COVID-19 has transformed Capitol Hill into a remote and virtual institution literally overnight. One week the Congress was operating at full steam, voting to expand apprenticeship programs for veterans, and to add Ireland to the E-3 visa program. By the next, like most offices in the United States, the halls of the House and Senate were virtually empty, with members and staff scattered to home offices and their districts.
Today it’s clear that the continuity of our Legislative Branch is dependent on its technical infrastructure. Over a month since widespread shelter-in-place orders were announced, we’ve heard barely a peep from a Congressional Committee and have had only one single day of emergency voting in the House.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers once described Congress as “a 19th Century institution often using 20th Century technology to respond to 21st Century problems.” I can attest to this. My last desktop computer on the Hill had a floppy disk drive— in 2015. In order to introduce legislation, a staffer is required to print the bill on 8 ½ x 11 inch paper, get it signed in blue ink by the Member, and walk it down the long corridor to the Capitol Building and drop it into a wooden box called “the hopper.”
Everyone knows these processes are antiquated, and for years, people inside and outside of Congress have discussed the need for an injection of additional technical expertise to help the institution. The idea has broad and bipartisan political support. The proposal to create a Congressional Digital Service is led by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
So why don’t we have a Congressional Digital Service today— nearly six years since the start of the U.S. Digital Service in the Executive Branch?
Reason number one is that increasing funding for any part of Congress is extraordinarily hard, even when there is broad consensus on a proposed solution that has consistently been shown to save taxpayer money.
But secondly, and just as importantly, Congress is fundamentally a reactive institution. The needs for a Congressional Digital Service have never been urgent, or timely.
Enter the coronavirus.
A senior staffer described this as Congress’s “HealthCare.gov moment”-- the crisis that led to creating the U.S. Digital Service. Just like after the crash of HealthCare.gov, the basic functioning of the thing— in that case, a website, in this case, a branch of government— has broken.
In response, we are thrilled to announce we are launching a Congressional Digital Service fellowship to help.
To date, TechCongress has sent 29 fellows to Congress as tech policy advisors. Fellows have served with the leadership of both parties and among the most active Members and Committees. We’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes for a technologist to succeed on Capitol Hill, and to galvanize the institution to invest in it’s own technical capacity.
We are immediately recruiting a small tech team to place on the Hill, modeled on great efforts like the US Digital Service, 18F, and Code for America, for an eight-month fellowship to support institutional staff to address the glaring technical capacity gaps that have become all-too-urgent during this pandemic.
Just as importantly, we believe this can serve as proof of concept for the long-standing proposal to build a Congressional Digital Service within Congress, and to build momentum for an increased investment in tech infrastructure on Capitol Hill.
This will be a one-time intervention. Ultimately, Congress needs to solve its tech capacity challenges itself. As a result, our fellowship will ramp up and shutter in 2020.
Here’s the good news: Congress already has a road map to modernization. Great civil society groups like the OpenGov Foundation, and advocates like Seamus Kraft, Daniel Schuman, Marci Harris, Lorelei Kelly and others have laid the groundwork for these digital projects and this initiative. The House Select Committee on Modernization passed its slate of tech modernization recommendations out of the House just days before the Coronavirus hit.
And there are excellent civil servants already in Congress working on modernization. They’re working on projects like building platforms for electronic bill introductions— no more dropping ink-signed pieces of paper into a wooden box— and mechanisms for digital signatures and real-time legislative track-changes. They’re working hard to help support offices as they adjust to this new remote-environment— guiding Committees as they plan for virtual hearings and markups, and Member offices to improve constituent engagement and services with collaborative tech tools.
But they’re under-resourced. The coronavirus has left them putting out fires, adjusting to the day-to-day crises of helping an entire branch of government function in a fundamentally new and distanced context. They could use a few helping-hands.
Yesterday, the House convened for the first time in nearly five weeks. There hasn't been a single Committee hearing in the midst of a crisis that has crippled our economy and left more Americans unemployed than any time since the Great Depression. We’re facing monumental challenges, and need a Congress that has the ability to weather this storm, and keep Americans and our economy as healthy as is possible.
Help us build that Congress. Help us source our Congressional Digital Service fellows, and apply by May 10, 2020.