Casework is Ready for Innovation

Two weeks ago, Congressional tech modernizers, innovators, and legislative nerds gathered for the 5th Congressional Hackathon. Hosted by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and the House Chief Administrative Office, the event focused on ideas and works-in-progress for how tech can streamline Congressional operations and make Congress a safer, more efficient, and more enjoyable place to work.

And for the first time, casework took center stage.

As Speaker McCarthy noted in his opening remarks, casework is a commonality uniting every Member of Congress:

“[Casework] happens to every single member. Regardless of whether you live on the East Coast, West Coast, Middle America, it doesn't matter what party you're in, when [your constituents] have a problem with the federal government, you want to help them."

But limits to technology also make that vital work challenging: for example, until the passage of the CASES Act, casework teams had to seek paper Privacy Act Release Forms from constituents, including those who had just lost everything in natural disasters.

But as the CASES Act shows, Congress’s attention to casework can dramatically improve its ability to serve constituents and carry out its Article One responsibilities.

The POPVOX Foundation team was honored to attend the event, and to share a bit from the team’s work on proof-of-concept tools to show how technology can support Congressional work. This wrap-up will cover the pain points and solutions caseworkers identified, and the biggest idea coming out of the Hackathon.

Catching Up: What is Casework?

“It is the sense of Congress that–

(1) congressional offices provide crucial services to constituents by acting as a liaison between the constituents and the respective agencies

(2) this includes assisting constituents by making inquiries and working toward resolutions on behalf of the constituent with the respective agencies;”

–CASES Act of 2019 (PL 116-50)

Casework is the process by which Members of Congress and their staff advocate on behalf of constituents to resolve problems with federal agencies, in accordance with the law. Casework is grounded in Congress’s Article One responsibilities to oversee the Executive Branch, and in constituents’ First Amendment right to petition for the redress of grievances.

While the specific issues vary by district and state, some common programs caseworkers handle include VA benefits, SSA benefits, passports, disaster assistance, IRS issues, military pay and benefits, and much more. In most cases, constituents reach out to Congressional offices as a “hail Mary” when traditional customer service channels have failed to resolve an issue, meaning that Congressional offices often see unusual cases and policy edge cases, as well as patterns in “pain points” where constituents have challenges with the federal bureaucracy. Beyond just service to constituents, ideally casework also surfaces common problems and trends that can be addressed through oversight.

Casework also represents a huge proportion of Congressional staff capacity: by a back-of-the-envelope calculation from CRS data, caseworkers and other staff with casework roles represent up to 14-21% of House Member office staff.

This means that innovations in casework processes have the potential to return staff capacity at scale: if each Member office’s casework team opens 15 cases per week and better technology can save 20 minutes per case, in a year that innovation can return over six weeks of staff time to each Member office.

Casework Pain Points

At the Hackathon, a breakout group focused on casework met to talk through challenges and opportunities for innovation. The group included two currently-serving caseworkers (each using a different CMS platform), staff from the Chief Administrative Officer (including former Chiefs of Staff), House Digital Services, House Information Resources, and other civic technologists and innovators. In discussing areas for potential casework innovation, the group surfaced several major pain points, in particular:

• Tracking and managing data
  Current default tags do not capture detail beyond general agency. The lack of detail makes it difficult for staff to manage their caseloads, and to spot trends in specific types of cases. Each office has the ability to add additional tags, but this makes it difficult to explore options for data interoperability.

• Transferring cases between Members (for example, in redistricting or when a Member retires or loses their seat)
  House Rules specify that all casework data is the personal property of the Member which poses difficulties for transferring data for in-progress cases when the seat changes hands. This data loss makes it difficult for incoming offices to hit the ground running.

• Non-jurisdictional casework
  Congress only has jurisdiction over federal agencies, but Members frequently receive requests for assistance with state and local programs. Although some Members use the opportunity to connect constituents with misdirected inquiries directly to other resources, caseworkers agreed that the ability to pre-screen those cases and educate constituents about other opportunities would be helpful.

• Vendor relationships
  While caseworkers reported dramatically different experiences with different CMS platforms, all noted major difficulties in switching between systems, and adjusting to updates that dramatically change the user interface for vital software. While some vendors are great at caseworker outreach, others stick to in-person feedback methods that primarily capture DC staffers’ experience with mail.

POPVOX Foundation’s work with caseworkers in the Casework Navigator program has also surfaced several additional pain points that were not covered at the Hackathon:

• Prompting for best practices
  CMS systems that don’t prompt best practices can lead to misuse or poor use by inexperienced caseworkers, including missing notes, mislabeled documents, and incomplete correspondence records (e.g. copying and pasting email chains).

• Document management
  Casework requires caseworkers to handle large amounts of documents related to constituent cases, but this process is still largely clunky and time-consuming.

• Managing agency liaisons
  One of the biggest challenges for new caseworkers and new casework teams is understanding which agency contact is appropriate for which type of case. While CRS hosts a general list of liaisons, the list does not include details of regional and local contacts for some agencies, and caseworkers often have to manually re-enter CRS information into their CMS system.

• Managing vulnerabilities
  With the rise in generative AI, casework teams will require better tools to identify and verify their constituents to avoid being party to fraud and other malicious activity.

A Caseworker for the Caseworkers?

Besides surfacing pain points, caseworkers and civic technologists also brainstormed ways that casework could be improved. For example:

• Working to develop a standard case tag list to be shared between offices and set as default options across CMS vendors

• Working to develop a standard feature list for CMS vendors that focuses on casework needs

• Working to develop options for digital PARF systems and CMS platforms to catch non-jurisdictional casework and redirect constituents to more suitable resources

• Working with CMS vendors to develop more comprehensive on-demand training modules to help new caseworkers level up

But when the caseworkers in the breakout groups were asked, “who would you go to about this?” there was no clear answer. While CAO staff, including coaches, the HIR team, and more, are helpful in specific cases, they rarely have the direct responsibility to advocate on behalf of caseworkers as a class of Congressional staff.

A central liaison office for caseworkers could start to act as a central point of responsibility and information for both caseworkers and modernizers who may be less familiar with caseworkers’ roles and needs. For example, a central liaison office could:

• Serve as a central clearinghouse to help welcome new caseworkers and make sure every caseworker has access to materials providing a baseline standard of training and resources through the CAO, Staff Academy, CRS, and CMS vendors.

• Brief agencies on Congressional casework to help promote best practices for liaisons in responding to caseworker inquiries

• Serve as a central liaison for agencies in distributing information to all caseworkers.

• Help casework teams by assisting in managing national Teams chats and listservs, answering basic questions, and relaying resources and updates.

• Coordinate with the Chaplain, the Office of Employee Assistance, and other support offices to identify opportunities to convene wellness resources for caseworkers, especially in periods of high-volume or high-stress casework.

• Conduct regular survey and feedback sessions with casework teams to establish best practices, baseline data on casework operations, and surface emerging problems and trends.

• Serve as a liaison to CMS vendors to identify feature needs and data requirements, especially in light of a potential national casework data aggregator.

In other words: Congress would benefit by establishing a casework team dedicated to serving caseworkers.

There is recent precedent in other staffing areas. Congress (especially the House) has recently achieved some great successes by creating central liaisons and support teams for functions that were previously siloed: for example, the creation of the House Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds, the House Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and the forthcoming CAO House Intern Resource Office.

A key takeaway from the breakout conversation was the sense of surprise from non-casework staff about the limitations of the tools caseworkers are able to access—and the amazing things they are able to accomplish anyway. Above all, the hackathon facilitated understanding casework from staffers' perspectives, and technologists in the room left energized about how better tools could tangibly improve interactions with constituents. In order to realize those capacity and efficiency gains, caseworkers need to be part of ongoing conversations about modernization, and caseworkers need dedicated champions who understand the complexity and uniqueness of casework—and its enormous potential to be unlocked.