Despite appearances, Congress is quietly improving functionality

Throughout the current Congress, headlines have painted a picture of an ineffective and unproductive institution. Maybe some of that chiding is deserved. Congressional Republicans and Democrats have struggled to perform basic functions such as funding the government, let alone difficult things like aligning on important policy fronts like immigration reform. 

What headlines won’t tell you is behind the scenes the House has made tremendous progress in making Congress more transparent to the American people and bolstering its capacity to hold a runaway executive branch accountable.  

Perhaps the most important achievement in the past year is that the Capitol complex is once again open to the public. Due to decisions made in the wake of the pandemic, the public couldn’t meet in person with their members of Congress for nearly two years. The public deserves to be able to petition and speak in person with their representatives and the current Congress restored that right.

The House has also made strides in preparing Congress to be a proactive institution in the 21st century. As part of our congressional service, we both happily served on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. Established with the support of both Democratic and Republican House leadership, led by Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), the committee conducted a thorough study of the internal operations of the House and made over 200 bipartisan recommendations to make the chamber work better.  

This Congress, under the leadership of Reps. Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.) and Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.), Republicans on the Committee on House Administration established the Subcommittee on Modernization to ensure that those recommendations would be implemented and not just collect dust on the shelf.  

Congress has a reputation for being behind the times when it comes to understanding and adopting new technologies. However, the subcommittee leads a proactive effort to provide guidance on and assess options for integrating artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the congressional workplace. These tools have the potential to help address Congress’s longstanding capacity challenges and ensure that it can better respond to constituent demands. 

Because of these efforts, POPVOX Foundation ranks the House “among the world’s leading legislatures in setting policies and encouraging responsible experimentation with generative AI.”  

Oversight of the executive branch is a core responsibility of Congress. Through the continued funding of a Modernization Initiatives Account, the House digital services office is working on projects that will bolster the tools and data available to members for oversight purposes. In the works is a casework aggregation tool, which will gather information from member offices about the problems constituents face when interacting with the federal government. 

Currently, most members’ insights into performance and customer service issues are limited to the experiences of their own constituents. Aggregating casework will give Congress comprehensive insight into which agencies and programs the public struggles to navigate, allow for earlier identification of system-wide problems and ensure taxpayers get what they deserve from government officials.  

The House is also exploring new avenues to boost its oversight capacity and legal expertise to put Congress on equal legal footing with the executive branch. Finally, expanded access to eDiscovery tools will allow committees to more easily sift through the thousands of pages of documents associated with each oversight inquiry.

Everyone working in politics knows that success is only possible through collaborating with others and building broad coalitions of support for your ideas. Congressional staff play an essential role in that process, but it can often be difficult to find a neutral meeting ground that is set up for work rather than for lunch, coffee, or worse — conflict. 

We are excited to see a new pilot program establishing a bipartisan coworking space inside the Capitol complex. This development along with the implementation and expansion of new and existing tools will facilitate greater collaboration and help congressional staff do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

The recommendations of the 2019-2022 Select Committee may seem exhaustive. However, as in the private sector, continuous improvement is necessary to quickly respond to new developments. 

For example, the Supreme Court will soon decide a case with significant implications for how regulations are made in the United States. The decision may require the legislative branch to be much more prescriptive when it does choose to write a law, and Congress will need access to far more expertise and capacity than it currently has to fill the gap.

Congressional dysfunction is on full display when we turn on the news, and Congress can undoubtedly perform better. But as observers have noted for years, much of what gets done in our national legislature garners little media or public attention. 

Out of the limelight, the current House continues that progress, reshaping the institution to meet the demands of the 21st century.

Rodney Davis is a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and was a Republican representative for Illinois’ 13th congressional district from 2013 through 2022.

Ed Perlmutter was a Democratic representative for Colorado’s 7th congressional district from 2007 through 2022.