Newsletter: Using Generative AI for Casework Good
You’ve probably heard a lot about ChatGPT, Dall-E, Claude, Poe, other publicly-available LLM tools, and AI’s enormous potential to change just about everything about American life. If this has seemed too big or too technical for you to wrap your head around — you’re not alone!
AI is already here, and in many ways is living up to or exceeding the hype. For caseworkers, that includes its potential to fundamentally shift some of the current ways that federal agencies operate, and how constituents interact with them. The first step toward having an informed position on how this will work is to have some experience using the tools for yourself.
As a bonus, these tools also have a lot of potential to speed up or streamline some of the repetitive, manual tasks of casework. Both the House and Senate have issued guidelines for how Congressional staff can use these responsibly, although your office may have additional rules.
Our new guide provides guidelines for using AI tools responsibly, as well as sample prompts tailored to casework activities. Below, in today’s news roundup, we’ll highlight some additional places to use the tips in the guide above.
I am always here for questions, comments, suggestions, or just to chat about casework. Please feel free to reach out by replying to this email, or shoot me a note at anne@popvox.org.
Anne Meeker
Deputy Director
POPVOX Foundation
NEW: AI Tools for Casework
Our new AI Tools for Casework guide has information on understanding LLM tools, and integrating them into casework-specific tasks.
Other resources on AI use for our team include sample prompts for your DC colleagues (even your interns!) and a guide to developing a responsible office-specific policy around AI use: where to use it, when to use it, and what not to do.
For the real deep dive, check out POPVOX Foundation Executive Director Marci Harris’s report on Representative Bodies in the AI Era: A Roadmap for Legislatures.
Casework in the News
Why these articles? We always try to highlight innovative casework practices, including how casework teams pitch local and national media outlets on casework-related stories. If we’ve missed a cool story your team landed, send it our way!
Lovely coverage of a local resource fair
Congrats to the Rep Ryan [D, NY] team on a successful senior resource fair!
AI Tip: GenAI tools can help draft copy for event materials and invitations.
Big bucks
There’s no better feeling than a gigantic casework win. Congrats to the Rep. Sorensen [D, IL] team!
News You Can Use
Casework-related hearings
It’s Appropriations season, which means a lot of agency heads are testifying to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees around their budget justifications. This is a great time to pick up news on what to expect in the coming year — and using the AI tips above, this doesn’t have to be a huge time commitment! Some notable ones include:
House
Senate
More will be scheduled soon, so check both Approps Committees sites for more details.
You’ve made it through the first wave of tax season cases!
The new IRS DirectFile program has completed 100,000 successfully processed returns. One organization claims that the project could save US households $11 billion annually on tax preparation, if successful. And no matter what you may have heard from constituents…taxes are still due even if you object to the philosophical concept of income tax.
30,000 died in fiscal 2023 waiting for disability decisions from Social Security
“Currently, the wait time for an initial disability decision is almost eight months, and the agency has a backlog of 1.1 million pending initial disability claims, as of Fiscal Year 2023. Those that ask for SSA to reconsider their initial decision for a disability claim have to wait another seven months, and those that request a hearing wait a year.”
New casework challenges unlocked?
Two recently raised issues affecting veterans are probably showing up in your casework — first, challenges veterans working in the federal government face in obtaining administrative leave for VA healthcare appointments, especially given the limit on the number of times they can cancel.
Second, when the National Association of Realtors settlement goes into effect in July, homebuyers will now have to pay buyers’ agents their commissions directly (instead of the previous arrangement where the sellers’ agent and buyers’ agent split the commission). This will pose a challenge for veterans using VA home loans, which prevent borrowers from paying commissions to buyers’ agents. This means that veterans will either have to pay commissions out of pocket or may not be able to be represented by a buyer’s agent, possibly disadvantaging them in the homebuying process.
If you’re seeing these, we’d love to hear about it!
AI Tip: Using GenAI tools to summarize available information on complex regulations like these can be a good way to quickly get up to speed on a new program.
OPM will not longer include SSNs in mailed docs
This is a step intended to help prevent ID theft by limiting the amount of sensitive information sent through the mail. It may be a good idea for Congressional teams to consider how they can do the same.
Two bills to watch
Two pieces of proposed legislation may have a big impact on the VA: a pending bipartisan deal to reauthorize the expired VET-TEC tech training program and an effort to examine and reduce mistakes made by the Board of Veteran Appeals.
Feels like a good PSA on federal benefits
Useful guide to understanding the impact of retiring vs. resigning from federal service.
AI Tip: ChatGPT and other tools are 100% better at drafting sample tweets than I will ever be.
Face-recognition ID verification options coming soon
GSA is rolling out a pilot of new face ID verification tools for login.gov this summer. GSA will also expand its in-person verification pilot to additional post offices. This could be a game changer for how constituents authenticate their IDs for online accounts for federal programs. However, some agencies are still more comfortable with commercially-available options.
