On February 10, 2019 we are shutting down Madison.

If you have used Madison to publish public policy documents and would like to download an archive of your document’s activity, you can do so through the end of Sunday, February 10th (EST). How-to instructions are included at the end of this post.

After February 10th, we will turn Madison into a static website. Published documents, discussions and debates will be permanently archived as they exist today. Should you wish to continue using Madison, you can stand up your own version of Madison. The code is free and open source on Github for you to do so.

Since December 2011, The OpenGov Foundation has developed Madison for public servants and citizens to develop better public policy together. Through four major releases, The OGF maintained and improved Madison for thousands of citizen-users and more than seventy-five local, state, federal and international governments. We are honored by every one of those users, and by the hundreds of thousands of additional people who stopped by Madison to witness smarter, more equitable 21st Century democracy in action. It was a helluva run.

Over the past seven years, Madison proved that digital-first and inclusive policy-making is the best way to govern in the Internet Age. Madison helped protect the free and open Internet, channeling and amplifying hundreds of thousands of citizen and stakeholder voices in order to sink SOPA and PIPA. Members of Congress used Madison to publish secretive Internet- and privacy-threatening international trade agreements — ACTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership — for public scrutiny and input. Madison gave birth to the first citizen-drafted legislation — The OPEN Act — and legislative amendments in the history of the United States Congress. Madison also helped to launch dozens of pieces of groundbreaking government reform and modernization legislation, with the 115th Congress’ Hoyer-McCarthy draft bill to create a Congressional Digital Service potentially the most transformative.

Many of those bills have become law. The DATA Act and FISMA and dozens of local open government data laws are some of the most impactful laws made with Madison. Beyond law and legislation, Madison powered efficient and open public engagement on an array of rules and regulations — the City of Syracuse’s body-worn camera policy for local law enforcement and the City of Chicago’s smart city data privacy rules are but two examples. Leading non-governmental organizations leveraged Madison to improve their policy agendas, from the Sunlight Foundation and MapLight to Code for America and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). To top it all off, the Obama Administration used Madison to draft and publish the U.S. Federal Government’s public engagement playbook.

All of this was made possible for significantly less than $1 million, cobbled together from grants and the odd charitable donation.

Click here to say thank you for 7+ years of Madison with a tax-deductible donation to The OpenGov Foundation. We’d be honored to have your support.

Special thanks to the wonderful people who helped create and improve Madison over the years — Aaron Ogle, Tanner Doshier, Patrick Bateman, Seth Etter, Chris Birk, Bill Hunt, Leili Slutz, John Athayde, Aaron Bartnick, Meag Doherty, Mary Kate Mezzetti, Chris Noessel, Kate Faherty, Ross Tsiomenko, Sean Keefer, Matt Steinberg, Michael Hardesty, Bryan Connor, Jayson Manship and the inSourceCode team.

Thank you to the directors and advisors who helped us steer The Good Ship OGF during the Madison years — Phaedra Chrousos, Michelle Lee, Aaron Snow, Laurent Crenshaw, Rich Hirshberg, Bob Sofman, Jo-Marie St. Martin, Janine Gianfredi, Peter Karman, Scout Addis, Patrick Dowd, Darrell Issa, Tom Davis, Lanham Napier, Brandon Andrews, Dr. Anne Washington, Karien Bezuidenhout and Larry Brady.

And we will always remain grateful to the people who financially supported The OGF so that Madison could remain free to all — Darrell and Kathy Issa, The Shuttleworth Foundation, The John S. and James L Knight Foundation, The Consumer Technology Association and The Rita Allen Foundation.

Madison proved that when those who serve in government and those they represent are truly and meaningfully connected, great things are always possible. The OGF family carried that torch for seven long years. I look forward to helping the next group of crazy, compassionate and creative people who take on the endless work of renewing representative democracy for this day, and all the brighter days to come.

Be kind, take care of one another and see you around the Internet,

• Seamus Kraft

Executive Director & Co-Founder

The OpenGov Foundation

Instructions for Downloading Public Comments on a Document You Published with Madison

If you have published a document on Madison and would like to download an archive of all the public engagement activity — edits, discussion, debate and comments — you can do so in 4 easy steps.

1. Log into your document sponsor account at MyMadison.io.

2. Click your user name in the top right corner of the page. From the dropdown menu, click “Sponsors.”

3. Click the icon in the “Comments” column for each document to download a CSV file containing the public engagement activity for that document.

4. If you are a member of multiple “Sponsors” accounts, click each “Sponsor” name and follow step #3 for each account.

A look inside institutional constraints and opportunities for congressional teams to improve constituent engagement approaches.

OVERVIEW

In the final section of our findings, we share insights into the mental models and institutional factors limiting innovation, and we offer ideas for overcoming inertia around change.

KEY FINDINGS

1 Offices are underwhelmed and often frustrated by the tools available to them, but they often lack time, resources, and appetite to experiment with new tools or invest in large-scale process innovation.

2 For most offices, the most significant limitations are human hours and financial resources.

3 Teams feel constrained by the rules and entities that regulate technology use, as well as their own limited experience buying and using modern tools. In addition, the lack of a competitive vendor marketplace means tools come at a high cost, and vendors aren’t pushed to provide innovative or forward-thinking solutions.

4 Innovation and experimentation — with tools, approaches, and processes — most often happen in teams lead by Members or senior staff with vision and passion for improvement, and with Party leadership teams that are willing to invest their expanded resources into paving new paths for themselves and their colleagues.

This article is part of From Voicemails to Votes (PDF), a report conducted by The OpenGov Foundation on the mindsets, capacities, tools, and operations of Congressional offices with regard to constituent engagement. More about the project here.

Section 4: Capacity for change was originally published in From Voicemails to Votes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mapping the processes, technology, and human experiences behind the scenes of Congress’ constituent engagement operations.

“Thanks for calling the office of Congressperson _______. Sorry, we can’t get to the phone right now.“

After the Presidential election of 2016, our country experienced a rising tide of citizen engagement. New apps and tools were invented seemingly overnight to reduce friction in contacting Members of Congress, and advocacy organizations new and old activated hundreds of thousands of Americans to speak up. Quite suddenly, Congress faced reportedly the largest uptick in constituent input in recent memory.

Amidst this flurry of civic engagement, stories emerged of overflowing voicemail boxes, woefully understaffed congressional offices, and bitter, disgruntled constituents.

Meanwhile, on the other side of D.C., organizations such as 18F and the U.S. Digital Service have been busy sharing lessons from the private-sector technology industry with federal agencies, successfully helping redesign and rebuild core public services. Thanks to these efforts, veterans have been able to access their VA healthcare more seamlessly, processing time of green card renewals has dropped, and hundreds of digital services have migrated to secure, modern cloud-hosted platforms.

At The OpenGov Foundation, our mission is to serve the teams inside Congress who serve the American people. We are technologists with a love of efficiency and innovation, and our purpose is to reimagine and improve the hard and thorny sides of governance. As we witnessed the challenges facing congressional teams in this new era of civic engagement, we knew this was a key moment to call upon lessons of other user-centered, 21st century digital transformation efforts.

Understanding our users

Taking a page — the very first page — out of the U.S. Digital Service Playbook, we sought to start at the beginning: to deeply understand, from the experience of the people inside Congress, the authentic, day-to-day challenges, pain points, needs, and limitations facing those on the other side of the phone. What happens after we the people leave a message, send an email, or post to social media? What technology do staff use to keep track of it all? What do they do with all those messages anyway? Are there openings for new approaches or solutions? Who is leading creative and interesting ways of engaging with constituents?

During the late summer of 2017, The OpenGov Foundation undertook a first-of-its-kind effort to apply a human-centered design/user research approach to investigate the systems, tools, constraints, and human drivers that fuel congressional constituent correspondence processes.

This report holds the findings of our work.

Our driving questions

In order to frame and guide our research of congressional teams, we developed three themes, around which this report is organized:

1. How do congressional teams manage the process and operations of constituent engagement?

2. How does constituent input shape actions and decisions?

3. What capacity do congressional teams have for change?

We invite you to join us in exploring insights and visualizations from this work, read stories from the people answering your calls and letters, and begin to imagine concrete opportunities for building a responsive, people-centered 21st century Congress.

This article is part of From Voicemails to Votes (PDF), a report conducted by The OpenGov Foundation on the mindsets, capacities, tools, and operations of Congressional offices with regard to constituent engagement. More about the project here.

Section 1: Project overview was originally published in From Voicemails to Votes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The channels, tools, and strategies that get attention and inform the opinions of congressional teams.

FINDINGS

Staff generally felt that in-person visits, personal letters, and, increasingly, social media were the best tools for being heard by Members of Congress.

The more effort a constituent puts in, the more engagement and impact they can expect.

“The more effort a constituent puts into their correspondence with us, the higher the likelihood the Member will respond themselves.”

“We give more attention and weight to those who take many steps towards change.”

The correspondence that makes its way to Members is subjectively hand-selected, with an eye to resonant personal stories.

“I have a folder on my desk of unique, moving, personal stories for the Member to review and respond to by hand.”

“I hold onto [personal letters] so that our boss can call them back or write a handwritten letter.”

“In our district, student and kid stories carry a lot of weight.”

“Especially thoughtful letters get handwritten responses from someone on the team. The more original and organic, the more valuable it is to us.”

In-person contact remains the most meaningful and valued form of engagement.

“The truth is that more weight is given to groups of constituents who show up in person. I hate to say that people have to fly across the country, but it really does have more of an effect.”

“People in Congress are starting to want less tech and miss face-to-face.”

“In-person engagement is always going to be better than online.”

Many staff increasingly reported that constituent engagement is much swifter on social media, but is handled very differently from mail/phone/email correspondence.

“The [communications] team handles the social media engagement and is at least three to four times faster at responding to constituents than the [legislative] team.”

“It’s definitely much easier/better to reach us on social media but we don’t want to tell people this because we’ll get bombarded, and we don’t quite know how to handle that.”

Universally, staff were frustrated by “low-effort,” third-party strategies — often in the form of apps or digital tools — that make it easy for constituents to contact Congress without sharing much insight into their opinion or request.

“One-click” style apps degrade the conversation.

“These apps that constituents use to contact their representative degrade quality of conversation. These are low effort, and they have low impact.”

“Fax is the original spam. It’s useless to us.”

“These apps that auto send messages… it almost creates a false sense of urgency around a given issue and [provides] no context to the constituents.”

These tools provide a kind of constituent data that staff don’t fully know how to meaningfully use.

“Every time we make it easier for people to engage, it makes it harder for us because we are not equipped with the right tools, enough bandwidth, and know-how.”

“Some of these are just too low effort — I don’t get to learn anything about the sender, sometimes even where they are or who they are.”

“[This app] is like Tinder for bills — people swipe but they don’t know any content about the bill. It tells us basically nothing about what the constituent wants.”

Personal voice gets lost in “campaign” emails and petitions.

“If something is thoughtful and not a campaign, we will try to give it a personal response. Otherwise, a form letter gets a form response. That’s how it is.”

“If you want your voice to be heard, use your own voice.”

“Even just writing your own message in a petition is better than adding your name with no personalization.”

“Petition/advocacy organization campaigns carry less weight for us — it’s just too easy for someone to click a button in an email. It doesn’t mean much.”

This article is part of From Voicemails to Votes (PDF), a report conducted by The OpenGov Foundation on the mindsets, capacities, tools, and operations of Congressional offices with regard to constituent engagement. More about the project here.

3.3 Staff perspectives on the best ways to get heard was originally published in From Voicemails to Votes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article is part of From Voicemails to Votes (PDF), a report conducted by The OpenGov Foundation on the mindsets, capacities, tools, and operations of Congressional offices with regard to constituent engagement. More about the project here.

Glossary of terms was originally published in From Voicemails to Votes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Opportunities for The OpenGov Foundation and our partners to expand upon this project.

Human-centered design leans heavily on the very kind of people and systems-focused research we’ve just shared with you. But this is just the start. Capturing a rich understanding of constituent engagement operations is but one early step to reimagining how our democracy can evolve into the 21st century. We now need to experiment, design new ideas, and gather feedback iteratively to identify the biggest opportunities for impact.

To chart where to go from here, we suggest a few concrete directions for this work:

1. Prioritize, design, and experiment with improvements to constituent response operations.

• Conduct workshops with congressional staff to further articulate pain points and prioritize areas of opportunity.
• Collect and map real-time costs required for transitioning to new software systems and tools, with the aim of providing concrete data for teams’ consideration. This will provide a clearer sense of what’s involved and reduce concern about risk.
• Design and test ideas for areas of opportunity with congressional staff, congressional administration offices, vendors, and adjacent organizations.
• Prototype, with these partners, a “model office” to test and experiment with technology, processes, and approaches. This alleviates pressure on current staff to take on risk and creates a learning lab to see real solutions applied in real time.

2. Map the experience of engaging with Congress from the perspective of constituents.

Since this project is aimed at “backstage” operations, with a focus on the experiences, needs, and capacities of staff inside congressional offices, complement this study with a similar investigation into the constituent side of the equation: What does it feel like to call your congressperson, or a receive a letter from them, or engage online? How do constituents perceive their interactions with Congress on social media? What are people’s appetites for automation, form responses, etc.?

Gaining an understanding of these, and related lines of inquiry, will offer focus to internal improvement efforts. Knowing where people are most frustrated or confused can provide clarity on where and how we should be addressing opportunities internally.

3. Expand upon this study with a focus on proactive constituent engagement and a deeper dive into district office work.

This project was primarily dedicated to constituent input response operations, only one slice of the full suite of engagement activities, which include outreach, communications, events, and casework. Each of these areas would benefit from a more focused exploration.

4. Apply a human-centered design and research approach to other crucial aspects of congressional work.

Constituent engagement is only one piece of the work of congressional teams, and myriad other workstreams and responsibilities would benefit from more user-centered tools and processes. Conducting similar kinds of design and research activities on legislative tracking, communications and press, internal administration, etc., would yield similarly meaningful opportunities for enhancing Congress’ work.

This article is part of From Voicemails to Votes (PDF), a report conducted by The OpenGov Foundation on the mindsets, capacities, tools, and operations of Congressional offices with regard to constituent engagement. More about the project here.

Section 5: Designing for people-centered operations in Congress was originally published in From Voicemails to Votes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How congressional staff perceive their ability to affect the handling of constituent engagement.

FINDINGS

With such a steady stream of work, teams rarely take interest in making process changes. They also hesitate to change systems due to upfront costs of team training and fear of losing data, even if they’re deeply frustrated with their current setup.

With a strong inertia for the status quo, teams are wary to invest in new ideas or tools because transitions feel risky and time-consuming.

“We’re working the way we do because it’s the way we’ve always done it. Until there’s a solid alternative, it will continue.”

“I know there are tools out there I’d like to explore. I don’t have the time to really invest in figuring out if or how we could use them.”

“We like to experiment and test different tools, but we are rare — most teams won’t invest the time in trying things out.”

“We ultimately didn’t procure this one tool we were considering for a while because we didn’t have an internal lead to handle the transition. And really, we didn’t want to spend the money just to have it not work.”

“A few times when I’ve identified a tool that I think we could make use of, we do a demo and test it out, but then we decide the cost is too high to risk switching to it knowing that it might not work for us.”

Switching tools is a time and training investment few are willing to make.

“The sense of long transition to a new system and a difficult learning curve keeps people from moving off of CRMs that aren’t working for them.”

“There is a sharp learning curve to get to a point of comfort. Changing tools would be more difficult now [that there is an existing system in place].”

“We chose [our CRM] because it’s what the [legislative director] was comfortable with and had experience using, [not because we found that it was the best tool for our needs].”

“Switching platforms was the sh**tiest process, ever. We did this at the beginning of the new Congress. I used to be the LC with zero backlog [and switching platforms changed that — mail was backed up for ages when we got set up].”

“Our caseworkers have been using [our CRM] for 20+ years — changing now would be a big burden and risk.”

Even among those with an appetite for tech solutions, there is a distrust of over-automation and a widely-held belief that some processes just require a human hand or a change in attitude.

Some feel tools won’t help — that these jobs require humans to be done right.

“You need a person to go through the mail; a machine can’t do it. They’ll always mess it up.”

“Regardless of what number of innovative tools we use, at the end of the day, we still can’t ease a Member’s schedule.”

“Tools are important, but the actual person doing the job is more important.”

Others, with a more critical view of the way Congress currently handles constituent engagement, believe even the best tools won’t solve what is ultimately a culture change and values problem.

“The best tools in the world won’t change the way constituent engagement is prioritized as long as lobbyists from downtown continue to get more time than our constituents.”

“We can provide the perfect tech stack, but people have to be willing to change — and truth is, not everyone is. Most are not.”

Overwhelmed congressional teams feel their biggest limitation to better engaging with constituents is a lack of people and resources.

Frontline staff are underpaid and undervalued, so few in these roles remain invested in the quality and improvement of constituent contact work.

“The Hill has always had a lot of turnover, but it’s obviously gotten worse. I have to think a lot of that is [due to] people running into roadblocks everywhere and being ill equipped [to troubleshoot]. How, as an institution, are we going to fix that?”

“If you had higher pay scale, then a different demographic would be applying for jobs on the Hill shifting the makeup of congressional staffers.”

“A veteran’s case had changed hands a number of times without progress (due to staff turnover), and he was very frustrated.”

“…because constituent interaction is managed at that [legislative correspondent] level, and it’s long boring work — your goal as a [legislative correspondent] is to not spend very long at that job.”

Many offices feel the constraints on staff capacity is what keeps them from better constituent engagement.

“We can only answer as many calls as our interns can handle, and we can only have as many interns as can fit in that corner of the office.”

“With limitless capacity, we could really talk to all these people, but we only have a handful of people with the time to really engage with people.”

Teams led by senior staff with vision and interest in innovation or technology are far more likely to experiment and see advances in their systems and processes.

“A value that our boss presses upon all of us is to question why the rules exist. If someone says ‘no’, she’ll tell you ask why five times. This approach trickles into the whole staff, how and what we’re willing to push for.”

“I’ll always take meetings with vendors — even if we’re happy with what we have, it helps me to know what else is out there and what is possible.”

“Our boss is an entrepreneur — he really encourages that spirit in us to solve problems and take new approaches. He wants us to push to think more creatively.”

This article is part of From Voicemails to Votes (PDF), a report conducted by The OpenGov Foundation on the mindsets, capacities, tools, and operations of Congressional offices with regard to constituent engagement. More about the project here.

4.2 Mindset on making change was originally published in From Voicemails to Votes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A human-centered and systems design approach for Congress.

Our research followed a human-centered design methodology, an approach to product and service innovation that combines two elements: 1) an understanding of the human experience of a system — the capacities, behaviors, drivers, and needs — and 2) the development of technical solutions, which we design and test with real people. This approach allowed us to qualitatively understand the current state of correspondence systems and identify opportunities for improvement.

Human-centered design allows us to examine the constituent engagement process in a unique way: with the needs and experiences of congressional staffers at the forefront.

While the vast majority of research done on Congress to date has relied on self-reporting and academic surveys, this approach emphasizes on-the-ground observation and in-context conversation. Spending time embedded with congressional staffers as they processed constituent correspondence, for example, allowed us to capture a rich firsthand perspective on the process, assess both reported and observed gaps and opportunities, and surface themes that emerge across staff roles, offices, and systems.

RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS

We intentionally recruited participants who represent a diverse spectrum of staff roles, party affiliations, and district locations to help us understand what might change congressional teams’ relationship to their constituents based on any of these factors.

We interviewed House and Senate staffers, ranging from chief of staff to legislative director, and from legislative assistant down to interns. Our research partner offices included a strong mix of Republicans and Democrats, junior and senior Members, party leaders, and niche issue advocates.

THE NUMBERS

100+ hours of field research

58 research participants

17 congressional offices

11 states, including

4district offices

FIELD ACTIVITIES

Contextual Inquiry

Our research team conducted qualitative, conversational in-person interviews with staffers in both D.C. and district offices in an effort to map the de facto processes involved in constituent engagement. We explored the steps of their operations, tools they used, and staff pain points. We targeted our conversations around process and best practices, as well as the cultural context unique to Congress. This helped us understand mental models for using constituent input in decision-making and teams’ capacity for innovation.

Process Observation

In order to observe tactical aspects of constituent engagement, members of the research team shadowed frontline staff in D.C. offices as they answered calls, responded to mail, and sifted through social media. Insights from these shadowing sessions allowed us to understand the nuances of working on Capitol Hill during periods of high and low call volume, for example, and to identify where potential solutions may fit into existing processes.

Observing operations on the ground in district offices was important for developing a 360-degree perspective of constituent engagement, particularly the role of helping constituents resolve problems with government programs in the form of “casework” (e.g., veterans’ benefits and immigration application challenges).

This article is part of From Voicemails to Votes (PDF), a report conducted by The OpenGov Foundation on the mindsets, capacities, tools, and operations of Congressional offices with regard to constituent engagement. More about the project here.

1.2 Methods was originally published in From Voicemails to Votes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1. Invest in improving the user experience (UX) within approved constituent relationship management systems (CRM).

Many pain points we observed staff experiencing with their core technology — their CRMs — indicated that these tools, while showing signs of improvement, were not designed to best support the human needs of a staffer quickly maneuvering in and around these systems. Features such as language detection, batching, and document review proved particularly troublesome and could benefit from UX evaluation and redesign.

• Conduct usability tests and focused user research on the workflow, processes, technical capacities, and constraints of congressional CRM users.
• Identify core pain points and user stories for prioritizing fixes.
• Hire UX professionals to redesign, test, and refine existing and new core features.

2. Build a simple, accurate, and straightforward means by which all of Congress can verify constituents.

Critical steps of the constituent correspondence process, such as constituent verification, must be done manually , using unreliable data files and constituent self reporting. Developing an accurate and reliable system based on information shared between federal agencies will enable Member offices to save money on procuring voter files and free up staffers’ time.

• Develop a constituent database supported with data from entities such as the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which is shared among federal agencies.
• Build an internal shared constituent database to minimize duplication of work per office.

Anyone undertaking this work should be fully aware of the potential privacy, security, and ethical challenges inherent in the collection of this data.

3. Update congressional CRMs to integrate social media input for better tracking and engagement on these platforms.

Member offices are missing critical insight from their constituents due to overlooking the informality of social media. Rather than having social media feedback live exclusively with press teams, consider ways vendors can incorporate it into CRMs to allow staffers to develop daily engagement reports and share meaningful constituent conversations with the same rigor as other forms of input.

Some concrete ideas for this include:

• Integrating cross-channel social media input into existing CRM systems.
• Connection of social media profiles with existing constituent contact cards in CRMs for a more comprehensive understanding of each constituent’s interaction with the office.
• Filter for trolling comments that allows for a focus on meaningful engagement with concerned constituents.
• Create the ability to view daily/weekly social media report in CRM for review by staff.

4. Automate and streamline core administrative tasks.

Overwhelmed congressional teams feel their biggest limitation to better engaging with constituents is a lack of people and resources. Tasks such as scheduling meetings, responding to informational inquiries, and responding to constituent service requests consume much of skilled staffers’ time, preventing them from dedicating more time and energy to engaging with constituents and tackling legislative issues.

Possible solutions:

• Automatic responses for informational queries, such as voting history.
• Order tracking system for flag requests and other constituent services.
• Scheduling tool that allows staff assistants to process public meeting requests and manage calendars with ease.
• Electronic signatures for documents shared between Member offices — for example, collecting co-sponsor signatures.

This article is part of From Voicemails to Votes (PDF), a report conducted by The OpenGov Foundation on the mindsets, capacities, tools, and operations of Congressional offices with regard to constituent engagement. More about the project here.

2.4 Opportunities to improve engagement operations was originally published in From Voicemails to Votes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Understanding the “users” of congressional constituent engagement operations.

Correspondence teams are users of both the workflow and technical systems that make engagement possible, and constituents are users of the engagement itself. In order to envision products, tools, and services that support and improve existing processes, we must first have a robust understanding of the needs and behaviors of the system’s users.

To help create and improve tools used by staff, we’ve identified nuances of the role each staff member plays in the process of engaging with constituents, and what they need to successfully do their work.

These qualitative insights about the people who make up the system are derived from both contextual conversation with staff and observation of how they perform their roles.

Intern

HOW I FIT INTO THE PROCESS

Constituent Contact, Verify Constituent, Identify the Type of Contact

When someone calls our office, I am typically the first to answer the phone. My primary responsibility is to handle phone calls and capture the information my team needs. Often, the staff assistant shares this task with me. This work includes finding out if the caller is a constituent and identifying why they are calling. I do not always have full access to the CRM or other systems and am often assigned a very specific piece of the intake tasks.

I sit with other interns in a designated part of the office — sometimes we share a desk, a corner, or even a closet. As we wait for calls, we discuss current events, check our email, and use social media.

Log, Categorize, and Assign

As I speak to a caller, I am responsible for noting the constituent’s contact information and their message to the congressperson. Once a message is received, there are typically two ways we log information for later use by other staffers: 1) record a constituent’s message with pen and paper or on a digital document (e.g., spreadsheet, Word doc); or 2) enter it directly into our CRM. We use our discretion and rely on office process norms.

WHAT I NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL

• I need a consistent process and access to the team’s systems when transferring constituent messages to the appropriate staffers.
• I need to be trained on best practices for customer-centered phone service.
• I need to be trained on how to use the systems and tools — and be entrusted to be knowledgeable about the district I am serving, as well as to have all necessary contact information to verify constituents.
• I need to be paid a living wage for my mission-critical services.

Staff Assistant

HOW I FIT INTO THE PROCESS

Constituent Contact, Verify Constituent, ID Type of Contact

In addition to answering phones alongside interns, I am also typically one of the first points of contact for those meeting with the Member of Congress in person, whether scheduled or impromptu. I typically receive and sort postal mail and transfer calls. My role at times overlaps with a legislative correspondent as both of us can be the primary source filtering incoming mail in our CRM.

Log, Categorize, and Assign

At this point, I am entering the constituent’s contact information and their message to the congressperson. Often an intern is also doing this. Once a message is received, there are typically two ways we log the information for later use by another staff member: 1) record the constituent’s message with pen and paper or on a digital document (e.g., spreadsheet, Word doc), or 2) enter it into their CRM. As a staff assistant with full access to the CRM, I typically log the information directly into the system instead of first recording with pen and paper. We use our discretion and rely on office protocol as we discern appropriate next steps.

WHAT I NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL

• I need to be able to react quickly to a multitude of situations, such as an impromptu visit from an important constituent or other Member, or a sudden increase in constituent communications volume because of my Member’s position on an issue. I also need tools that allow me to work with multiple documents simultaneously, do not have aggravating lag times, and help simplify the many different processes for which I am responsible.
• I need a consistent process when transferring information from message intake to appropriate staffer.
• I need a repeatable, effective way to quickly leverage the capacity of a new round of interns.
• I need a way to systematize my work so that I can seamlessly hand over operations when I likely move to a different office or am promoted.

Legislative Correspondent (LC)

HOW I FIT INTO THE PROCESS

Log, Categorize, and Assign

Organizing and responding to constituent input is my primary responsibility. I shepherd the sorting and batching of each piece of incoming correspondence in our CRM, including messages from phone calls, emails, postal mail, and faxes. I often train and oversee interns, instructing them how to handle handoff of phone messages, which I later categorize and assign. Sometimes, I flag special or interesting messages for senior members of our team, and at times for the Member themselves.

Develop a Response

I typically manage the response process — from drafting to approval and final delivery. I look through our library of form letters (contingent on how long the Member has been in office) or draft a new response. I work with more senior staff members to gather data to inform how our team wants to respond. As a response is developed, my colleagues and I often circulate various iterations via email attachment.

I continue to usher outgoing drafts to ensure they reach the appropriate senior staffer during the approval process. In some offices, it’s my job to get final sign-off from the Member, who may give detailed edits. This process is manual and happens outside our CRM.

Finally, I make sure all responses are sent accordingly.

Since I’m often inundated by the mail process, I make mental note of opportunities for change but rarely have the bandwidth to instigate change.

WHAT I NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL

• I need an easier way to batch mail into categories/assignments that does not require such manual, time-intensive focus.
• I need a way to flag and keep track of important messages that my boss will want to review or respond to, and/or which may influence their decision-making.
• I need a resource of all approved language — not just form letters — that I can use to build upon previously approved language when crafting new responses.
• I need the ability to edit and collect feedback collaboratively, preferably directly within the CRM.
• I need a simple method of tracking where a response is throughout its various stages to simplify the editing process for my colleagues.
• I need contact information for constituents to be able to respond to them on the channel in which they reached out to us.

Legislative Assistant (LA)

HOW I FIT INTO THE PROCESS

Develop a Response

I enter the process during the drafting of new responses by pulling talking points, drafting the initial response, and/or digging through our archives if our library of form letters is robust and useful. I sometimes share responsibilities with the LC in ushering review and approval of new letters.

I ultimately hand off new responses to the LC, who will ensure they are sent.

WHAT I NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL

• I need clean and clear handoffs from my LC and streamlined approval processes.
• I need a search function in our CRM that allows me to find exact letters/responses without friction.
• I need a CRM that processes information quickly; I currently spend a lot of time waiting on load time, such as loading a document to a constituent’s profile.
• I need an easy way to pull reports on volume and turnaround time to share in a weekly update to my team.

Legislative Director (LD)

HOW I FIT INTO THE PROCESS

I am ultimately responsible for our correspondence operations, including its responsiveness, usefulness, and success. I oversee team members who staff the process, as well as make decisions about the technology we use for correspondence and mentality with which we approach political issues . I sometimes share these responsibilities with my chief of staff.

Develop a Response

I typically act as a sounding board when the legislative correspondents and legislative assistants need guidance on policy-related responses throughout the correspondence process.

Approval

I am at times the final stage of approval before a reply is sent to a constituent. In other circumstances, I am the last stage prior to final approval from either the chief of staff or Member of Congress.

WHAT I NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL

• I need better information about how the process is working in order to lead change and make improvements.
• I need a CRM tool that allows me to easily find, review, and edit new correspondence awaiting my approval.
• I need a CRM that tracks mail from intake to delivery and a method that will help monitor volume, turnaround time, bottlenecks, and other correspondence operations.
• I need to be able to easily get data on our correspondence operations: turnaround times, intake and response volumes, bottlenecks, etc.

Communications Team

HOW I FIT INTO THE PROCESS

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I monitor social media platforms for incoming constituent messages. When there are direct messages or posts, I try to identify if the user is a constituent and determine the nature of their contact. I direct casework issues to the district office and look into policy-related questions and opinions myself.

Develop a Response

For social media, I respond at my discretion to posts and messages, sometimes in collaboration with other team members or our boss.

For mail, email, and phone input, I am brought into the process primarily for assistance developing responses, when staff know that our reply will be available to the wider public or when we have issued public statements on a topic around which they are drafting a new response.

WHAT I NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL

• I need a better way to sort through the overwhelming quantity of comments and interactions online to be able to more easily distinguish constituents from non-constituents.
• I need tools that allow me to track social media engagement and more systematically capture and relay constituent input to the rest of my team/my boss.
• I need a CRM tool that allows me to easily find, review, and edit new correspondence awaiting my input.

Chief of Staff

HOW I FIT INTO THE PROCESS

I am the ultimate decision maker when it comes to technology procurement, process redesign, and office culture with regard to constituent engagement and operations. I engage with and connect both the legislative and communications teams.

Develop a Response and Approval

If I am involved at all, I finalize and sign off on new responses to constituents.

Often, I sign all outgoing mail.

WHAT I NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL

• I need a streamlined editing and approval process, which allows me to easily find, review, and edit new correspondence awaiting my input.
• I need data about constituent sentiment, interactions, and volume of input.
• I need insight into the productivity and efficiency of my staff.
• I need a more holistic understanding of the features and specifications of new technologies in order to make informed decisions about what product would work best for my team.
• I need to understand the costs and benefits of making process and technology changes that will impact my team’s operations.

This article is part of From Voicemails to Votes (PDF), a report conducted by The OpenGov Foundation on the mindsets, capacities, tools, and operations of Congressional offices with regard to constituent engagement. More about the project here.

2.2 User needs was originally published in From Voicemails to Votes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.