A developing database of constituent complaints to Congress could help agencies find systemic issues in their public services

When a member of the public has an issue accessing a federal benefit or service, they often contact their member of Congress for help. That assistance is called constituent casework. 

If an agency receives a lot of requests from lawmakers on behalf of their constituents about a specific issue, or if there are multiple constituent cases coming from the same area, that could be a signal to officials that there’s a problem.

But actually using this data to pinpoint systemic problems with agency operations is difficult because there’s no database to collect such information from across Capitol Hill offices. The House of Representatives, however, could soon change that. 

House Digital Services, a tech team within the chamber’s support office, has been working since 2024 on Case Compass, which is a dashboard that will display anonymous constituent casework data from across participating Capitol Hill offices. On Sept. 9, the House unveiled a framework to aggregate such information.

Anne Meeker — the managing director of POPVOX Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit that helps Congress utilize technology advancements and that has been pushing for the creation of Case Compass — said this system could enable improved collaboration between the legislative and executive branches. 

“By not tracking congressional casework in a systemic way, agencies are missing a chance to say ‘Hey, what is not resolvable through our own channels where constituents are so desperate and so frustrated that they’re going to Congress?’” she said. “So here's…an independent data set of the pain points — the friction — constituents experience with programs under this agency. Now, what are [agencies and Congress] going to do together to go fix it?” 

The project is the result of a 2022 recommendation by a bipartisan select committee on congressional modernization that called for the development of "an optional system to allow offices to share anonymized constituent casework data and aggregate that information to identify trends and systemic issues to better serve constituents.”

Meeker, a former congressional caseworker who “fell in love” with constituent service during an unpaid internship, testified to that panel about such an idea ahead of the recommendation’s issuance. 

In a September blog, she wrote that caseworkers often set up informal channels to share information that could be helpful to other offices, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic and military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Meeker said in an interview with Government Executive, however, that creating an official system was difficult due to legal requirements with handling constituents’ personal information and because most casework is addressed in district offices rather than Washington, D.C. 

Meeker in the blog urged Capitol Hill caseworkers and federal employees who work in congressional-agency relations to provide feedback on the data system, as HDS continues to refine it. 

“Casework is the best thing Congress does,” she said. “The things that case workers handle are just absolutely fascinating. It's this really vital ground floor look at how policy works.” 

The Office of the Chief Administrative Officer, which oversees HDS, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about when Case Compass would be fully operational. 

As part of President Donald Trump’s federal workforce reductions, the Social Security Administration office that helps congressional offices with constituent casework, among other legislative responsibilities, was reduced from around 50 employees to as few as three.