Newsletter: Summer Outreach Season
Happy early Independence day! If you handle immigration casework (or any kind of casework), we hope you get to enjoy seeing some of the more heart-warming USCIS activities over the holiday.
And we have some good news — we’re restarting our Casework Navigator webinar series! Just in time for the August recess, this summer’s series will focus on the overlap between casework and outreach: what is the right balance of proactive outreach and preserving capacity to react to changing needs? How can offices find creative ways to coordinate with local nonprofits on constituent service events? How can you tell if your careful outreach strategy for casework is working the way you want it to?
Speakers for this series include academics answering some of these questions, former caseworkers, and constituent services pros at the state and local level — among others to be announced. Sign up below!
I am always here for questions, comments, suggestions, or just to chat. 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 Resource
You may have seen that the House Ethics Committee and Committee on House Administration just released new guidance allowing Congressional offices to more easily partner with nonprofit groups to cohost constituent service events. This is a major shift for the House that will let offices be more efficient and creative in serving constituents — but the guidance itself can be a little difficult to understand. POPVOX Foundation summer Fellow Nick Dokoozlian created a quick-start guide to understanding the new guidance for nonprofits. Feel free to share in your networks to help your community partners understand the new rules and start thinking of creative joint events.
News About Casework
Casework in the News:
Kind of love this hurricane season PSA from Sen. Rick Scott [R, FL] and an unexpected guest.
Nice press release on a major milestone of $ returned to constituents through casework from Team Kean [R, NJ]. Congratulations!
The team at Indigov recently ran an experiment measuring response rates for a sample of elected officials in eight states. We would ask some questions about the usefulness of lumping together data from local, state, and federal officials into one metric — but if you’re curious about that metric, they found an 8.44% response rate.
Casework-Related Agency News
State Dept. launches online passport renewals
And caseworkers everywhere breathe a sigh of relief. The portal is still in beta testing, accepting a limited number of applications per day, but State said that it expects the system to one day handle 25% of all passport applications and 2/3rds of passport renewals.
SSA updates a job list from the 1970s
Social Security eliminated a huge number of outdated jobs still represented in its database used to determine eligibility for disability benefits — including pneumatic tube operators, microfilm processors, and nut sorters. Disability advocates expect this will lead to more approvals. Related: this was a nice profile of Commissioner O’Malley and his one-year runway to fix many of Social Security’s major problems.
SSA handles a big wave of calls from a fraudulent news story
SSA call centers saw an enormous uptick in volume around a false rumor that seniors would receive a secondary $600 COLA adjustment this summer.
IRS stats that WILL make you sound smart at receptions
Did you know that the IRS maintains 37,200 individual web pages (of which 26,600 are written in English, and the rest are translations)? Or 51% of IRS site traffic comes from mobile devices? Or more than half of IRS.gov viewers read at a sixth grade level or lower?
In more depressing statistics
The IRS is still struggling to handle a wave of ID theft cases. The current backlog for resolving ID theft cases and re-issuing stolen refunds remains around two years.
Administration pardon for gay veterans opens up benefits
President Biden recently pardoned veterans who were convicted and forced out of the military for gay relationships from the 1950s to 2013. The change does not automatically repeal their military convictions, but allows them to apply for a pardon that, when granted, would make them eligible for benefits.
VA still handling backlogs of provider bills after ransomware attack
The recent ransomware attack on Change Healthcare is still causing ripple effects in the VA, including delaying providers’ ability to submit invoices or transmit third-party prescription data.
Staffing shortages led DHS to release hundreds of “inadmissible” travelers
A DHS IG audit of one airport found at least 380 instances where staffing shortages led DHS to release a traveler deemed “inadmissible” into the country, and in many cases did not follow up to begin deportation proceedings.
