Citizen reports of problems with government programs can reveal larger issues

Terry Gerton You spent years working on cnstituent services, studying the practice. What made you think that now was the time to create this kind of professional organization for the field?

Anne Meeker Yeah, absolutely. So, as you said, we have spent years thinking about casework, working with caseworkers, both chambers, both sides of the aisle, even between the federal and state levels. And we’ve really, in talking to caseworkers. come to the conclusion that casework right now is kind of at a tipping point. We’re seeing higher demand from constituents for that level of support from their elected leaders than ever before. We’re also seeing Congress’s trust numbers really lower than they ever have been before. And it seems like there’s an opportunity between the two things, that there’s this demand for casework, there are these fabulous caseworkers in every office. This is the one big commonality between every single elected legislator. They run this kind of service. And we know anecdotally from caseworkers, casework is an enormous way that Congress demonstrates accountability and builds trust in a really meaningful way. So it seems like all of this is coming to a crisis moment, but we have the problem and the solution in casework.

Terry Gerton Has there been a change in casework over the last few years that people who maybe don’t interact with it might not appreciate?

Anne Meeker Yeah, absolutely, we’ve seen a couple of things. First of all, we’ve see these big crises and these big surge moments for casework that really demonstrate how brittle some of our programs and our services that the American people rely on can be and how much casework is a really vital next level, extra level of benefit and support that people can really rely on. We’ve seen this with COVID, certainly. We’ve seen this with government shutdowns, and we’ve seen this with a lot of the back and forth over new program rules, new program administrations over the last few years as well, especially as we’ve seen a lot of federal programs downsize in the number of staff available for customer-facing or constituent-facing roles.

Terry Gerton And you mentioned earlier how important constituent and casework is to trust in government. These caseworkers are out there helping individuals solve individual problems, but don’t they sort of also function as kind of an early warning system for their elected officials?

Anne Meeker Yeah, absolutely. So as you said, caseworkers are so important for trust, just in that when you reach out to your member of Congress with a problem, you know, no one ever calls Congress on a good day. People call Congress when there’s something that’s going wrong. And I think the most important element of that civic relationship is making sure that there’s someone who’s going to answer the phone, who’s going to be compassionate, that cares about what the challenge in your life is, and that’s competent enough, who is well-trained and professionalized enough to know what’s going wrong and how can they help you fix it. But as you said, at the individual level, that really builds trust, and that’s hugely important for Congress as a whole. But when you zoom back out and look at the information that Congress gleans from those interactions at scale, that is truly an early warning system. And we have some really interesting stories where casework teams have caught things that are going wrong in federal agencies well before the media gets wise to it, well before it shows up for in congressional committees. And so caseworkers really can be that kind of canary in the coal line to say, hey, we’re noticing a problem here that should be addressed through additional legislation, that should rightfully be the subject of oversight because it’s impacting our constituents and we can tell you how.

Terry Gerton A lot of your prior work focused on data collection and sharing across the caseworker community. How is that helping to inform that sort of problem determination?

Anne Meeker Yeah, absolutely. So there are two things we’re super excited about there. First is, I think we’ve talked about it before, the Case Compass project that the House has been working on, that will be an opt-in data aggregation tool to pull top-line casework information into one national dashboard that should launch for the new Congress. And that’s really exciting. We think it’s going to launch for the new Congress, we haven’t heard the final word internally, but I think that’s roughly the timeframe we’re tracking. And that’s a huge opportunity for the new offices coming in to say, this is a really cool opportunity, that casework will function differently for new offices than it has functioned for offices in the past. Offices will now have more of an ability to look at that aggregator and say, is what I’m seeing a trend in my regional VA or is it a trend in the national VA? And then what do we do with that information from there? That’s really going to help with wayfinding. And then the professionalization for those caseworkers as well. If you see, looking historically at what cases come into a district, well, we usually have this big pool of VA cases here, you need to train up a caseworker to really understand the VA in a different way than if you only had a small number of those cases. So hopefully that data is going to help not only Congress turn that constituent input into policymaking, but also help that constituent experience. When you come in as a constituent to your member’s office, you know they have all of the information they need to give you that standout experience.

Terry Gerton Anne Meeker is the founder and executive director of the Constituent Services Institute. We were talking about how much of this is a caseworker dealing with an individual constituent, and a lot of new rules and programs deal with individual services, especially like Medicaid and SNAP, as we’ve gotten new eligibility requirements or documentation, for example. When the government makes a change on that scale, what typically happens inside constituent services operations to help them prepare to answer those questions?

Anne Meeker Yeah, it’s a good question. And that’s really one of the places where we see the most room for improvement. It’s kind of creating those trusting and productive partnerships between agencies and constituent services staff, knowing that each has the same mission of supporting constituents and that they can be really effective partners in helping each other. What we’d love to see is when a new program gets rolled out, when a program gets implemented, a new law gets implemented, that the agency really takes on the responsibility of proactive briefing for caseworkers to say, here’s what we think is going to happen. Here’s how it’s going to change. Now, will you help us proactively message that in your districts? Members of Congress are really trusted messengers for a lot of these programs in a way that it’s tough to replicate anywhere else. You know, here’s your liaison when you get a constituent who says this isn’t working right, here is the person that you need to call. We don’t necessarily see that today. And part of the issue is just scale. There are 541 individual congressional offices, and it’s really tough for agency liaison shops to get in touch with all of them to share all of that information proactively. So that’s a huge part of what we do at the Constituent Services Institute is we run a newsletter for caseworkers where we round up issues and changes that are happening in federal agencies and try to be a little bit of that early warning system for the folks providing the early warning systems to Congress.

Terry Gerton Is part of the challenge there just the time gap between a passage of a law and the issuance of the actual implementation rules so that constituent services folks may have forgotten about what was coming down the pike before it finally hits?

Anne Meeker Yeah, definitely. But I think the caseworkers also see some issues internal to agencies as well, where all of a sudden, ta-da, there’s a new program change and no one has told the frontline staff, or I was talking to some caseworkers last week who said they were on the phone with their liaisons for Social Security about a new ID requirement. And they said, we’re hearing this the same time you are so we’re all going to be figuring it out together. So sometimes those caseworkers really hear to those relationships with agency staff an internal challenge where the agency is not internally communicating what it needs to to make sure that everyone receives consistent service.

Terry Gerton Well, that’s an issue for folks maybe who’ve been on the job for a while, but as we come out of the midterms, it’s highly likely that there’s going to be a lot of turnover, both in members in Congress and then in their staffs. When you see this kind of transition, how do new staffs bring on their caseworkers and what kind of training do those folks need to get up to speed?

Anne Meeker Yeah, you’re right. This is, as we’re looking at possibly a record level of turnover for Congress this year, that has a huge impact on constituent services. And I think it can be kind of frustrating for constituents that as you come out of this campaign season, where you’re hearing more than you ever will from your member of Congress about why you should trust me and vote for me, then we’re also in this chaotic moment where you may not get the best service, just because the official side is trying to figure out that transition. But for the new offices, one thing that I think may surprise some folks who are less familiar with casework is that a lot of new offices will actually keep the former members’ casework team, or keep part of the former member’s casework team. We really love this, honestly. It’s a great way to kind of preserve those relationships that make caseworkers really effective and preserve a little bit of that continuity for constituents. So we’d love to see that. We’d really encourage new members coming in, if you can get in touch with the outgoing casework team, you feel like they’re aligned with you on policy, yeah, absolutely, bring those folks on, they’re fabulous. But for new offices, there’s a lot to get up to speed on at any given time. You’re going to learn a new CRM. So I think the technological training of the software offices use to manage casework is a huge, huge thing that offices need to prioritize. And then it’s that agency training. We do see some of the big agencies do a fabulous job of reaching out to the internal house and senate offices to say, hey, here’s a briefing, can we bring in caseworkers? We know new caseworkers may be less familiar with our program, so let us help you get up to speed so that we can all work together better. If I have one piece of advice for the agencies, I think that’s the absolute best thing that they can do to set up those relationships on the right foot going forward.

Terry Gerton And as you get the Constituent Services Institute up and running, it sounds like there’s an immediate need across a wide spectrum of operations. But what do you hope consistent future operations look like? What do you see as the biggest needs you want to address?

Anne Meeker Yeah, sure. We are absolutely coming in, hitting the ground running in a very crazy time for casework. But we really want to focus on three big things. The first is championing casework — I’m so grateful to get to talk to you again today, Terry — not a ton of people understand what casework is, despite the fact that it’s up to 20% of congressional staff who are dedicated to this important function, and it can be that lifeline for constituents. So you want to keep telling that story about what case work is, why it’s important, what can I do for constituents, what can it do for members in the institution. The next big thing is training. As we said, it’s a very fast-moving policy landscape right now, and there’s always more need for caseworkers to really understand what’s happening and understand better what’s happened, the why behind their caseload, what’s driving constituents to them and how can they help fix it? And then the last big thing is research. Some of that will be research we do ourselves and some of that will be research that we help facilitate. Because casework has never really been the central focus for a lot of political science work, a lot of work on modernizing Congress, it has a really light evidence base. There’s so much we don’t know about casework. I can tell you anecdotally as a former caseworker that when folks came through my door, they came away, or we tried to make sure that they came way, understanding the government better with more trust in government. We don’t know what that impact is at scale. So that’s the kind of thing that we’d really like to facilitate so that we can truly understand, here’s the impact of casework, here’s the return on investment Congress gets from the work and the effort that it puts into these folks.