Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

How Congress turns citizens’ voices into data points

How Congress turns citizens’ voices into data points

"No matter why or how people contact their elected officials, they all want one basic thing: They want someone to listen. But what actually happens is something different," writes Samantha McDonald.

Zach Gibson/Getty Images

McDonald is a Ph.D. candidate in the practice of information processing and information system engineering at the University of California, Irvine.

Big technology companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google aren't the only ones facing huge political concerns about using citizen data: So is Congress. Reports by congressional researchers over the last decade describe an outdated communication system that is struggling to address an overwhelming rise in citizen contact.

Every day, thousands of people contact their senators and representatives. Their intentions – protesting or supporting a politician or legislative proposal, seeking assistance with the federal bureaucracy or expressing their opinions about current affairs – vary as widely as their means of communication, which include phones, written letters, emails, in-person meetings, town halls, faxes and social media messages.

The Congressional Management Foundation suggests that most congressional offices saw constituent contact double – or even increase eight-fold – from 2002 to 2010. Current staffers say the numbers have climbed even higher since then. Congressional staffers spend hours listening, reading, collecting and organizing all this information. All of it ends up going into databases in their offices.


As a scholar of technology use in Congress, I've interviewed more than 50 staffers in more than 40 congressional offices. I've observed that advancements in computer technology are changing how Congress handles citizen communication and uses the data collected from those conversations to represent citizens – for better and for worse.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

No matter why or how people contact their elected officials, they all want one basic thing: They want someone to listen. But what actually happens is something different. As one staffer explained to me: "They want their voices to be heard, and it's me entering their info into a database."

When a constituent calls a congressional office, the staff member answering the phone collects personal information – the caller's name, their address and why they're calling. The address is important, because it can confirm the person is actually a resident of the congressional district. Congress has been logging this sort of data for decades, but the number of constituents seeking to contact their elected representatives has grown immensely and is overwhelming congressional systems.

For example, one democratic staffer told me that in 2017, as Republicans took up efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, often known as Obamacare, their office received 200 phone calls a day – with only one intern answering the phone. The only way to handle so many calls was to tally people's views as "for" or "against" the current proposal. There was no time to track anything else. This is the new normal for Congress – which is understaffed and underprepared to substantively listen.

Too much attention to data can cause problems in a representative democracy. Each representative has an average of 710,000 constituents – so aggregating and tallying views of citizens can be an attractive solution. But each of those people has their own story. With staffers' focus on collecting data, the emotional stories that drive citizens to speak up are often lost.

Imagine a caller contacting their member of Congress about the ACA who has an overall view of the bill, but also has a personal connection to one of its details – such as a college-age child who might lose coverage, or a preexisting medical condition.

More often than not, that caller's opinion will end up labeled as either "for" or "against" the whole bill – not, for instance, "against" this part of it, but "for" that part of it. The problem isn't that members of Congress and their staffs don't care – they care quite a lot – it's that they don't have the capacity to truly listen.

By turning contact from citizens into data points, Congress reduces what it can learn about its constituents and what they want. But this contact is important. It is the single most consistent predictor of which constituents policymakers pay attention to in their district – putting issues on the radar for the future. Data changes those perceptions, by emphasizing the numbers as an efficient means of understanding.

The databases not only oversimplify constituents' views – they leave out large groups of Americans.

More often than not, the people who contact their members of Congress are white, educated and wealthy. The database information is easy to analyze, so it's tempting to assume it accurately represents wider public opinion. But it doesn't.

There are also other major concerns. Many of these databases are designed based on business practices, making Congress treat citizens more like customers to satisfy than collaborators in policymaking.

This is causing staff roles to change from gatekeepers of citizen voices to underpaid database administrators and customer relations personnel. Staff spend hours, and sometime days, logging, organizing and tracking citizen information for the database. This is a huge amount of time and labor that could be better utilized elsewhere to understand constituent views.

As the practices of collecting and logging citizen contact continues to grow, Congress needs to think critically about what this data and these data collection practices are doing to representatives' relationships with citizens. Citizens will have limited ability to influence policymakers without such critical conversations.

Technology doesn't change the political realities of what is already happening in Congress, but it often reinforces and amplifies what is already happening in society.

Changing how Congress uses and tracks citizen data needs to be connected to larger conversations about what it means for the government to listen to constituents and involve them in policymaking. This can drive innovative technology that promotes higher-quality forms of constituent engagement.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Read More

The Untold Costs of AI: The West Is Paying for the Future That Hasn’t Arrived

robot, technology, future, futuristic, business, tree, symbol

Getty Images//Stock Photo

The Untold Costs of AI: The West Is Paying for the Future That Hasn’t Arrived

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been heralded as a technological revolution that will transform our world. From curing diseases to automating dangerous jobs to discovering new inventions, the possibilities are tantalizing. We’re told that AI could bring unprecedented good—if only we continue to invest in its development and allow labs to seize precious, finite natural resources.

Yet, despite these grand promises, most Americans haven’t experienced any meaningful benefits from AI. It’s yet to meaningfully address most health issues, and for many, It’s not significantly improving our everyday lives, excluding drafting emails and making bad memes. In fact, AI usage is still largely confined to a narrow segment of the population: highly educated professionals in tech hubs and urban centers. An August 2024 survey by the Federal Reserve and Harvard Kennedy School found that while 39.4% of U.S. adults aged 18-64 reported using generative AI, adoption rates vary significantly. Workers with a bachelor's degree or higher are twice as likely to use AI at work compared to those without a college degree (40% vs. 20%), and usage is highest in computer/mathematical occupations (49.6%) and management roles (49.0%).

Keep ReadingShow less
What a health insurance CEO's murder reveals about America's pain

Cancer, healthcare and support with a woman holding hands with her man in the hospital. Medicine, insurance and trust with a couple in a clinic for treatment or help before death, mourning and loss

Getty Images//Stock Photo

What a health insurance CEO's murder reveals about America's pain

The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson represented a horrific and indefensible act of violence. His family deserves our deepest sympathy.

As a physician and healthcare leader, I initially declined to comment on the killing. I felt that speculating about the shooter’s intent would only sensationalize a terrible act.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Look Ahead at AI, privacy and Social Media Regulation under the New Trump Administration

Ai technology, Artificial Intelligence. man using technology smart robot AI, artificial intelligence by enter command prompt for generates something, Futuristic technology transformation.

Getty Images - stock photo

A Look Ahead at AI, privacy and Social Media Regulation under the New Trump Administration

Artificial intelligence harms, problematic social media content, data privacy violations – the issues are the same, but the policymakers and regulators who deal with them are about to change.

As the federal government transitions to a new term under the renewed leadership of Donald Trump, the regulatory landscape for technology in the United States faces a significant shift.

Keep ReadingShow less
Presidential promises, promises, promises....

Former President Donald J. Trump answers question from Pastor Paula White-Cain at the National Faith Advisory Board summit in Powder Springs, Georgia, United States on October 28, 2024.

(Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Presidential promises, promises, promises....

When Donald Trump made his first successful run for president in 2016, he made 663 promises to American voters. By the end of his 2021 term of office, he could only fulfill approximately 23 percent of his vows. Before we get too excited as to what will happen when Trump 2.0 takes effect on Jan. 20, let’s take a moment to reflect on covenants made by a couple of other presidents.

PolitiFact tracks the promises our presidents have made. PolitiFact is a non-partisan fact-checking website created in 2007 by the Florida-based Tampa Bay Times and acquired in 2018 by the Poynter Institute, a non-profit school for journalists. Here’s a report card on three presidents:

Keep ReadingShow less