The topic of this episode is, “What’s the status of congressional modernization?”
My guest is Representative Stephanie Bice, who is the chairperson of the Subcommittee on Modernization and Innovation in the US House of Representatives. She also sits on the Committee on House Administration, which has jurisdiction over a lot of aspects of the legislative branch’s operations.
Rep. Bice is a Republican who has represented Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District since January 2021. She previously served in the Oklahoma state legislature from 2014 to 2020. Prior to that, she worked in business for her family’s technology company and ran her own marketing firm.
This is Rep. Bice’s second time on this podcast. Not long ago, she spoke to us about how the House of Representatives could better prepare new members.
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It is a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be.
And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I am your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.
Representative Bice, welcome back to the podcast.
Stephanie Bice:
Thank you so much for having me.
Kevin Kosar:
Not everybody listening is familiar with the Subcommittee on Modernization and Innovation. Briefly, for these listeners, what does this House subcommittee do?
Stephanie Bice:
The House Subcommittee on Modernization and Innovation was actually created out of a Select Committee that was started in the 116th Congress to really look at how the House functions. When you’re talking about an institution that is as old as the House is, what can we do to improve it?
Improvements not only internally within House offices or committee offices, but also externally, how do we improve the experience for visitors and guests that are coming to the US Capitol, and specifically the House? And so this committee is tasked with implementing the over 200 recommendations that were created from that Select Committee, but then also looking to the future, to what innovative technologies are coming down the pipeline that we should be embracing. And so it’s been a busy Congress putting a lot of great initiatives forward, and I look forward to continuing to do that in the future.
Kevin Kosar:
How did you end up getting on this committee and becoming its leader?
Stephanie Bice:
It’s sort of a funny story. Part of the House Administration Committee’s responsibilities is actually freshman orientation. So when you are elected immediately after the election, after the November election, you are brought to DC for about 10 days or so of orientation. And I served in the state legislature prior to being elected to Congress and had the opportunity to create a mentorship program and an orientation program in the state senate. And I found a lot of flaws, if you will, with the way that our freshman orientation was done. Candidly, part of it was no fault of anyone; I was elected during COVID, so there were some things that you could not overcome.
But I felt like the structure of what we did and when we did it didn’t make a lot of sense. So I put together a very lengthy document that I shared at the time with Speaker McCarthy to outline what I thought could be changed in the future for freshman orientation opportunities.
Sometimes when you do that, you find yourself in a new role. And so after Speaker McCarthy was elected, he called me and said that he was appointing me to the House Administration Committee and was going to put me as the chair of this subcommittee to lead the efforts to modernize and innovate Congress. So here we are.
Kevin Kosar:
As you mentioned, the Modernization subcommittee works on a whole range of reforms, something like a couple of hundred of them that came from the Select Committee that preceded it. To help listeners better appreciate what exactly these reforms are and the breadth of the stuff that you guys are tackling, can you describe two or three of these reforms?
Stephanie Bice:
Sure. It’s everything from, let’s say, pay periods—how staffers are paid monthly. Some staffers would rather be paid biweekly, so there was a conversation around whether that should change. It is also things like, what is the vendor process like for becoming a vendor for the House, and working within the House confines. Certainly, cybersecurity is a big issue. A lot of work has also been done on disability areas that the House could improve upon. So what’s fascinating about this subcommittee is that it really touches a whole host of areas of how the House functions, and it’s been fun to be a part of.
One of the most recent changes that we’ve had at the end of last year was changes to the food service in the building. If you’ve ever been to the US Capitol, you know that it can be a very busy place, especially in the summer. There were limited opportunities for dining in the building. And so we’ve expanded them and are offering more options for visitors to the Capitol and staff.
Kevin Kosar:
What reforms are you trying to push over the line right now? Are there a few of them that are really high priority for you?
Stephanie Bice:
Yeah, there have been a few things that we’ve been working on that are in the process right now.
One of them is what we call a constituent management system, or a CMS. There are outside entities that have been creating CMS platforms specifically for the House for quite some time. But one of the things we’ve learned is that if you are a business and you are creating a product, but you only have a very limited or finite number of customers, I think it makes it challenging to be able to invest in that product. And so we’ve seen a lot of management systems come and go over the years, and one of the conversations we’re having now is, do we actually bring that in-house? Do we make this an internal product so that we’re not always relying on outside vendors to improve or innovate?
We can actually do it internally. And so we’re doing a bunch of research on that right now. What does that look like? How do you make sure that data is secure and safe? How do you make sure that it’s not compromised even within the House infrastructure?
Another one that I am incredibly excited about is looking at how to navigate the complex. If you’ve ever been to the Capitol, you know that this is a very confusing place. I remember my dad came to visit me right after I got elected, and we got lost a couple of times, but I got to where I was going, and he said, “I don’t know how you find your way around.” And I said, “Well, I just walk until I get to where I need to go, but sometimes I have to go the long way.”
The reality is, it’s tough for people who have never been to this building to navigate it, especially the House and Senate office buildings. So we are looking at doing a digital wayfinding program, kind of like a Google Maps app, if you will, that can guide you from place to place throughout the campus.
We think that’ll be incredibly helpful, especially for constituents who are visiting maybe with an association or a trade group, or even those who just want to come in and visit the Capitol and see their member of Congress.
Kevin Kosar:
I should say for listeners out there who heard the phrase constituent management system, it might be easier if you just think of that as a customer management system, because really that’s what these things are for. Constituents are reaching out to Congress by email, phone, etc. How do you manage all that data? How do you keep track, and how do you ensure that you’re being responsive to them? Well, you’d better have pretty good software, and since the average member of Congress has approximately 740,000 constituents, you’d better have good software to do that.
Stephanie Bice:
Yeah. And I think one of the things we’ve learned, especially in the last couple of years is that there’s an incredible opportunity to utilize AI to our benefit as House offices, whether that is trying to find information quickly for a constituent who may be calling in or emailing, or trying to reply to constituent requests or concerns. There are opportunities for us to use AI, but how do we do that responsibly, and how do we integrate it into the House network?
Kevin Kosar:
So your subcommittee plays a lead role in figuring out how to fix all sorts of things on Capitol Hill, but you can’t always just do it yourself—changing policies or spending a little money means having to work with the Committee on House Administration, under which the subcommittee is tucked, and the House’s Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations, who have got the purse strings. So you’re on the Committee on House Administration, and you’re on Appropriations, but you’re not on the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee.
How does this interfacing work between the subcommittee and the two committees to get things over the line?
Stephanie Bice:
Sometimes it’s challenging, frankly, because in the House you sort of have two areas of expertise, if you will. You have appropriators, who are the folks who actually appropriate the dollars to do the initiatives. And you have what we call authorizers, those are the individuals who will pass legislation that gives you the ability to spend the money to be able to do the project. And so sometimes there’s a little bit of a push and pull in that process to be able to make sure that the initiative that I’m trying to spearhead—is that a good use of dollars? Should we be researching that? We are fortunate that two Congresses ago, we created the Modernization Initiative Account. And there’s been a couple of million dollars or more put into that account to allow us to do some of the things that we’ve already done. And it’s been incredibly effective.
It’s a little bit slower than I would like, but Congress is a slow body. This institution was not made to go fast necessarily. And so I’m doing my due diligence to make sure that I am vetting every project, so that when we submit this to Appropriations for review, there are no questions or concerns, they can sign off, and we can get going on these projects.
I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done. Some of it is behind the scenes, and people don’t notice it, but some of it’s actually very forward-facing, particularly for our visitors to the Capitol. And disability access has been one of those. I had no idea when I took over this role that there was no permanent disability drop-off and pickup point on this campus for the House. And so one of the first tasks that I took on was to try to make sure we could secure the funding for it—whatever that funding looked like—and then to be able to identify with the Sergeants at Arms, Capitol Police, and others, where we could actually install that location.
I’m happy to say that it’s now been months, and we’ve had that ready to roll for folks.
Kevin Kosar:
Yeah, it is rather astonishing. I mean, any grocery store you visit, any shop you go to, there’s inevitably going to be handicapped parking spots out there. There are going to be little ramps that they’ve made for a sidewalk and doorways that are wide enough for folks to get in through. And yet, you had to go up stone steps to get into the US Capitol for the longest time and most of the beautiful federal buildings. So, hearing about how this interfacing between the committee and the subcommittee and the two other committees goes on, the listener might wonder, when the subcommittee is either recommending or wants to do something, does that have to go up to the Committee on House Administration and be formally approved by a vote, or does that not have to happen?
And this account you mentioned that has a couple of million bucks in it for these sorts of initiatives, when listeners think of an account, they might think of a bank account or checking account where you can write checks to make it happen.
Can you say a little more about those two things?
Stephanie Bice:
Really, what we have focused on over the last two and a half years or so has been to try to get all of the recommendations that the Select Committee made back in the 116th and 117th Congresses, and whittle them down, to get them to a point where we’ve addressed all of them. There are a few we can’t address. They’re actually out of House Administration’s jurisdiction. But for the most part, that’s what we’ve been focusing on. Now we’re getting to the end of that, and that’s where the innovation piece comes in. Now we can start looking at some things that weren’t on the list four years ago that have the potential to really make a huge impact.
Some of them are things that members of Congress have brought to me to try to look into. Some of them are visitor experience opportunities, including the wayfinder application that I mentioned. We’ll continue to work on ways in which the House can be innovative, and it’s really kind of a collaboration of the members and the general public, frankly, to be able to come up with these things.
There’s no sort of formal appropriation approval process. It’s more just double-checking and making sure that it meets the need, that there’s no additional information that’s necessary for them to make sure that this project is funded. We try very hard when we’re looking at these projects to recognize that they can’t be multi-year projects because we may not have funds in three years. These are sort of one-time funds that we’re investing, and the disability accessibility issue is a great example of that. We knew that this needed to be done. We had the money to do it, and we were able to achieve that, but it’s those types of things that we want to address that are sort of one-time issues that that money would be appropriated to.
Kevin Kosar:
We’re running short on time, and you’re going to have to run and cast votes and do other important things. But if I may, this reforming of Congress work—do you ever get to talk to constituents about it, or are voters, for the most part, more interested in and want to hear about tariffs and all sorts of other kinds of high salient stuff that they read about online?
Stephanie Bice:
One of the downsides of the House Administration Committee is that it’s not the most glamorous committee. We’re not often covered in national news publications. We’re sort of flying under the radar. But what I would tell you is that we’re making a difference for the House. One of the most recent things that we’ve been able to tackle is integrating AI into how we handle workflow.
Every user on this campus has the Microsoft suite of tools to be able to utilize, and we were able to work with the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer to acquire 6,000 Microsoft Copilot licenses to be able to distribute to House offices, leadership offices, and committee staff to be able to try to find ways to utilize AI. Funny enough, I actually used it today to write a quick nominating speech for one of my colleagues.
And so it’s finding those little ways that we can improve efficiencies, functionality, and output for Congress that I think are really exciting.
Kevin Kosar:
That sounds like something that voters would very much be in favor of, so here’s to hoping more of them hear about this.
We are out of time. You have important work to do. So let me thank you, Representative Stephanie Bice, chairperson of the House Subcommittee of Modernization and Innovation, for being with us again and for helping us learn more about your ongoing efforts to modernize Congress.
Stephanie Bice:
Thank you, Kevin, for having me, and thank you for your interest in this important work that oftentimes goes unseen. We appreciate your championing and highlighting of the important work that we’re doing.
Kevin Kosar:
Thank you for listening to Understanding Congress, a podcast of the American Enterprise Institute. This program was produced by Jaehun Lee and hosted by Kevin Kosar. You can subscribe to Understanding Congress via Stitcher, iTunes, Google Podcasts, and TuneIn. We hope you will share this podcast with others and tell us what you think about it by posting your thoughts and questions on X.com and tagging @AEI. Once again, thank you for listening, and have a great day.
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