Constituent Services

This is what Hobson called his number one issue.  It is not an issue per se. While it is important for a Congressman to help the people of the district deal with problems they have with Federal agencies, it is primarily a Congressional staff function. A Congressman should be spending most of his time on legislative matters and the conduct of Federal agencies as related to all people.  There are 800,000 people in the 7th District.  A Congressman must spend most of his or her time dealing with legislative issues affecting everyone.

For the last thirty years, my professional activities have been primarily to develop effective management systems.  These systems have been supported by computers but have concentrated on providing people an easy and effective access to information.  I will apply that experience to defining and implementing a problem tracking and solving system to serve the people of the 7th District.   I anticipate a system including the following elements:

• All requests and related actions will be tracked on the internet.
• At the option of the individual, access to private information will be protected by confidential password. 
• A person will be able to access the complete record of  his or her request, subsequent actions, responses, planned actions etc.  on the internet.  For those without internet access, staff members will access the files in response to a letter or phone call.  Staff members will verbally review and/or mail the complete record as requested. 
• Pending actions such as response from Federal agencies will be assigned reasonable expected completion dates and staff follow up will be initiated for all overdue responses.
• Notes will be entered by the assigned staff member appraising the progress made toward satisfying the request.

A good system accomplishes the following:

• Tracks all of the related information in an orderly way not letting anything "fall through the cracks",
• Is easy for a new user to understand and access and provides quick shortcuts for the experienced user,
• Provides clear reporting of the information relating to an individual case,
• Aggregates information to identify similar problems indicating a prevailing problem in the supporting agencies,
• Provides assurance that proper actions will taken in a timely manner,
• Provides honest and objective measures of the effectiveness of the tracking system on a case by case and overall level,
• Leads to the proposal of improvements to be made in the operations of the responding agencies, helping everyone.  Such proposals may result in pressure to rewrite agency regulations and/or legislative action

I will seek to develop this system as a cooperative effort with other Congressmen of either party.  Or, I will provide the final design specifications and software to other Congressmen for use in their districts.  Use in multiple districts could provide a larger aggregate database for evaluating the performance of federal agencies.

I have many years of experience building such systems (See the Graham Business Process Improvement System and the EASE Project Management System as two examples of systems which I have developed.)  The key elements necessary to succeed in such developments are integrity, objectivity, and a consuming desire to make a positive difference.  These are the same as are evident in my campaign for Congress.