Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Finding innovators in an unlikely place: Congress

Rep. Don Davis and Sen. Marco Rubio

Rep. Don Davis and Sen. Marco Rubio won the Congressional Management Foundation's Democracy Award for Innovation and Modernization.

Fitch is the president and CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation and a former congressional staffer.

One of the last places you’d expect to see innovation in the workplace is in the halls of Congress. One lawmaker described the institution this way: Congress is “a 19th century institution often using 20th century technology to solve 21st century problems.” That is one of the reasons the Congressional Management Foundation sought to create competition among members of Congress with a Democracy Award for Innovation and Modernization.


The office of Rep. Don Davis (D-N.C.) is the one of two winners of this award in 2024, and Davis is the only first-term legislator to win an award this year. He and his staff seem to understand innovation and modernization are not the result of a single effort but a continuous practice. To this end, the team remains committed to exploring ways to enhance the office to serve constituents significantly through forward-thinking strategies.

For example, the office uses web-based tools like Trello for project management and Microsoft Bookings for scheduling constituent appointments. These tools support initiatives like the Veterans History Project for the Library of Congress to ensure the stories of veterans in North Carolina’s 1st district are gathered and preserved for future generations. The Airtable application handles National Defense Authorization Act and appropriations requests, including details such as the requester, funding amount, project description and status updates.

Internal communication is streamlined by utilizing text message groups on iPhones for office departments, operations and special events, enabling staff to stay connected. The office regularly holds tele-town hall meetings and webinars, leveraging virtual platforms for constituent engagement and weekly staff meetings. The office has increased feedback from these meetings by offering constituents a QR code to link directly to feedback forms. To ensure clarity and precision in communication, all team members use Grammarly across all forms of correspondence.

Lastly, the office established a Constituent Services Excellence Committee, which includes representatives from all departments, including the director of military, veterans affairs and Hispanic outreach, as well as the staff assistant for the Teen and Young Professional Mentoring and Leadership Advisory Council. The committee is tasked with meeting, reviewing, and making recommendations to the entire staff on elevating and maintaining exceptional service levels and promoting innovation and modernization. The committee also designated a staff member as the congressional modernization representative to help advance office and congressional modernization.

The Republican winner is the office of Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla). The Rubio office — a previous Democracy Award winner — set itself apart by adopting a completely paperless system and revolutionizing its management process. The office has implemented a constituent survey to get feedback on each case handled by staff members, providing crucial feedback to help the office improve its service operations. In 2023, the office restructured and revitalized its internship program to align with the senator’s mission of fostering public service interest and equipping future leaders with essential skills, knowledge and tools. The program boasts a comprehensive one-day orientation that includes a wide range of presentations, seminars and training sessions delivered in close collaboration with sub-departments.

Additionally, by developing a specialized consent form for constituents requesting assistance, the office has streamlined a previously labor-intensive process related to foreign travel. The Rubio office can now coordinate with local passport offices, prioritizing emergency travel. In doing so the office has been successful in handling several thousand passport-related cases during a State Department backlog. They quickly established internal procedures to handle the unprecedented volume of passport requests.

On behalf of a state frequently hit with hurricanes, the office developed a novel approach to coordinating available services at every level of government. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, staff immediately simultaneously set up tents and tables at separate locations in two affected counties to provide essential services to those in need. In collaboration with nonprofit organizations, staff helped 2,450 families receive 21 pallets of food and bottled water and FEMA registration assistance in just three days.

Lastly, the office crafted a senior fellows program designed to meet the specific needs of older adults. This program offers a specially tailored orientation and extensive training to accommodate a longer, six-month service term twice per year.

These two offices have demonstrated the value of innovation in government, not for the sake of innovation but to elevate the level of service to their constituents. If more elected officials adopted this kind of attitude, we can only wonder how people’s views of their government might change.

Read More

Protestors holding signs at a rally in Chicago against ICE.

Demonstrators protest the agenda of the Trump administration with a march through downtown on September 30, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois.

Getty Image, Scott Olson

Stop the War Declared on U.S. Informal Workers

“Operation Midway Blitz,” the Chicago area efforts by Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE), intentionally and actively terrorizing Chicagoans, is targeting informal workers, including street vendors and day laborers.

It is a scenario played out across the country, including cities in New York, Oregon, Colorado, Iowa, and Texas.

Keep ReadingShow less
A portrait of John Adams.

John Adams warned that without virtue, republics collapse. Today, billionaire spending and unchecked wealth test whether America can place the common good above private gain.

John Adams Warned Us: A Republic Without Virtue Cannot Survive

John Adams understood a truth that feels even sharper today: a republic cannot endure without virtue. Writing to Mercy Otis Warren in April 1776, he warned that public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without [private virtue], and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.” For Adams, liberty would not be preserved by clever constitutions alone. It depended on citizens who could restrain their selfish impulses for the sake of the common good.

That insight has lost none of its force. Some people do restrain themselves. They accumulate enough to live well and then turn to service, family, or community. Others never stop. Given the chance, they gather wealth and power without limit. Left unchecked, selfishness concentrates material and social resources in the hands of a few, leaving many behind and eroding the sense of shared citizenship on which democracy depends.

Keep ReadingShow less
Protest sign, We the people.
Protests have been sparked across the country over the last few weeks.
Gene Gallin on Unsplash

Why Constitution Day Should Spark a Movement for a New Convention in 2037

Sept. 17 marked Constitution Day, grounded in a federal law commemorating the signing of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787. As explained by the courts of Maryland, “By law, all educational institutions receiving federal funding must observe Constitution Day. It is an opportunity to celebrate and discuss our Constitution and system of government.”

This week also marked the release of an important new book by the historian Jill Lepore: “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution” (as reviewed in the New York Times in a public link). Here’s an overview of her conclusions from the publisher:

Keep ReadingShow less
America’s Long History of Political Violence—and Why We Can’t Ignore It Now

Political violence has deep roots in American history. From 1968 to today, Jeanne Sheehan Zaino explore why violence remains a force for change in U.S. society.

Getty Images, B.S.P.I.

America’s Long History of Political Violence—and Why We Can’t Ignore It Now

In 1968, amid riots and assassinations, a magazine asked leading intellectuals why America was so violent. Among the responses was one that stood out—H. Rap Brown’s now-infamous line: “Violence is as American as cherry pie.”

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz dismissed the phrase as a cliché. But sociologist St. Clair Drake took it seriously. “However repulsive and shocking,” Drake wrote, Brown was “telling it like it is.” Americans, he said, must face the fact that their society is, by global standards, a very violent one.

Keep ReadingShow less