Members of Congress get, on average, three requests per day to help them with federal bureaucratic issues. A thousand requests a year. That means nearly half a million queries hitting federal agencies every year. My next guest got an assignment from the Administrative Conference of the United States. It wanted to explore ways to improve how agencies respond to congressional casework queries. With what he found, Boston University associate professor Sean Kealy joined  the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin All right. So I guess this is in some ways analogous to FOIA requests, maybe not as frequent, but something they have to regularly deal with. And it sounds like it’s mostly a fire drill at this point.

Sean Kealy Yeah, it’s something that Congress has always done with agencies. And unfortunately, the size and the complexity of our federal bureaucracy makes it necessary for constituents to go to their congressional representatives to try and get some help. And so when Congress reaches out to the agencies, it’s sometimes very mundane issues. Where’s my Social Security check? And sometimes it could be very complex regulatory issues, dealing with a small business or maybe a larger corporation. So it’s a wide range of problems spread over almost every agency out there.

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Tom Temin Yeah, I was going to ask, do most of them concern Veterans Affairs and say CMS or Health and Human Services, or is it kind of across the board?

Sean Kealy My project, I try to focus in on the agencies that would field the most questions and would get the most attention from Congress. Although, I did try and sprinkle in a few agencies that were smaller and had a smaller caseload. But you can imagine the places that you would get the most requests, IRS.

Tom Temin Oh yeah. Them too.

Sean Kealy Yeah. Veterans [Affairs], Department of Homeland Security, especially Immigration and Customs. And so, yeah, it was very interesting to see how each agency handled and processed those requests and what their internal structure was. And what you find is that some agencies are highly centralized. Everything goes through their Washington office, and some of them are highly decentralized. For instance, Social Security, where you have many regional headquarters to deal with the constituent requests that they get.

Tom Temin And as things stand now, then, how effective is the process?

Sean Kealy Well, varies greatly. And that was why the administrative conference wanted me to take a look at it. Some agencies are regarded very well and some have a lot of improvements to make. And the question was, is what’s causing that? Is it something internal? Is it a structure of the way that their constituent service offices are set up? And the answer is  that there’s, again, a wide variety of problems and a wide variety of solutions.

Tom Temin Well, which agency is say, really good at it and what is their setup?

Sean Kealy I would say that the IRS is actually quite good. A lot of the problems that the IRS faces is that it’s either feast or famine when it comes to funding. And this was not part of my project. I should say that the administrative conference gave me a very narrow scope, just looking at what the agencies are doing and not necessarily how Congress could improve or what Congress could do better. But certainly one of my own conclusions, not speaking for the conference is that, Congress could be a lot more consistent in funding the agencies as far as constituent service work goes and giving them the tools that they actually need. And so, for instance, the IRS, depending on the administration, depending on the Congress, their funding could be very good or it could be very small. And right now, they seem to be getting the funding they need to upgrade their computer systems and their ability to handle these questions. And, fortunately, when the agency is better able to respond, then there’s less need for congressional intervention.

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Tom Temin Sure. It’s kind of a cycle there. We’re speaking with Sean Kealy. He’s a clinical law professor at Boston University. And so what did you recommend? Because agencies do vary with how centralized and how scattered or federated they would say that they handle these. What are some of your conclusions for improvement?

Sean Kealy Yeah. One of the main takeaways was that agencies should have in place standard operating procedures that would be available not just internally, but also available to Congress and to the public. Now, typically, if an agency has a well worked out operating procedures dealing with constituent work, Congress has that available to them. But I found that it would be really helpful if the constituents themselves had access to those operating procedures and hopefully in one place, the IRS, for instance, I don’t know if you’ve ever waded through the Internal Revenue Manual, but it’s massive.

Tom Temin When I have insomnia.

Sean Kealy Yeah, that’s right. But there’s some really good stuff in there, but it’s spread out and its not really accessible to the average person. If the standard operating procedures were available, I suggested that it would help congressional staff manage the expectations of their constituents. And that was a real key takeaway is that the content congressional staff who I spent some time talking to, really see their job as being a conduit between the agency and the constituent. And sometimes it’s difficult to manage those expectations. Constituents tend to think that once they’ve talked to their congressman, the congressman can just talk to the agency and it’ll be done. And that can’t happen. It shouldn’t happen actually, that somebody just because they’re close to their member of Congress gets something that another person does not. And both, the agency personnel and the congressional staff are very aware of that and respect those boundaries. But sometimes it’s hard to manage the expectations. So if the congressional staff were able to show the constituents, look, this is what we can do, this is what we can’t do, here’s how the agency works. These are the problems that we’re facing and the barriers that we’re facing. Now let’s see how we can overcome them.

Tom Temin But fundamentally, it sounds as if the better the agency is at responding to exceptions or queries, then the less people will need to go to Congress. But if they do go to Congress, then there should be a procedure for that. And not simply a committee chairman making the agency jump through hoops because it’s a committee chairman.

Sean Kealy Exactly. And that’s an interesting way to put it. Because one way I really looked at constituent service was that it’s congressional oversight and writ small that it’s not just the committee chairs who are constantly looking at how the agency operates, but every member of Congress now has an opportunity to say, well, this isn’t working well, why? And to become involved in understanding the agency, its challenges and perhaps addressing that. Again, one of my conclusions was this is a good thing that over time, if used properly, the agency is able to look at the constituent requests they’re getting from Congress, analyze them and see if there’s something systemic in place that could be fixed that would greatly reduce congressional inquiries.

Tom Temin Right. The IRS has a similar process for forms if like a certain high percentage of people make the same mistake on a given form, then they often conclude, well, there’s something wrong with the form, not with 10% of the people or 50% of the people who get it wrong.

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Sean Kealy Yeah, exactly. And one of my recommendations was that agency heads should regularly be reviewing the types of questions that are coming into their constituent service people and look at ways to improve the agency.

Tom Temin All right. So then your recommendations and conclusions are at ACUS and they will then promulgate them around the the government.

Sean Kealy Yeah, it’s at the ACUS website, you can find both the report and the recommendations. It was a really tremendous process. I was so impressed with the way ACUS operate. They took my report, we worked together to boil those down to proposed recommendations. And then one of the committees of ACUS really thoroughly examined both the report and those proposed recommendations. Gosh, we probably spent three hour meetings going through the recommendations with a fine tooth comb. And I think it’s a really strong document. I was really happy with the way it came out.

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