What we did over our summer vacation

Written By Anne Meeker

Hi caseworkers,

We missed y’all on our summer break! Hope your August was warm but not too warm, full but not too busy, and otherwise wonderful. In the grand tradition of “what I did over my summer vacation” essays, here are a few things we’ve been up to:

  • Did you see our AI summer camp?! My brilliant colleagues designed a choose-your-own adventure to help Congressional teams safely experiment with AI tools to better understand this wild world of emerging tech. Obviously there is a casework-specific track!

  • We launched the Departure Dialogues, a project to help departing federal employees share insights into statutory burdens/barriers to agency programs that will require Congressional action to fix — hoping this will be helpful for oversight, including casework!

  • I wrote about why the structure of Congressional offices makes it hard to move casework-related insights up the chain of command.

  • We’re hiring a program associate role at POPVOX Foundation! If you happen to know any rockstar former caseworkers who would be excited to help write this newsletter…

And, more importantly: we are THRILLED to see the amazing team at the House Digital Service (HDS) announce the release of their new casework taxonomy. This taxonomy is a coherent system for tagging and tracking casework data that will form the basis for the House’s new Case Compass nationwide casework dashboard. Seeing the full map of potential casework issues laid out is an enormous testimony to the complexity of casework and the expertise caseworkers need to move through this system fluently — and a great example of how the House and Senate can support casework by investing in custom-built tools. (And if this is super intimidating, don’t worry: HDS is also working on ways their system can automatically tag this data from case notes, so you don’t have to hand-tag it yourself). We have more on why this is so important here.

HDS is looking for feedback from casework teams on what’s missing here or ways the taxonomy could be further refined — drop comments on LinkedIn, or reply to this email and we’ll get you connected.

If you have questions about our work or suggestions for how we can be helpful, please feel free to reply to this email, or reach out to me at anne@popvox.org.

Anne Meeker
Deputy Director
POPVOX Foundation

Casework News

  • Huge congratulations to the winners of the Congressional Management Foundation’s Democracy Awards for Constituent Services — now including winners for DC-based constituent services too!

  • Even the Speaker of the House’s casework team handles passports.

  • CRS released updates to the Congressional District Geography workbook!

  • Coverage of the team from Rep. Swalwell’s [D, CA] office’s work on behalf of a constituent allegedly wrongfully deported.

  • Congratulations to Rep. Peters’ [D, CA] team on reaching $23 million in recovered benefits!

  • Interesting to see advocacy groups develop resources pointing the public toward Congressional casework — especially given the challenges some teams have faced obtaining info from the Department of Education.

Agency News

Immigration

  • Good news on passports! The State Department’s online platform for renewals is keeping up with demand, even accounting for “magnitudes” higher numbers of applications.

  • The State Department plans to introduce a “visa bond” pilot program that would require travelers from countries with high rates of visa overstays to pay a bond up to $15,000 to enter the US.

  • The Cut has a guide to travelers’ rights if stopped at the border entering the United States. Relatedly, Wired reports that CBP phone searches have risen 17% this year.

  • A USCIS policy clarification that anyone stopped at the border is eligible for expedited removal appears to be applied retroactively, including applicants whose asylum applications have been pending.

  • Members’ right to enter detention facilities as part of their official oversight responsibilities is still very much under contention. A standoff in August at an ICE facility in New York left several Members unable to exit a facility, and members of the Colorado delegation are also seeking answers after staff at a detention facility were unable to provide information on the facility’s operations.

  • ICE signaled that it will increase efforts to collect fines levied against immigrants who have received deportation orders.

  • USCIS also issued new policy manual updates on a few topics, including:

    • the agency’s no longer accepting cash or checks,

    • restricting the types of groups that can offer voter registration services at naturalization ceremonies,

    • and clarifying discretionary factors (i.e., anti-American sentiment/communications) in certain benefit requests.

SSA

  • A former SSA-OCLA employee flagged that the Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs has been downsized from fifty to only three people. While the vast majority of Congressional casework goes through field and regional offices, this still represents a significant hurdle for offices managing urgent casework or troubleshooting issues with field and regional offices.

  • There appears to be some inconsistency between SSA’s public claims that it removed stringent ID checks from some phone services, and SSA’s internal policies that still instruct employees to obtain verifications. On the other hand, we know that it can be a real process for agencies to update internal manuals…we’ll keep an eye on this.

  • ProPublica has a deeply-reported story (interviews with Leland Dudek) on what happened with DOGE at SSA.

VA

  • Good news first: the VA announced that it had processed more disability claims so far in FY 2025 than it had in any single previous year, due in part to tech investments in automated decision support and review summary tools.

  • And other good news: the Veterans Experience Office is now officially in law as an office reporting to SecVA, tasked with setting policy around customer experience and feedback.

  • A GAO report found that VA may not be appropriately monitoring whether settlements in whistleblower cases have been paid out in a timely manner. As a reminder, the House Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds has a fact sheet on VA-specific whistleblower laws.

  • VA OIG issued its Congressionally-mandated annual report on occupational staff shortages at VHA facilities, and found that 94% of VHA facilities reported severe shortages of medical officers, and 79 reported nurse shortages. Psychology was the most frequently-reported clinical occupational shortage.

  • Surprise: VA OIG also found that the VA can improve its management of disability appeals with greater oversight over the tech system used to manage appeals. Some interesting insights in here into the actual processing of appeals.

  • And last but not least from VA OIG: not all disability compensation examiners providing opinions on PACT Act claims had completed their required trainings.

FEMA now requires email addresses for disaster relief services

New FEMA policies require disaster survivors to register for services with an email address. The agency says the changes will bring programs into compliance with an executive order shifting the federal government away from paper-based communications.

New IRS Commissioner removed

Recently-confirmed IRS Commissioner Billy Long was removed from his position in August. Treasury Secretary Scot Bessent is currently serving as acting Commissioner until a new Commissioner can be nominated and confirmed.

Air Force denies early retirement to transgender service members

The Air Force rescinded its early retirement offer to transgender service members who are no longer eligible to serve on active duty after a DOD policy change earlier this year. Transgender service members may now choose between a voluntary separation agreement or involuntary removal.

Changes to federal grantmaking

President Trump also signed an executive order changing how agencies conduct oversight over federal grants. We’ll be curious to see how these changes are applied to projects covered by federal earmarks; in the meantime, here’s a quick rundown of what the EO means.

Preview of service design changes in the Exec branch

Ugly PDF warning: OMB issued budget guidance for agencies for the upcoming year, including, in section 6 (that’s page 20 of this PDF’s table of contents, or page 629 of the document itself), guidance on implementing the Customer Service Delivery Improvement Act, including how agencies should designate a Performance Improvement Officer. These folks are going to be key allies for casework — keep an eye on this!

America by Design

The Trump Administration launched a new initiative aimed at overhauling the interfaces Americans use to access services.

The agentic state?

Relatedly, interesting piece from the Open Government Partnership on imagining the future of government service delivery with agentic AI. TL;DR — are forms dead forever?!

Relatedly: Anthropic rolls out to government social workers to streamline paperwork

Anthropic announced that it had partnered with social work platform Binti to provide AI services for common social work tasks like transcribing meetings and filling in paperwork.

Also relatedly: study on the impact of personalized assistance to safety net programs

If we’re thinking about what agentic interfaces could look like, this study from NBER on the impact of personalized assistance during the Medicaid renewal window is a good data point.

GA faces SNAP challenges after cyberattack

Staff for Georgia’s EBT program are still navigating fallout after the agency was knocked offline for almost a month by a cyberattack.

Thinking through SNAP changes

Recent Casework Navigator webinar panelist Dave Guarino has some really interesting analysis on where and how states are susceptible to risk around new SNAP requirements from the OBBBA. One unexpected consequence of the bill may be states investing in some truly innovative interfaces for beneficiaries out of necessity.

Access to COVID vaccines?

Longtime caseworkers know that shortages or restrictions to vaccine access can show up in casework — the VA’s struggles with shingles vaccine supply come to mind. Here’s a rundown of how COVID vaccine access may be changing.

Casework Navigator Newsletter

Get tools and tips to level up your casework, as well as the latest casework news and agency updates.

Anne Meeker
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What Citizens’ Assemblies Can Teach Legislatures