Specifically . . . With committee buy-in, the House could 
establish a website that allows all committees to solicit 
public comment before upcoming hearings and markups, or it 
could develop a plug-in for committees to use on their existing 
website. Committees could selectively solicit public comments 
based on the topic or business before the committee. Like an 
executive agency comment period, the site could allow for 
comments and uploading documentation relevant to the 
committee's interest. Depending on the committees' preferences, 
Committees could keep comments private, or they could be 
presented publicly and made part of the record as is done for 
agency comments. A study will address the feasibility and 
practicality of developing a platform and ensure there is 
committee buy-in to develop and use such a platform.
          (6) Recommendation: The House should develop an 
        efficient and secure tool for coordinating constituent 
        tour requests.
    Specifically . . . The House should develop a portal and/or 
plug-in for tour requests that allows constituents to securely 
submit their personal identifiable information (PII) and allow 
staffers to easily track and manage constituent requests for 
tours of the Capitol, White House, and other federal entities 
open for public tours. The CAO should assess industry standard 
technology tools or develop new digital solutions to 
standardize the tour request process.
          (7) Recommendation: The House should develop a more 
        efficient process for tracking and managing constituent 
        flag requests.
    Specifically . . . The House should develop a portal for 
flag requests that allows users to see where a flag is in the 
process, encompassing all stages within the Architect of the 
Capitol's Flag Office, House Mailing Services, and the House 
Office Supply Store. By creating a system like an online 
``pizza tracker,'' House staffers would be able to see where 
the flag is in the current process. House Mailing Services 
should also provide the option to either mail flags directly or 
send them back to personal offices, an option that the 
Committee understands currently exists only for Senate offices.
          (8) Recommendation: The House should develop and 
        provide offices with optional tools for surveying and 
        tracking their constituent's `customer service' 
        experience.
    Specifically . . . The House should offer a standard 
Customer Experience (CX) package for offices to utilize where 
at the end of an interaction between a member office and a 
constituent, there is an opportunity for constituents to 
provide feedback about their overall experience. In developing 
tools for tracking satisfaction, the House should look to the 
private sector for best practices. The tool should be optional 
for offices and provide customized options for offices to 
measure various aspects of the customer/constituent service 
experience. Offices could also opt in to allow their customer 
service response data to be aggregated into an anonymized 
report to enable them to compare their own office's performance 
with other offices, and with a House-wide performance ``base-
line'' on customer service. The report could be supplemented 
with survey data obtained through Congressional Staff Academy 
courses related to constituent services. Collecting information 
on the constituent service experience can help offices gain a 
better understanding of how to meet constituent expectations 
and to identify areas in which to make improvements in service 
delivery.
          (9) Recommendation: Future upgrades to the Capitol 
        Visitor Center should allow for a more personalized and 
        interactive tour that allows constituents to better 
        understand who their representatives are and how their 
        opinions are reflected in House votes.
    Specifically . . . For example, an electronic device 
assigned to a visitor could allow them to learn specifically 
about their member and district by simply tapping their device 
on the display. In addition, it could enable them to 
participate in live polls (without voting repeatedly) and see 
how their vote matches up with how the House voted on an issue 
and how every other visitor to the center voted on the issue. 
Another example would be to create a Member Wall like the one 
in the European Parliament Parlamentarium that would pull up 
basic facts about each member, their committee assignments 
(potentially with live information about committee hearings), 
and member positions on key issues. Implementation of this 
recommendation would require an in-depth examination of how to 
address possible privacy and IT security concerns and a 
feasibility assessment of infrastructure and staffing 
requirements.

                      Bolstering House Technology

          (10) Recommendation: Congress should institutionalize 
        and expand technology education and innovation 
        initiatives such as the Congressional Hackathon.
    Specifically . . . The Congressional Hackathon and other 
technology and innovation-related events and initiatives in the 
House would benefit from being institutionalized and be 
expanded to bring together technical staff from throughout the 
legislative branch to brainstorm and work on technical 
solutions collaboratively. Additionally, institutional support 
would encourage more of the legislative branch agencies, like 
CRS/CBO/GAO, to participate.
          (11) Recommendation: The House should develop an 
        onboarding process to institutionalize congressional 
        technology that has reached a mature development stage, 
        is widely used, or is considered mission critical.
    Specifically . . . Systems like the Dome Watch app, DemCom 
intranet, GOP Cloakroom amendment / vote tracker as well as 
committee amendment systems are widely used or considered 
mission critical. These systems were developed by Leadership or 
committee offices and are ``owned'' by those individual 
offices. As such, they could become unavailable or unusable as 
staff departs and offices change. House Information Resources 
(HIR) and House Digital Service, after consultation with other 
institutional offices, should develop standard criteria for 
mature technology and a standard process for onboarding them 
with the appropriate institutional office. There should also be 
a process in place, with appropriate oversight, for ``off-
ramping'' technologies that may have become obsolete or are no 
longer utilized or effective. Additionally, custom software 
tools are often built by software developers that numerous 
offices use but fall out of favor because the developer doesn't 
have an incentive to continue to maintain or upgrade that tool. 
The House could benefit by having a process for procuring the 
source code and building on top of the base tool, rather than 
building a similar mission critical tool from scratch.
          (12) Recommendation: House-developed digital 
        applications should be made open source by default.
    Specifically . . . Technology developed with House 
resources should, by default and when appropriate, have code 
that is published publicly under a structured open-source 
license. Open-source software is computer software that is 
released under a license in which the copyright holder (in this 
case the House) grants users the rights to view, use, study, 
change, and distribute the software and its source code for 
usage and further development by other entities. Open-source 
licensing can be structured in ways that are beneficial to the 
House, and, if necessary, be revoked. A sample agreement would 
require that the House also be able to use free of cost any 
tools developed to expand functionality for the underlying 
digital tool. An open-source system will make it easier to 
improve functionally and maintain House-built tools in addition 
to preventing vendor lock-in.
          (13) Recommendation: The House and Senate should work 
        to align more of their technology standards and 
        processes.
    Specifically . . . Through a bicameral working group, the 
House and Senate should seek to align technology standards and 
processes, where feasible. Enterprise-wide systems used by both 
chambers (for example, Microsoft Office Suite) should be 
aligned to facilitate collaboration between the chambers. 
Currently, House and Senate offices are not able to communicate 
over MS Teams. Ideally, approval by one chamber should allow 
for expedited, or even immediate, approval by the other 
chamber. Both chambers should use one system of Communicating 
with Congress (CWC), the tool that processes constituent mail, 
which would be easier and cheaper for both chambers and for the 
advocacy organizations. Aligning more technology standards and 
processes, including procurement and onboarding processes, will 
save money, allow offices to work more efficiently, make it 
easier for outside groups and vendors working with Congress, 
and improve collaboration across the chambers.
          (14) Recommendation: The House should provide more 
        public information to potential technology vendors and 
        streamline the vendor approval and onboarding process.
    Specifically . . . The House should publish a page on their 
website for potential developers of digital tools similar to 
the ``Steps to Becoming a Web Vendor'' that exists on the 
House's website. While the House has a process for working 
specifically with vendors, it should continue to improve the 
process and establish a clear liaison or point of contact that 
works with outside vendors once they are approved. In addition, 
the vendor application should be posted publicly along with 
information explaining the application and approval process, 
recommended best practices, and FAQs. Any streamlining of the 
vendor approval process should ensure a competitive process 
that secures the best quality products and services at the best 
possible price. Providing more information publicly about the 
process and helping small vendors navigate it could attract 
more technology startups and encourage the development of new 
tools that innovate and improve House operations.
          (15) Recommendation: The CAO should develop an 
        Established Delivery Partners program for digital 
        solution vendors that regularly work with the House.
    Specifically . . . By creating an ``Established Delivery 
Partners'' (EDP) process and list, the House can make it easier 
and quicker for experienced vendors to clear administrative 
hurdles to deliver digital tools to House clients. Vendors in 
included in this process would understand House Rules and 
possess a proven track record of developing tools successfully 
and meeting the House's security protocols. As the CAO develops 
and utilizes EDPs, it should be careful to ensure it remains a 
competitive process that is continually open to new entrants 
and does not, through institutional inertia, become an 
exclusive group and thus a potential obstacle to accepting new 
vendors and technologies. The intention is to ease 
administrative and approval burdens when a vendor has 
demonstrated repeatedly that they understand and follow House 
Rules and protocols. Having an established list of approved 
software developers will ensure that House offices are able to 
better scope potential projects, receive more accurate costs 
estimates, and develop and receive tools in a timelier manner.
          (16) Recommendation: The House should review current 
        policies and, where appropriate, allow opportunities 
        for congressional use of software and its underlying 
        code that is developed by outside civic technology 
        organizations.
    Specifically . . . The House Committee on Ethics and the 
Committee on House Administration should review and provide 
public-facing, written guidance on Congress's potential use and 
publishing of open-source technology. The guidance should 
address whether offices can communicate publicly about the 
development of a website, whether congressional offices can use 
open-source software published in a public repository, whether 
congressional offices can publish open-source code developed 
internally using official resources, and whether congressional 
offices can provide comments and feature requests to open-
source projects developed by others concerning ideas for 
further improving the software. Clear guidelines could enable 
civic tech organizations to develop and make improvements to 
code that the House might use and should ensure opportunities 
for technology sharing and collaboration remain competitive and 
remain available to all otherwise qualified civic tech 
entities. The Ethics Committee and other committees of 
jurisdiction should review and update gift rules to allow 
appropriate collaboration between congressional offices and 
civic tech organizations and allow for collaborative technology 
prize competitions. The House could publish data standards and 
common identifiers (for example, member unique ID) a as well as 
more API information to allow civic tech organizations and 
academics to, in a standard fashion, work with the data 
Congress produces. Reviewing and updating rules and policies 
and/or providing additional clarity, where appropriate, can 
help Congress better utilize and share open-source civic 
technology to improve the public's access to and understanding 
of Congress.
          (17) Recommendation: The House should establish a 
        high-level working group to prioritize and coordinate 
        the maintenance and development of House digital 
        infrastructure.
    Specifically . . . The House should establish a coordinated 
working group comprised of leadership offices, relevant 
committees, support offices, and outside advisors to discuss, 
coordinate, and prioritize major technology projects in the 
House and implementation of the Select Committee's 
recommendations. The working group should represent both the 
majority and minority parties in the House. The working group 
should be charged with bringing together members and relevant 
staffers from member offices, committees, and support agencies 
to identify pain points in congressional technology and plan 
out what areas need attention. This working group can identify 
and evaluate technology that can support lawmaking, oversight, 
constituent engagement and overall operations for the 
institution and serve as a central clearinghouse for 
information and expertise about technology. The House 
Technology Working Group should consult widely, gathering input 
from relevant stakeholders and experts and using data to assess 
technology for the chamber. By bringing together staff from 
across the institution, and from the outside, the working group 
provides a new--and needed--forum for identifying shared 
technology challenges and assessing new tools. The working 
group should make clear and actionable recommendations that 
would advance congressional technology.
          (18) Recommendation: The House should create a 
        Digital Service Advisory Board to help plan and 
        prioritize the work of the House Digital Service.
    Specifically . . . The Board should include a wide variety 
of senior congressional administrative staff representing 
various departments and with technical knowledge. A board will 
help ensure that the HDS has broad buy-in to their objectives 
and is prioritizing systems that customers identify. The HDS 
should develop a transparent but nimble process for selecting 
projects. This could be modeled on the Digital Strategy Board 
that helps govern the UK's Parliamentary Digital Service.
          (19) Recommendation: The Capitol switchboard should 
        be updated to allow call information to be passed 
        through to House offices.
    Specifically . . . The Capitol switchboard should allow 
call information, like the phone number, to be passed through 
during the switch from the call center to a House office. The 
House has made improvements and offices can now identify when a 
call is coming in through the switchboard, which can be helpful 
for a Capitol Police investigation but is not helpful for 
blocking disruptive and threatening callers.
          (20) Recommendation: The GPO should create and offer 
        a standard process for automating committee hearing 
        records.
    Specifically . . . The GPO, working with the Clerk, should 
establish a standard but optional process that automatically 
generates and compiles a draft hearing record using documents 
uploaded into the committee repository (e.g., testimony, 
transcript, votes, and other documents). This process will 
require compatibility between document formats used by 
committees and the format used at GPO. For years GPO has been 
working on this compatibility and has developed XPUB to 
modernize the process. To ensure all hearing records are 
accounted for, the committee clerk must mark the hearing record 
`closed' before GPO begins to compile the record. Automating 
the process for compiling and submitting hearing records to GPO 
will reduce time and cost burdens and encourage the printing of 
committee hearing records. An official printed record lasts in 
perpetuity and enhances transparency and public availability of 
hearing information.
          (21) Recommendation: The House should work with 
        committees to develop optional tools that allow them to 
        continue to migrate away from the use of paper 
        documents during committee meetings.
    Specifically . . . The Committee on House Administration 
could develop procedures and make resources available to 
members and committees to ensure that all future committee 
business is ``digital by default.'' Members or committees that 
still wish to operate based on paper could still opt-in to the 
paper-based system. The costs of digital tools necessary for 
committee business would be borne by committees.

                  Supporting Congressional Operations

          (22) Recommendation: The House should provide 
        resources to support HOLC's continuing efforts to 
        expand education and proactive outreach to members and 
        staff.
    Specifically . . . The House should provide HOLC with 
resources to add a Director of Outreach and Education or assign 
additional non-attorney staff to an outreach and education team 
at HOLC that would be solely focused on proactive outreach to 
member and committee offices, serve as the office's ``eyes and 
ears'' to answer questions and identify possible concerns, and 
to focus on ways to continually improve the office's 
educational and informational materials and offerings to ensure 
staff, in particular new staff, are fully informed on the 
HOLC's role and processes. The Committee understands the focus 
of the OLC is on legislative drafting services and would not 
want this effort to take away from the resources that should be 
geared toward improving that core drafting function. This 
person could have office space in the Capitol that is welcoming 
to staff, and the space could be used for legislative drafting 
collaboration between members, staff, and attorneys at HOLC.
    The HOLC attorneys interact daily and directly with members 
and committee offices and staff to provide the legislative 
drafting support and assistance they need. Therefore, customer 
service is an integral part of what HOLC attorneys do, and each 
attorney in the office, by definition, plays an important and 
much needed customer-facing role. Over the past several years, 
HOLC has expanded its educational and informational outreach to 
provide members and staff with the resources necessary to work 
most effectively and efficiently with offices to turn members' 
policy ideas into effective legislative text. For example, in 
collaboration with the Congressional Staff Academy (CSA), the 
Office is currently offering a Legislative Counsel 101 (Leg 
Counsel and You) and a Legislative Counsel 201 (Working with 
Legislative Text) course. The Committee also understands the 
HOLC plans to establish open house opportunities for House 
staff to meet with the Office to share questions, goals, ideas 
for improvement, and concerns. Finally, the CAO Coach Program 
in April 2022 hired a Legislative Coach specializing in 
mentoring legislative staff and has partnered with HOLC to 
offer legislative staff tips and tricks. The Committee strongly 
supports these efforts, because when legislative staff is fully 
informed on the HOLC drafting process and understands how they 
can provide a workable policy idea to begin the drafting 
process, workflow and efficiency improve.
          (23) Recommendation: At the beginning of a new 
        Congress, House business support offices and agencies 
        should hold an ``Open-House'' to provide members and 
        staff the opportunity to personally meet with 
        institutional offices and staff and learn about the 
        services they offer.
    Specifically . . . An in-person ``Open-House'' would raise 
the awareness of these offices and what they do. It could also 
improve the working relationships with member offices by 
providing a personal touch and the opportunity to meet the 
people they may otherwise only interact with over the phone, 
via email, or virtually. Many offices already hold an open 
House or information session, but these are not coordinated 
with each other.
          (24) Recommendation: The House should permit 
        legislation to have two members of Congress serve as 
        first sponsors, provided that members are affiliated 
        with different political parties.
    Specifically . . . A second primary sponsor designation for 
a member of a different party would incentivize bipartisanship 
by giving a member who substantively helps in the crafting and 
passage more credit than a co-sponsor designation, which often 
only reflects support for the legislation. This recommendation 
does not call for a change to the standing rules of the House 
but rather envisions a special order to pilot the idea for a 
single Congress. There is some precedent for having more than 
one member be the sponsor of a bill. The 104th Congress adopted 
a special rule to allow the first 20 bills introduced in the 
House (H.R. 1 through H.R. 20) to have more than one member 
listed as a first sponsor. The committee understands that 
operational challenges may arise if implementation diverges 
from the precedent of the 104th Congress.

                  V. COMMITTEE CONSIDERATION AND VOTES


                             Consideration

    On September 29, 2022, the Select Committee held a Business 
Meeting, a quorum being present, and reported favorably the 
recommendations herein contained in this report.

                                 Votes

    In compliance with clause 3(b) of rule XIII of the Rules of 
the House of Representatives, there were no recorded votes 
taken on these recommendations. The recommendations herein 
contained in this report were adopted by voice vote, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative. A motion by Chair Derek Kilmer of 
Washington to report these recommendations to the House of 
Representatives was adopted by voice vote, two-thirds being in 
the affirmative.

                                  [all]