Casework and the Veil of Ignorance
A next-generation CASES Act, and how Congress can protect its casework capacity
In the few weeks since we published our piece on Constituent Services in a Permanent Crisis, I’ve been hearing directly from constituent services staff that they are not only overwhelmed by the volume of new casework since January, but that casework mechanics are not working as normal.
For a newsletter broadly focused on “constituent engagement,” it’s probably worth reiterating again why constituent service and casework is a critical piece of this puzzle. In brief:
Casework is one of the few effective tools that Congress already has to build and rebuild constituent trust, reaching some of the people who would otherwise be unlikely to engage.
Constituent services is one of the few uniting factors for all Members of Congress — every Member maintains a casework team because they know that demonstrating accountability is critical for their service in Congress.
This means that casework is one of the few good areas to build common interest for Members — handling the same types of cases brings Members into a shared political reality that feels further and further away otherwise.
Given all that, when I hear that the mechanics of casework are in trouble, my alarm bells start going off, and yours should too.
Casework as a tool and a pathway for constituent engagement requires that Congress be able to do a good job when constituents ask for help. That doesn’t happen by magic: it takes dedicated and trained staff, good CRM software, and outreach letting constituents know how to get in touch. But most critically, successful casework requires a responsive Executive branch willing to recognize Congress’ authority to investigate individual constituent concerns as part of its broader oversight responsibilities.
That final piece is what’s currently in jeopardy. Here’s what I’m hearing from casework teams across the country:
Liaisons at agencies being shut down or dramatically downsized are not able to work or respond to Congressional inquiries — including open inquiries for constituents with cases in progress who are most directly affected by rapid changes in policy and personnel.
Members with constituents who have been detained by Homeland Security agencies have not been able to obtain information without a signed Privacy Act release form (PAF, PRF, or PARF), and agencies have refused to provide PARFs to constituents in agency custody.
Agency personnel in regional offices for agencies like Social Security, Medicare, OPM, IRS/TAS, and FEMA who are normally directly tasked with responding to Congressional inquiries are taking early retirement or deferred retirement, or are being RIF’d or reassigned — meaning open cases are closed out or left hanging while the agency reassigns and trains staff to respond, increasing wait times for Congressional offices. The Taxpayer Advocate Service is an especially critical example, given that the agency was created by Congress in part to be directly responsive to Congressional inquiries.
Elon Musk and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles have given Republican Senators their direct lines to solve active agency problems impacting their districts — which is clearly helpful for these offices in the short-term, but still a tenuous solution dependent on these two people remaining in their current roles for the long term (not a bet I’d take, personally).
Some of these represent exaggerated versions of normal turmoil at the changing of an administration. Access to information between branches will always be somewhat political, even for activities like casework that usually fly under the radar of more formal public “oversight” activities.1
But this list still makes it obvious how much this critical element of Congressional work is dependent on norms and goodwill between branches of government — and a troubling sign for Congress, allowing its ability to serve constituents to be damaged in the long term.
In this political moment, casework is what lets Members of Congress continue to make the case for why Congress as an institution should exist. For Republicans: “I may not be holding town halls, but my casework team is open for business.” For Democrats: “We are limited in what we can do in the minority, but we are holding agencies to account through casework.” Some may see that as a cop-out, but I think it is critical to maintain some type of expected practice for Members of Congress to be directly accountable to all constituents, no matter their political affiliation.
I know that bipartisan institution-strengthening is a hard sell right now, but this is one clear area where Congress can navigate the veil of ignorance to ensure that it does not willingly give up one of its most useful tools. And the good news is that there’s some precedent here to build on.
In recent memory, Congress has passed one bill aimed directly at ensuring interbranch cooperation: the Creating Advanced Streamlined Electronic Services (CASES) Act of 2019. This bill was a bipartisan effort that addressed a persistent administrative challenge with casework: that agencies required Congressional offices to obtain “wet signatures” from constituents before they would release any information. This imposed additional burdens on constituents facing disasters or in crisis situations where tracking down a printer and scanner were the least of someone’s worries.
CASES has not yet been fully implemented, years after its passage. But the fact that it exists at all provides a blueprint and hope for caseworkers on both sides of the aisle struggling to serve constituents in this moment of chaos: it is possible for Congress to act to support its own responsibilities, support its staff, and help its constituents — even in an era of divided government and political tension.
For offices asking what they can do to support casework to support their constituents, here are four starting points for a next-generation CASES Act.
CASES 2.0
Enforce the original CASES Act. One challenge for CASES was that it named OMB as the entity responsible for issuing guidance to agencies on CASES Act compliance, but not the specific agency staff who would implement the guidance. Conveniently, one of the last bipartisan bills signed into law in the 118th Congress was the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act, which created a Federal Government Service Delivery lead at every major agency. This position should be a natural ally to casework teams, and could be tasked with ensuring agency compliance with CASES, including providing regular reports to Congress on implementation progress.
Require agencies to provide constituents in agency custody with a Privacy Act Release Form on request. This would fall in line with the original mission of the CASES Act to ensure that constituents exercising their First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances are not unnecessarily blocked by administrative burden. Casework would seem to fall squarely in that right, and Members of Congress have previously filed an amicus brief supporting Congress’ access to the information it needs to carry out its responsibilities in this regard.
Require agencies to provide CRS with a written copy of their policies for Privacy Act Release Form management, to be made available on the CRS liaison page. Caseworkers constantly describe back-and-forth with agencies who seem to change the rules for Privacy Act Release forms at the drop of a hat. Having a written version of this policy in a centrally-accessible location would help offices effectively cut through red tape to advocate for their constituents. This recommendation has previously been included in the FY 2025 Legislative Branch appropriations bill, but could also be advanced through oversight or other vehicles.
Task the Government Accountability Office with providing recommendations to Congress on minimum viable standards to ensure agency responsiveness to Congressional casework requests. Strengthening casework liaisons is a tricky and delicate proposition: impose too much centralization and you risk overturning the apple cart of agencies that do provide great liaison services by fostering local relationships. But there is still room to create baseline, enforceable expectations for agencies in providing accurate and timely information to Congress, with some agnosticism in how this is done — especially by making a foray into outcomes-driven legislation, with casework numbers through the CaseCompass system (under development in the House) as one metric with which to measure success. This was also incorporated in the FY 2025 Legislative Branch appropriations bill, but similarly could find another vehicle to move forward.
From Afterthought to Oversight
A final challenge of CASES was a lack of familiarity with Congressional intent behind the law. This feels evident in reading GAO’s audit of CASES’ implementation in 2022: while the text of CASES is actually one of the very few places modern casework is described in law, GAO focuses instead on FOIA. The same was apparently true for OMB and GSA in implementing the law, as described in the report, including a discovery team process focused on FOIA requestors, with no mention of constituents seeking casework help from Congress. While this bill was intended to streamline casework, the end product it describes is a patchwork where constituents may need to sign up for multiple competing identity proofing platforms to authorize Congressional casework on a single case — for the agencies that have actually taken this step to allow digital signatures at all.
This underscores the fact that a new CASES 2.0 would be a wonderful start, but not enough on its own. To build that record of Congressional intent and tackle challenges with liaison responsiveness in this administration and future presidencies, Congress has to understand itself as a customer in agency service delivery, and treat its experience like it matters. This means holding oversight hearings and other activity explicitly and directly focused on casework: casework as an indicator for larger structural problems, but also the amount of time and hassle individual Member offices spend doing casework for specific agencies. Right now, responsiveness to casework within agencies is often ad-hoc, which is part of why it is so easy for it to fall through the cracks in transitions.
Congress treating casework as a priority tells agencies to treat it as a priority as well — meaning better service and support for constituents and a stronger First Branch for the long term.
Check Your Voicemail
Our irregular roundup of news on constituent engagement — send me anything we’ve missed!
WOW is there coverage of town halls and protests and elected leaders’ prerogative to face an angry crowd in-person or not, including discourse over whether Senate Majority Leader Schumer canceled his book tour for safety reasons or to avoid public blowback on the CR (it can be both). I’m thinking a ton about these right now, especially thinking with some compassion of the staff for Members who end up facing the brunt of the emotional outlet function here. More to come soon.
Speaking of, the National League of Cities is hosting a hybrid event on the wave of “uncivil” behavior at town halls on April 22.
Loved this short piece from Chris Nehls commemorating the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva [D, NM] for his joint work with the late Rep. Donald MacEachin [D, VA] to attempt a genuine deliberative process of legislative co-creation. This is still one of my main touchpoints for what’s possible with public engagement in Congress.
This looks like a CRM glitch to me — Senator Bernie Moreno [R, OH] sends individual form email responses to every contact instance, meaning some constituents received upwards of 130 form emails.
The European perspective on the role of parliaments in public engagement.
Upcoming event from the Harvard Ash Center on what makes an effective protest.
Perceptions of legitimacy are critical for public engagement — this was an interesting academic take on what makes an institution feel legitimate.
CA launches a digital democracy tool to facilitate constituent-representative connection.
An interesting take on messaging and public engagement — you might get people engaged with messaging, but what is that engagement for? Logrolling here, I’m also very excited to share next week’s interview with a grassroots group really thinking about these questions, so… subscribe if you haven’t to make sure you don’t miss it!
Which, as maybe to be expected, are also largely blocked from the minority right now: https://x.com/AndrewSolender/status/1901984194391105959