Transcripts For CSPAN2 Hearing On Congressional Mailing Standards 20240713

The hearing will come to order. This hearing is entitled congress and the frank bringing congressional mailing standards into the 21st century. I now recognize myself for five minutes to give an opening statement. Happy halloween everybody. I am dressed as americas most maligned superhero, congressman, to be able to fly across the country in six hours on alaska airlines. We were thinking about titling this hearing frankenstein, have houses ghoulish mailing standards have haunted members for decades, but i suppose we should go with the official on spooky title for the record. Like most of the issues that fall into this commencement date, its very inside baseball. To most people frank is a name or aam hot dog but the reality s for members of congress, congressional frank is actually fundamental to how we can indicate with our constituents and every time we respond to constituent request or send newsletters or send synopsis te upcoming town halls we use frank. So surprised with the rise of social Media Congress has an overall decline in members use of the frankfort continue to commit was spent an average of 58,000 on frank mail and todays number spent an average of 26,000. Theres a lot of variation by district and by member but still is a getting on the fact social media has had to ms. Impact on how congress communicates with its contenders. Congress didnt have a Digital Media staff ten years ago and today almost everything he has one including ours. Given these changes in the way congress and the American People to make it todays hearing is important. Y if history is any indicator key vacations platforms will continue to rapidly evolve and Congress Needs to adapt so members can to make it as effective as possible with the people they represent. I know susan davis and the frank commission have put a lot of thought into these issues and have smudges of how to modernize the frank. Members need to understand the differences across platforms so they can make smart choices but how s to best comedic effect the frank comes with geographic constraints but social media doesnt. Some social media platforms come with advertising that frank mail doesnt. The bottom line is communicating is these are today but its also a lot more complicated. Im looking for to what our witnesses had to say and support for us to understand the history of frank as well as modern trends and how members communicate with their constituents. We are focused on making Congress Work better so we can better serve the American People at a think this hearing is holiest part of that district f support of that mission. I would like to add the vicechairman for any halloween jokes. All i have is lasting. Thats all i can do for a living. Thanks for all a dream today. As you said, mr. Chairman, thermally ways never to talk to our constituents back home, with the click of mouse we can connect to our district to solve problems, share website updates and your ideas inde a page from those we represent. Communication with his represent is one of the most important parts of t our jobs. As we are represented for them but the current ranking process as you describe one that most dont even know about or understand feels light years behind the speed of communications with the opportunities we have b today. Gr constituents. Is a result throughout this year, whose committee we have heard from monday of our colleagues who have monday ideas for reforming congress including whose process. Have communication. So whose topic, monday of the freshmen who have stepped up, to voice their opinions and question the way we do things. Im very grateful for that. Because they have experienced the rules and regulations and the procedures for the first time and thankfully the very quick to highlight ways to improve or suggest they may have. Two allows communicate differently and better. And quicker. So look forward to hearing of whose today chris would be great and have a wonderful holiday and what better way to start off than being right here. Today we welcome testimony of five witnesses. A first panel which we are calling for davis panel, we have representing susan davis the chair of the House Commission on congressional mailing standards and representative rodney davis with surfing on whose committee has served is chair of the House Commission on congressional mailing standards in the 150 congress here to share their knowledge and ideas for reforming the franking process. Each will provide five minutes of testimony and wasnt finished, will move onto the next battle. So represented susan davis going you know not recognized for five minutes. Thank you very much. You understand that we get confused now again. I do appreciate your pointing that out. And of course members of the select committee, is the presbyter to join you. On whose historic day for what has to be the houses firstever frankenstein hearing. I want to acknowledge in the House Administration and chair and how the Ranking Member davis and Ranking Member brian still, all of whom play key role in the future of Mass Communications. The houses current franking rules have certainly stooped members. Staff and constituents uber the years but the good news is that we can continue make the whole franking process both the scary and more effective. Contrary to what monday staff believe, the cost franking manual was not created to frighten people. But the rather of good intentions of preventing members from using fair funds for personal and political or commercial use. However, after nearly two decades, working with those rules we have seen that the rules have the unintended side effect of slowing things down and preventing members from writing the way they speak. When they conduct official business. Our commission to the fresh look at the roles and came up the new approach. In estimating components. Was the going hand in hand. Greater transparency in support set of rules. Greater public handprints ensures greater care and accountability. We can achieve transparency easily by making the frame advisory opinions available online. The houses website is linked to ours, is it currently does for Financial Disclosure reports and travel reports and gift and travel filings and Legal Expense funds disclosures and statements of disbursement. I was just ending in, because you know all know whose, the whole idea is that members in Communications Available to their constituents and the public by report. It really does, i believe, discourage undue advantage of the franking privilege. Combined with transparency are shorter set of clear and essential roles will prevent the misuse of taxpayer funds. I look forward to sharing the new list of rules we are developing with you and all of our colleagues and staffs are cooling those together so naturally they have come up with quite a few defenses for his work on her new package we have some requests that the Modernization Committee relating to additional communication. My written testimony into greater detail below highlight a few main now. First we suggest the Modernization Committee recommends consolidating a Digital Communication and putting it on our jurisdiction. Right now we are only charged with reviewing postal mail but in practice we review all communications. And second the Modernization Committee should evaluate the appropriateness and again i think whose is before you all to look at allowing members the option to transfer the social media from Campaign Accounts to their official locales from time to time or perhaps just one time. I also consider allowing websites is it too late to official sites. Whose will eliminate confusion and we all fear from our constituents while maintaining appropriate separation. And third, we need to use technology to upgrade the strict office mail reports which are still selfreported and done by hand. Perhaps we can fix whose between the barcodes. Rough up now because pumpkins are fast approaching. Thank you again and has been a pleasure working with all of you and your staff as well. Look forward to your next set of recommendations. Thank you. Now represented rodney davis, you know recognized for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman and thank you to the vice chair and also the chair in the franking. In my good friend, ms. Davis. I would tell you, its an honor to speak from the side of the site and ill go around back to the site is soon is im done but to be able to talk about something that a lot of folks in and around washington dont want to take the time to delve into, and is very important for the job we do in communicating with our constituents. Last congress, i was the chair of the franking commission. And i have to commend my colleague ms. Davis, because we were able to Work Together to implement some new processes that made the frank easier. Older than you. And i do and see, the folks at work on House Administration and taking these franking requests, my staffers tim and hell live, do a great job in making sure they work with their member offices to implement monday of their archaic stands that we put in place but susan and i, and our teams were able to actually make the process easier. Will required higher percent online submission his. More in the 21st century. Whose is the thing we should do. We digitized everything. It makes the process for turning that approval or disapproval around faster. And it is something that i know for both of us, when we are in the commission. Weve got to do more. There is finally i believe you have been tight on both sides to roll up our sleeves is chair davis said. To get our teams together and come up with some solutions. I believe we are doing that. I am very happy that lena mccarthy, appointed our calling congressman right style, a freshman and a former staffer like monday of us whose had the years of frank. He is doing a great job of getting involved in finding out how we can even expand on what susan and i did with our teams last year. They resent bipartisan negotiations and is she said, opportunities for substantial changes to the franking rules. And we have three main buckets. Focusing on making improvements on them. The speed of approval, we want to get these approvals turned around faster. Transparency. There also developing regulations of work the 21st century. Let me frontline a few reasons why these reforms are in such need. First existing regulation is a burdensome and very bureaucratic. Were literally injuring the size of pitcher and counting the numbers of times goleta i is used. Staff president. Has not been upstate created and regulations. Let me get whose straight. Monday of the rules that we follow and approvals that are teams follow, have been set by president between staff for decades. We is members of the codify whose president s into rules and regulations so that we dont have any changes when we have changes on the committee, and leadership and that is something that i am looking forward to working with whose committee and also with brian and susan on. It is hard to follow rules that are not written down. And when theyre not transparent. I also think we should visit when taken is need it. Managers have an automatic approval process in some instances. For the consequences if members and staff dont follow those rules. For example doesnt make sense that facebook had died 500 people the cost of 20 is the subject to the same review the physical mailer going to hundred thousand people at a cost of 50000 taxpayer dollars. A little more than the expectation of privacy has brought the same it was ten years ago. And is a we support increased transparency standards for frankie. Massively Greater Transparency comes a check and balance with constituents and the american taxpayer is the should replace the role of staff here in dc measuring pitcher and counting eyes. And finally is members of whose committee contemplate recommendations, even my three things. Members need to keep send communication to their constituents. Regional regulations are necessary to prevent abuse and filing of the regulations and guidance into be transparent and accessible and easy to understand. In whose basic process, i. E. In courage the members to think bold and also new ideas are always welcome. I will take whose opportunity to eat to you 29 seconds back to you mr. Chair. Soon thank you both. And it was a busy morning for you so thank you for making time to come. One of the if the nextel of witnesses. To take their seats and perhaps is they do, i will start providing introductions just in the interest of time. Our first witnesses doctor matthew glassman, a senior fellow with a government of georgetown university. Prior to joining jai he worked at the regression all Research Center for deniers. Congressional operations, frank in preparation of powers appropriations and traditional administration, Agency Design and congressional history. He was detailed to the House Committee on appropriations is professional staff. Legislatures land of symphonies and 2010 and 2011. Next witnesses her attacker. Professor of politics at the new your university. Doctor tepper is the coprincipal investigator in the wind like so laboratories, codirector of the nyu center for social and political behavior. Doctor tucker specializes in comparative politics with an emphasis on elections and voting and Public Opinion formation and the use of social media and facility all forms of participation. Coeditor also of the monkey cage and Award Winning and politics log which appears in the washington post. Final witnesses josh billy meyer, doing the right. Who for the past 15 years has worked with Congressional Offices and streamlined the cmm operations and leverage new technologies. Prior to focusing on Software Solutions for Congressional Offices fulltime for josh worked for several meters patients Testing Services and attorney 18 began ceo of congressionally office that he cofounded. Five minutes for all of you. That went out objection your written statement will be part of the record. keller, vice chairman and members of the select monday. Thank you for the opportunity to sit testify today. Im senior fellow at darshan university. Lamented congressional service. Institutional issues in congress including members of communication in the pagan philip privilege credible legislative speech. Testimony, i provided to historical and contextual overview of the frank. Pacifically discusses the origins of national and longstanding criticisms of it. In writing frameworks congress is used regulate. Number consecutive would medications the building block. Its information about legislative activity for members of constituencies. Joint policy judgments and professional action and budget was about members. Likewise, the constituents cannot easily communicate preference to members and congressional action is less likely to reflect a Public Opinion. For most of the 19th century, postage free frank now can only be semi members, but to congress by constituents. The frank privilege dates to the 17th century england and has existed tenuously in the united states. So for a brief period in the 1870s when it was temporarily abolished. The water system basic comprehensive forum passed in 1973. Subsequent reforms m when reforms were made in the 1980s including many familiar restrictions, using private money, limits on overall frank expenditures, Public Disclosure individual member costs and be election band on mass mailing. The past 20 years house regulation of email and other Electronic Communications have been built on top of the existing two longstanding criticisms have been lodged against the frank privilege, that it is financially wasteful and second that it gives unfair advantage to incumbent and congressional elections. In 2018 house members mass mail, the total cost of 26 million at an average cost of . 25. These expenditures are quite small by historical standards. From 19882018, official congressional call dropped 80 is contemporary cost of mass mailing being driven by increasingly small number of offices. In 200485 of offices sent one last postal mailing. In 2018, only 61 did. Furthermore over half the costs of mass mailings were accrued by 65 high spending offices that averaged 216,000 in mass mailing expense. Several spent more than a quarter of their nra en masse postal mail. As has been the case for decades freshman members and members of swing districts spend more on page mass mailings and senior members. Overall frank mail costs are higher in election years than not. Throughout history technological the balance of altered member constituent communications and have triggered regulatory changes. For example arise of computergenerated mailing lists expanded the ability of members to reach constituents and led to an explosion in the amount of unsolicited mail sent. The rise of electronic communication in the 21st century is changing how members and constituents communicate. Email is the most possible way for constituents to reach members. Social media accounts allow for realtime interaction with no marginal costs, member or constituent. These changes call into question the relevance and financial efficiency of the traditional system which has become a smaller portion of most communications in recent years. Members sent 78 million pieces of mass mailing 2018 to billion pieces of mass communication. These Mass Communications cost on average one half of one cent per peacemaking 70 times less expensive than traditional postal mass mailings. As Public Policy there are 5 dimensions, who is entitled to frank, what can be frank, how much can be sent, where it can be sent and when it can be sent. In addition, policy sources exist regarding transparency and how franking costs will be paid for. They answer these questions in the past. It is quite different from what precedes it and increasingly out of sync. In the 21st century. Thank you for your testimony. You are recognized for 5 minutes. Members of the select committee, to testify before you today. My name is Joshua Tucker with the New York University and codirector of nyu center for social media and politics. In your testimony today i would like to highlight the following four points, despite recent social media platforms there has been no appreciable drop in social media usage among us adults. Viable platforms reach large portions of the population. There is a great deal of variation in social media tools to communicate with the public. Both due to platform avoidance and the platforms themselves as well as the preferences of different members of congress. Third there are crucial distinctions between communicating with constituents through the u. S. Postal service and social media platforms. They have less control over how messages are delivered and to whom. To make social media Data Available for outside research and analysis should therefore be an important concern for members of congress, access to social media data to assess the functioning and impact of efforts. I will address my remaining remarks. The consequences of business models, first, social media platforms generate revenue by selling advertisements which means messages from them as of congress to review the public, if you have an ad over which members have no control consider this equivalent to a franking policy that allows advertisements to be converted into mail sent by congress. Post on social media are not geographically constrained. It is practically impossible to ensure messages posted on social media platforms will be seen by constituents. When his Congressional Communications will no longer be written with ones constituent in mind. This means all members have more incentive to think about national as opposed to local audiences. The other is it will be impossible to ensure equality in terms of exposure to messages when the medium is social media. It will always be the case members with larger numbers of followers will enjoy greater reach for their messages than those with fewer followers. Most social media platforms deliver content through proprietary algorithms. This is a secret sauce of social media. That means for platforms the display content in any manner other than a simple chronological approach no one outside the Company Knows how the company determines what viewers will actually see. This means method of congress are unable to control how or even if their content is seen and they will be at the mercy of any algorithmic changes platforms decide to make in the future. While individual users can receive information about exposures to their posts, the ability of outside observers to assess these patterns is often severely constrained making it difficult for congress to monitor the impact of its members communication strategy. It is against this backdrop i turned to the importance of data access for assessing the impact of social media on policies. A disturbingly large portion of the data to investigate the internet effect on politics and democracy are locked inside social Media Companies in these firms alike data for outside analysis. When reason for this is the cost, legal, financial and reputational of unauthorized disclosures. This was necessary and salutary given the dangers of privacy in the digital environment but unfortunately outside research was Collateral Damage in this battle between government regulators, privacy advocates and the platforms. As we think through this set of issues it is important to realize a prohibition on making social media Data Available for outside analysis does not mean these data will not be mined for insights. Rather it means only employees of the platforms will be mining the data and answering questions about social medias impact on democracy and other social phenomena. They need to move beyond the paradigm of should platforms respect the privacy of their users with which we all agree in the abstract. The one who embraces the tradeoff inherent between legitimate privacy concerns on the one hand and the social good that can come for making Data Available to outside researchers on the other hand whether they are academics trying to study the impact of social media on democracy or Congressional Offices trying to reach their constituents. Into this debate any attempt to monitor the existence and impact of congressional communication through social media will undoubtedly fall. I will forward your questions. Thank you for your testimony. You are recognized for five minutes for your testimony. Thank you memo to the committee for the opportunity to speak today. Im the ceo of fireside, one of the leading providers in congress. Our Company Provides software that allows 150 members to manage all the incoming letters and emails from constituents, turnaround focalin relevant responses. As ceo, how Congressional Offices operate, how they manage their mail and how they decide when and how to communicate with their constituents. I have had countless conversations with members, chiefs of staff, legislative director and correspondence gaining an understanding of the practical challenges related to franking. They were sent to members of congress in the last 1015 years. Software allow Congressional Offices to take these messages in, and respond to constituents and the rules that govern outbound communication with constituents have not changed in the last few decades. And 3 overarching rule changes for franking. And it highlights the policies outlined in speech. Your staff may have to wait for days but not a week to send out the mail during the surge times. That takes far too long. Congress should not have an approval process, makes it no longer newsworthy by the time they send it out. My strong recommendation is congress find an approval process that takes less than 24 hours to for content to be sent out by email. There are some changes to the approval process and Technology Used to facilitate the approval process congress can meet this challenge. My second recommendation is allow offices to send multiple followup responses to a constituent about franking approval. They contact a member of congress urging them to cosponsor legislation, the office can responsible 500 people without needing franking approval. After those responses are sent, and to cosponsor that piece, the staff will have to get approval from franking to send an update to those people letting them know they cosponsored the bill. If it passes the house of representatives the office will get approval from the franking position, letting those 500 people know the legislation is passed. Strong recommendation regardless of how many people contact Congressional Office on policies or piece of legislation the opposite have the ability to send multiple followup emails. The third recommendation is create a task force, and updating in light of emerging technologies. Members of congress have access to two new Technology Innovations that will improve their building to communicate with constituents. And to help offices manage the onslaught of Inbound Communications from constituents. We are also introducing technology that will be available to members of Congress Next year to allow staff to automate the process of writing responses to constituents. This automatic letter writing technology can be programmed to follow the franking rule so when a member uses the letterwriting tools we can ensure content of the letters kept in the boundaries of the franking guidelines and wont lead them to get prior franking approval. The franking rules created decades ago need to be updated to account for the way congress operates now. Congress should be creating policies that not only apply today but work for emerging technologies in the future. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. Thank you for your insurance money each of you. We will go to enabling members of the committee that asked questions. I recognize myself or five minutes for questions. Not sure if i should direct this to doctor tucker. Im curious how the senate does this with regard to social media. We may be wrong about this but on the house side we have multiple versions of ourselves, official derek and unofficial derek. They may do things differently in the senate and i want to get your reaction and i know they have a hard on the amount members can spend on franking. Curious if you have a reaction whether that is a good thing or bad thing. The hard in the senate is the amount of postal mass mail. That members consent. 50,000 in postage per year, probably the driving reason the senate decreased its franking postal costs since it was instituted, senators send mass postal mailings, where mass mailings, might reduce cost in the house significantly without affecting committee members. Imagine 100,000 of total cost of mass mailing. That would save 8. 5 million from last year reducing costs by 30 and 3 quarters of members wouldnt be affected by it. I cant say im familiar with senate rules regarding social media accounts, cant answer the question directly but i have been sending students to interview member of congress both on the house side and the senate side for the last 6 years to ask the people in their office who are responsible for driving social media posted overseeing the process and what has continually amazed me is the variation we see across offices and the way there are so many different approaches across different offices so i have seen a kind of best practice emerging where people are converging around one set of practices around this and one of the Big Questions that always comes up is a question of finding different accounts of members of congress, the official count, the Campaign Account, the personal account. This actually also causes difficulties on the back end when you are trying to monitor how members of congress are communicating with constituents. You have to track down different accounts. It also causes as was mentioned by representative davis during the earlier panel cause a problem when you have a lot of followers on one of your social media accounts trying to get them to the other social media accountant given there are different systems for official count versus nonofficial counts, it seemed a fairly inefficient way from the members perspective and those of us trying to understand how members are using these communication tools. I want to get a sense from you whether there are things being done, technologies being used, Communication Strategies and the private sector that you think congress ought to take a crack at. I think probably like everyone else who signed up for news alerts when you go there you can select the topics you are interested in and get emails based on that. I subscribe to political technology, not as much about healthcare or china and those practices can be utilized by members of congress as well. Most constituents arent interested in getting information on all the topics you address, allowing them to choose Veterans Affairs and other topics they are interested in and tailoring the content to that to keep them more engaged as a practice. Is that allowed . Yes. I did a quick audit of all the email signup forms. Only one member asks, but you are allowed to ask constituents which items they are interested in. The challenge is when you tailor content you send out a lot more content. It is different and that is where the franking process becomes a bottleneck. You spoke in your testimony to things you thought ought to be changed. Which franking rules continue to have some value should be kept, should be updated . Speaking as a constituent i would say i like all the comments about not allowing members to endorse things or have highly political speech. Those seem like common sense things, the blackouts. I dont know what the status is of those but those are all valuable things. Terrific. With that let me invite miss brooks for five minutes. Thank you to those on the panel for coming today. When i first came to congress in 2013, it did baffle me that we could not migrate our campaign the first time we ran for office and create a Campaign Account and those people that were following us that we had to educate them in very difficult ways. If memory serves me correctly only one time could we informed them to go to the official account. I want to talk about that more. What do you think of the proplaps and cons of us migrating our campaign followers to the official count and vice versa . I dont see what you are solving is a friction problem. People who sign up and want to get information about you and you have another vehicle where you will be providing that information. It is a costly problem for the constituents in that they are signed up to get information one way and the information will be coming from another channel. The way people talk about a twitter account, you could two your followers that you are switching accounts and they should sign up for this other account but one thing we know about twitter is people dont see every single tweet that shows up in their feed. There are a lot of factors that factor into this, how many people they are following or how often a lot online, it is easy to miss this. People dont go to peoples pages, who they are following and see what they have tweeted regionally, it is by this newsfeed function which is what i was talking about with out the rhythms that serve this information in terms of the way things are ordered on the newsfeed. If you have a process where people could migrate people across these lists it would only be beneficial to constituents. There is a larger question which is the larger issue when we talk about people who are following you if you want a situation where you have a way to communicate with constituents social media is never limited to constituents. You may have other people who choose to follow you who arent constituents but your constituents, one of the key hallmarks of social media is they can share your information and their followers can share the information as well. If you pushed a pro for why you might keep these accounts separate the only thing i would say is potentially for the members you might have Greater National following on your Campaign Account because he were trying to raise money outside your district and you are trying to develop a separate list of people in your district who might follow your official account but in practice this is a timeconsuming effort that imposes costs on members and the constituents and followers as well. The task force, he recommended setting up a task force so we could continue to explore emerging technologies. Who would you have on the task force . Quite a variety of expertise particularly with respect to members of congress. How would you decide, what thoughts do you have about the task force . I would echo previous testimony from brad fitch who suggested having Communications Directors and press secretary says people on the ground and using all of those technologies and have a firm grasp on tasks and workflows they are doing. That is a great group of people to start with. I will yield back. Thank you. Thank you to the panel. Let me pose a question around social media advertising. I dont do the franking. Sound like if you have added social media review, what you are saying and certain quantities, the real value to social media is the target which is what i do with my business, daily basis. You can get mad and specific as your spouse to say happy birthday, you can get that specific. I can pick suburban women before mail. That is a lot of value to being able to use that. If no one looks at that can you address that issue, the difference because that is my biggest concern. You can start to use it in official capacity that is awful campaign like. It is important to understand this varies across platforms so i will speak to the general level. What is important to understand and i address this in the written testimonies when members have access to social media for communications purposes there are two distinct ways you can do this. One, you can have organic reach, your posting things on social media and a lot of people who signed up to follow you ensure that information and there is targeted advertising which involves paying for ads and some platforms you can do this in some you cant do this. You are talking this hyper ability generating what people call excessive microtargeting where people have companies, especially google and facebook that can give you these incredible precision and targeting apps. These are two different things. This is one of the the advice i give in written testimony that anything you do in terms of thinking about social media usage by members of congress. They specify whether it applies to advertising and we also regulations around advertising by members of congress whether it is intended to apply to organic reach. Organic reach, this is what i said in my remarks about not being equal, lots of different reasons. There is no way you can ensure that is equal. Advertising, you can put limits on how much members can spend on this advertising if it is in the realm of what you are doing with advertising. These are different types of approaches and if organic you cant necessarily target it. Im trying to get to specifics of the abuse via that advertising part. Some people get it and some people dont but you can be very specific to the point of what we do in campaigns and no one will look at at current set of rules. That is the latter part of my testimony about the importance of ensuring data access to outside handling so this is the only way we can understand the political impact of social media, people not working, and review of their own companies, have access to this data to understand what is in that. There are efforts underway, and archive is available that they are trying to take steps forward but in terms of as you think about reforming and congressional education in the 21st century, in both these dimensions the organic content and advertising content it is important that you do what you can to make sure this is available for analysis by the government so you can make correct policy but also people like myself so we can help you make correct policy by providing thorough information about what is happening in this regard. The original rules say you cant collect data on constituents that identify whether they are a republican or democrat based on Party Affiliation but based on communications you get from constituents and surveys you send, you can very easily, you can make one question survey to your constituents that says Something Like do you support impeachment and you will probably know which Political Party is in that or with a few things was the original intent of franking, was not allow offices to overuse that information but with all the streams of Public Information it is very easy for you to know that information about constituents. The current framework i set up, anything you send through official content is official representational content and that is how they separate Campaign Items from official representation and i wouldnt change how much you can target using the frank. Everyone knows you can get someone who is this age, this gender who spent two letters on gun control and can do 499 to them or something bigger. Thank you, mister chair. Interesting panel, thank you all for your comments and what you are discussing with us is what i considered delving into the weeds which is what this committee is here to do. My first question, we share the goal of providing better experiences for members and making communications with constituents even more effective and easier. The house isnt the easiest to operate in. Can you tell us about any roadblocks or difficulties you run into that prevented you from introducing new features you mentioned in your testimony . Absolutely. I would say one of the unique aspects of congress as i am sure you have heard is the fact there are state actors, security, trying to compromise our political process. For a long time the information resources had very restrictive guidelines around where data can be hosted, constituent data and until recently was restrictive in keeping that inside the house network, which restricts vendors from using things Like Cloud Services to do analysis on data and from what i understand theyve done a little work on that, the number one priority is enabling vendors like myself to access those resources and in the next year or two we will have the paths we need to leverage that, to give you an example where that winds up where we did the research on Machine Learning, we partnered with Machine Learning Consulting Group and took all the constituent mail from four offices and processed all that using modern Machine Learning and how many servers we had, you could probably take ten years to process all of that information so we had to move that to amazon with specialized hardware to do that and my understanding is house information resources the group did overseas that, making policies to allow us to do that. How do you think some of the new technologies will be able to move our communications into the 21st century, we are here to talk about franking rules and regulations, what franking rules and regulations could still hold up the new technology from being as effective as it could be . Great question and i appreciate i have met with a lot of staff to talk a lot about the challenges and hear their perspective on it but there is ambiguity on how these rules apply. Heres a couple instances. A lot of people talked about one of the franking rules is you can send the same message to more than 500 people, lets say you wanted to deploy a modern chat bot to your website, constituents come a lot of times asking questions or send you paper mail. A more efficient way to process that is several chat bots in your home page that says what can i help you with . Im interested in casework, great, here is the form to fill that out. Is that solicited . Is that unsolicited . If you send more than 500 of the same responses to people on the chat bot does that fall into the franking guidelines . I recommended the task force to look at what officers had questions about am not sure where that goes. In another area, elaborate a little more. In the private sector almost all the communications are not monolithic emails you get from vendors. They are small reminders, notifications, looking at their interests and small predictions, you got these products, would you be interested in buying this other product or watch these movies on netflix to make a prediction. Are you interested in seeing these other movies as members of congress, to do the same with constituents if somebody writes in about, or basing the district, you can notify them and voted on legislation that affects veterans as well, making a prediction they have been interested in some topics and might be interested in other topics but when the franking model, people draft content, people approve content and can send it out and in the private sector that doesnt exist, you have computers analyzing deciding when to send messages, drafting the messages and sending messages and those are incompatible and they need to be a revaluation of the process. I appreciate responses and appreciate up selling, new ideas and communications. I started my first job with do you want fries with that, clearly it works. Thanks to all of you for being here with us today. I want to follow up on the same thing. Talk a little bit about technologies, you talked about automated response that helps to create responses. Talk a little bit about concerns you may have with personalization of responses and get to a point with automatic responses versus having a true conversation with constituents, a personal side of it. I worry how that could be lost. I would say what technology can help you with is filter out. As a member of congress trying to be at your level my understanding is members, what they are looking for is when you look at all the information they are getting from their constituents, they would like to do two things. They want to know a global picture of how do their constituents feel . What percentage support a particular bill, what percentage support, dont support it . After that, they are also looking for personal stories how people are affected when you make member of Congress Makes eaches, they dont show a graph or something. They are affected by this policy in this way. We make sure we use Machine Learnings to process that overall view and give you a view of what constituents feel your district but also give your staff the ability to identify those important stories. A lot, half of the Communications Come to congress are tin plated and constituent clicks on i support this measure somewhere and you get a template message and you dont need staff to eyeball those because that is where machines look at that and say we will put that in the overall sentimentality when somebody writes in saying im having trouble getting casework. I am a vet, not getting the support that i need it it needs to be handed to caseworkers. You dont want that to get lost in the mix and you need to make personal connections for your constituent. You are talking about taking incoming information and parsing it out to get the right response to the right person quickly. I will give you a quick example. I recently visited one office. I was looking at their practices and noticed they turned off every single automation and every single efficiency measure within the system and said i am curious why you did this. On everybodys contract form you usually have an option that says yes, i would like a response from you or i just want you to know my opinion. Of a constituent doesnt expect a response you skim that and close it out because they dont expect a response. A veteran wrote in who was suicidal notes, i dont need a response and that got lost in the process. That is a unique aspect of congress, every message has a lot of weight and we need a process that can find all those things but the tension is that your staff cant continue to eyeball every message. That is why we are looking at Machine Learning to find those relevant messages in this sea of noise. You see that a lot on social media. If you post something youre going to get a lot of very interesting responses and comments, not a lot of it helpful. One of them may reference somebody seeking casework or having trouble in the district and you still want to get without having to look at every single comment, every retweet but that is the case for computers. Thanks. I think you had to response, doctor tucker. I want to inject a word of caution in the switches we know that the users of any medium of communicating are going to be a biased sample of their constituents. People who have time to write hand letters, the means to get on and get on the internet and send email versus people who sign up for social media platforms. I think it is very important for members to keep that in mind, that many years, the only way youve got communication was from letters you have a good sense of which of your constituents are the kinds who will write letters and which are the ones, that will allow you to interpret that through the lens of how representative is this sentiment we are getting off of handwritten letters or typewritten letters. Now you are going to have members receiving communications from hundreds of different web means, youre going to have mail, phones, email, automated email and we saw in one of the reports recently the average member of congress had six Different Social Media accounts, six different platforms and i have data about this in the report but different people use these platforms at different rates. There is lots of different biases was wearying from comments on youtube. Is that representative of my constituent . I think there is danger with the types of tools that will automate across different platforms, a sense of false precision, 72 of communications are in favor of this issue but you dont know what that 72 is representing. A word of caution to think about that. In a district like mine with a lot of rural areas and not necessarily broadband access, those arent folks who participate online as much. More likely to send letters or may not be able to participate day today on social media. Thank you very much and i yield back, mister chairman. I had one other thing i wanted to raise before we call it a day. One of the challenges members face, based on how we currently do things you find yourself having to choose between doing more Proactive Communications with your constituents or paying your staff. I think in my first term as a freshman member, everyone was a i was able to do the proactive outreach and even in the most remote rural parts of my district to congressman delbenes point, keep folks up to date on what we were working on. I tried to retain these talented people, that slice of our Office Budget has shrunk. Any thoughts on this committee dealing with these issues. Should we look at taking that franking out of the mra, the Office Budget or do you have other ideas . I have mixed feelings, i am a big believer that we need to increase the Resources Available for staff to pay them better and have more, it is vitally important for the legislative costs. In the old days they ate the cost and we never account for it and starting in the 50s congress did reimbursing them with a general pool of the funds and appropriation bill. The reason it was changed is to reduce costs. Making them choose market value on franking but if you had to choose between staff and franking you might frank a lot less. There are no repercussions and you spend a lot. Consequently, moving franking itself out of the mra, if you just did that would lead to an implosion that if explosion in frank mail. I would suggest doing that and helping with a. I would encourage members, they have a lot of staff, they have no cost to it. There are other cost of franking. One of the things, we like the idea that members should represent their constituents as they see fit and that is great to have a decentralized system but there are certain things every member spend money on. Every member has accountability. We dont charge you to be here and you give it back so things, costs that are common across tens of thousands of dollars a year for members could be 2 essential bond and increasing costs and we think that is something that comes with the office, we dont have any mra freeing up money for half a staff. I would just note if you think of social media as a form of communication those conflicting goals where communications overlap. The cost of using social media to communicate with constituents is having a staff member who knows what they are doing and can oversee this and deal with multiple platforms and craft strategy and those things. That is one i have given you a lot of caveats about using social media as a communication strategy but those are caveats in terms of understanding the consequences of what will happen and offers tremendous promise for this reason you are talking about because this organic content you can put out on social media, these are things with very low budget implications and in the sense of dealing with staff or not, spending on staff can help people manage. One example when i started interacting with officers, ten years ago, the mail process is pretty pacific. They sorted the mail and las drafted all the letters and stuff and gradually migrated over time to lcs drafting mail and those who have interns drafting replies to constituents which would have been unthinkable ten years ago. The problem is the Resources Available to this, to member offices and for us as a vendor we raised prices, 35 a month over the last we 10 years even though the cost of hiring and entertaining programmers has gone through the roof. Those are just challenges. We have a lot of little pains here and there because there are limited resources. With that i would like to thank all our witnesses for their testimony. You took what could be a dry subject and made it pretty interesting and i want to thank select Committee Staff for their hard work in putting together these hearings and the budget kennedy for allowing us to use their room. Thank you for transcribing all that we are doing, thank you to cspan for covering us. Without objection all members will have 5 days to submit additional written questions for the witnesses and to be forwarded to the witnesses for the response and i ask our witnesses to respond as soon as you are able. Without objection all members will have 5 legitimate of days in which to submit extraneous materials for exclusion in the record and with that this hearing is adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations] coming up live today the Smithsonian Institution will a ceremony for its new secretary, lonnie bunch. As leader of the smithsonian mister bunch will oversee 19 museums, 21 libraries and the national zoo, he previously served as director of the National Museum of africanamerican history and culture in washington dc. You can watch live coverage of that event beginning at 3 00 pm eastern on the cspan. Looking at our campaign 2020 coverage democratic president of contenders are expected to speak at the Iowa Democratic party annual liberty and justice celebration dinner tonight in the state capital of des moines. Live coverage starts at 7 beauty eastern. Donald trump hold a Campaign Rally in mississippi. We have live coverage starting 8 00 eastern on cspan2. And some news, the job numbers were released, 128,000 jobs added last month but the overall rate went to 3. 6 , the Associated Press noted the figure announced a strike against general motors, and additionally for the second straight month, average hourly wages rose 3 , from a year ago. We are making it easier, search cspan coverage videoondemand of all the congressional briefings and hearings. As was the ministrations response to the impeachment inquiry process. Logon to our impeachment inquiry webpage, cspan. Org impeachment, your fast and easy way to watch cspans unfiltered coverage any time. Sunday live at noon eastern on in depth, Princeton University professor perry joins us to talk about africanamerican history and racial inequality. My mother came of age in jim crow, alabama, my mother lived her use through a White Nationalist society and openly officially White Nationalist society. It has reared its head again. Other books include profits of the hood and may we forever stand. Join the interactive conversation with phone calls, tweets and facebook messages. At 9 00 pm eastern on afterwords, david shelton, author of it shouldnt be this hard to serve your country, recount his time as secretary of Veterans Affairs in the trump administration. He is interviewed by iraq and afghanistan veterans of america ceo jeremy butler. The governments involvement in va healthcare is the most effective way of honoring our nations commitment to our veterans. That does not mean veterans should not have the ability to go into the private sector when it is in their best interests, when the care is better or specialized care is available. We all believe that should be available. Watch booktv every weekend on cspan2. Now david axelrod, one of president obamas senior advisers talked with democratic president ial candidate pete t buttigieg at the institute of politics, they talk about the campaign, foreignpolicy and the mayors favorite novels, this is an hour and 10 minutes. 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