Technological Expertise and Congress

Maya Kornberg and Martha Kinsella at the Brennan Center:

Nost public attention on Congress’s struggles to legislate has focused on partisan roadblocks — the increasingly sharp ideological divisions between the two parties and anachronistic procedural hurdles such as the Senate filibuster — that make decisive action a challenge, even during periods of unified party control.

footnote8_o0lnh008 But a related driver of congressional dysfunction is lawmakers’ shrinking access to the high-quality research and data and nonpartisan expertise needed for them to comprehend complex technical issues. In a 2016 survey, 81 percent of senior congressional staffers said that access to high-quality, nonpartisan policy expertise was “very important,” but only 24 percent were “very satisfied” with the resources available.footnote9_ydajgm09

Congress has many in-house subject matter experts. Each member has personal staff, and each committee has staff from each party. Legislators are also assisted by a number of support agencies, including the Library of Congress and the Congressional Research Service (CRS) housed therein, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional Budget Office, and the Government Publishing Office. Yet staff levels in Congress and at its support agencies have atrophied substantially over the past several decades, primarily as a result of cuts Congress has made to its own budget.footnote10_i9mgmtn10

Insufficient access to and absorption of high-quality, nonpartisan science and technology resources have many adverse consequences, including the allocation of billions of dollars in funding for technologies that do not work. These deficiencies also contribute to partisan gridlock because lawmakers increasingly rely on one-sided information from external sources — including those supported, directly and indirectly, by major political donors — making it harder to find common ground about basic facts and metrics for policy solutions.footnote11_4180msp11

Whether dealing with climate change, emerging AI technology, or myriad other complex issues, Congress has a need for science and technology support that continues to grow.footnote12_nbhe49x12 And while lawmakers have often issued broad statutory directives that defer to the expertise of executive branch agencies to fill in the gaps, the Supreme Court has put limits on the policymaking authority of those agencies.footnote13_3u2oaq913 Congress itself will need to legislate with more frequency and greater detail in response to complex problems. It does not have the support it needs to fulfill this responsibility.

California Update: Losing Population, Flunking Computer Science

Erin Davis at Axios:

New data from the U.S. Census shows that around 820,000 people moved out of California and 550,000 out of New York in 2022. They join more than 8 million Americans who moved states in 2022.

Why it matters: The rising cost of living is pushing people out of expensive coastal areas, and the trend doesn't look likely to change in coming years: four in ten Californians and and three in ten New Yorkers say they're considering moving out of state.

• Many of those moving are headed to Florida or Texas, the states with the largest influxes in 2022.
• But Texans worried about the "California-ing" of their state may not need to worry: Democrats are much more likely to move to blue states, while Republicans move to red states.

Carolyn Jones at CalMatters:

Five years ago, California embarked on an ambitious plan to bring computer science to all K-12 students, bolstering the state economy and opening doors to promising careers — especially for low-income students and students of color.

But a lack of qualified teachers has stalled these efforts, and left California — a global hub for the technological industry — ranked near the bottom of states nationally in the percentage of high schools offering computer science classes.

“I truly believe that California’s future is dependent on preparing students for the tech-driven global economy. You see where the world is going, and it’s urgent that we make this happen,” said Allison Scott, chief executive officer of the Kapor Foundation, an Oakland-based organization that advocates for equity in the technology sector.

Scott was among those at a conference in Oakland this week aimed at expanding computer science education nationally. While some states — such as Arkansas, Maryland and South Carolina — are well on their way to offering computer science to all students, California lags far behind. According to a 2022 report by Code.org, only 40% of California high schools offer computer science classes, well below the national average of 53%.

California’s low-income students, rural students and students of color were significantly less likely to have access to computer science classes, putting them at a disadvantage in the job market, according to a 2021 report by the Kapor Center and Computer Science for California.

 

Shady Fundraising

Many posts have discussed campaign finance.

David A. Fahrenthold and Tiff Fehr at NYT:

A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits.

...

In theory, it is a political nonprofit called a 527, after a section of the tax code, that can raise unlimited donations to help or oppose candidates, promote issues or encourage voting.

In reality, it is part of a group of five linked nonprofits that have exploited thousands of donors in ways that have been hidden until now by a blizzard of filings, lax oversight and a blind spot in the campaign finance system.

Since 2014, the five groups have pulled in $89 million from small-dollar donors who were pitched on building political support for police officers, veterans and firefighters.

But just 1 percent of the money they raised was used to help candidates via donations, ads or targeted get-out-the-vote messages, according to an analysis by The Times of the groups’ public filings.

...

The campaign-finance system is built to police who puts money into politics, legal experts say. These groups embodied a flaw: The system is poorly prepared to stop those who raise money and channel it somewhere other than candidates and causes.

By minimizing their aid to candidates, the consultants who helped set up the five nonprofits avoided scrutiny from the Federal Election Commission and most state watchdogs, and put their groups under the jurisdiction of a distracted and underfunded regulator, the Internal Revenue Service. As a result, their spending records were posted not on the F.E.C.’s easily searchable site, but on a byzantine I.R.S. page written in bureaucratic jargon. 

...

“Constructing an elaborate self-licking ice cream cone, or fund-raising cycle that feeds itself, that’s not an exempt purpose,” said Matthew Sanderson, a lawyer at the firm Caplin & Drysdale who has advised Republican campaigns, using the I.R.S.’s term for an allowable use of the groups’ money. “The fund-raising has to be for something.”

...

The organizations’ calls were recorded by Nomorobo, a company that collects robocalls so it can help customers block them. The company’s founder, Aaron Foss, said it had recorded tens of thousands of calls from just these four groups — putting them among the most prolific and longest-running robocallers his network has ever tracked.

The calls captured by Nomorobo were made using a powerful new technology, a “soundboard,” according to a spokesman for the groups’ largest vendor for fund-raising calls, New Jersey-based Residential Programs, Inc.

A soundboard is a computer program, preloaded with snippets of recorded dialogue, down to uh-huhs, thank-yous and mother-in-law jokes. By clicking buttons, an operator anywhere in the world can “speak” to donors in colloquial English without saying a word.

“One, it keeps everybody on script. Two, you don’t hear the foreign accent. And three, you don’t hear the call center noise,” Mr. Foss said.

“If you say, ‘Are you a robot?’,” Mr. Foss said, “there’s a button that says, ‘No.’”

Elon Musk and the War Effort in Ukraine

 Elon Musk has many critics, but he is helping Ukraine's fight for freedom.

Rachel Lerman and Cat Zakrzewski at WP:

Elon Musk recently challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a one-handed fistfight for the future of Ukraine. But the entrepreneur’s real defense of the besieged country is his effort to keep Ukrainians online with shipments of Starlink satellite Internet service.

Starlink is a unit of Musk’s space company, SpaceX. The service uses terminals that resemble TV dishes equipped with antennas and are usually mounted on roofs to access the Internet via satellite in rural or disconnected areas.

When war broke out in Ukraine, the country faced threats of Russian cyberattacks and shelling that had the potential to take down the Internet, making it necessary to develop a backup plan. So the country’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, tweeted a direct plea to Musk urging him to send help. Musk replied just hours later: “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.”

BUT NOTE AN IMPORTANT UPDATE:

Cristiano Lima at WP:

After Russia launched its invasion, Ukrainian officials pleaded for Elon Musk’s SpaceX to dispatch their Starlink terminals to the region to boost Internet access. “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” Musk replied to broad online fanfare.


Since then, the company has cast the actions in part as a charitable gesture. “I’m proud that we were able to provide the terminals to folks in Ukraine,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said at a public event last month, later telling CNBC, “I don’t think the U.S. has given us any money to give terminals

But according to documents obtained by The Technology 202, the U.S. federal government is in fact paying millions of dollars for a significant portion of the equipment and for the transportation costs to get it to Ukraine. to the Ukraine.”

AI and Astroturf

Henry Farrell and Bruce Schneier

This month, the New York state attorney general issued a report on a scheme by “U.S. Companies and Partisans [to] Hack Democracy.” This wasn’t another attempt by Republicans to make it harder for Black people and urban residents to vote. It was a concerted attack on another core element of U.S. democracy — the ability of citizens to express their voice to their political representatives. And it was carried out by generating millions of fake comments and fake emails purporting to come from real citizens.

This attack was detected because it was relatively crude. But artificial intelligence technologies are making it possible to generate genuine-seeming comments at scale, drowning out the voices of real citizens in a tidal wave of fake ones.

...

The big telecommunications companies paid millions of dollars to specialist “AstroTurf” companies to generate public comments. These companies then stole people’s names and email addresses from old files and from hacked data dumps and attached them to 8.5 million public comments and half a million letters to members of Congress. All of them said that they supported the corporations’ position on something called “net neutrality,” the idea that telecommunications companies must treat all Internet content equally and not prioritize any company or service. Three AstroTurf companies — Fluent, Opt-Intelligence and React2Media — agreed to pay nearly $4 million in fines.

The fakes were crude. Many of them were identical, while others were patchworks of simple textual variations: substituting “Federal Communications Commission” and “FCC” for each other, for example.

Next time, though, we won’t be so lucky. New technologies are about to make it far easier to generate enormous numbers of convincing personalized comments and letters, each with its own word choices, expressive style and pithy examples. The people who create fake grass-roots organizations have always been enthusiastic early adopters of technology, weaponizing letters, faxes, emails and Web comments to manufacture the appearance of public support or public outrage.

Technology and Inequality

 Thomas Edsall at NYT:

Technological advancement has been one of the key factors in the growth of inequality based on levels of educational attainment, as the accompanying graphic shows:

 

The change in weekly earnings among working age adults since 1963. Those with more education are climbing ever higher, while those with less education — especially men — are falling further behind.

[Daron] Acemoglu warns:

If artificial intelligence technology continues to develop along its current path, it is likely to create social upheaval for at least two reasons. For one, A.I. will affect the future of jobs. Our current trajectory automates work to an excessive degree while refusing to invest in human productivity; further advances will displace workers and fail to create new opportunities. For another, A.I. may undermine democracy and individual freedoms.

Post-Pandemic Jobs Bust

Erica Pandey at Axios:

By the numbers: The pandemic's disruption of work will push around 17 million U.S. workers to find new occupations by 2030, according to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report.

• "Even before the pandemic, 70% of employers reported having trouble filling roles because of a skills gap in the labor force, per Bloomberg.
• After the pandemic, high-skilled jobs, like web developers and epidemiologists, are expected to boom. And low-skilled ones, like restaurant hosts, bartenders and ticket agents are projected to bust.

"We knew artificial intelligence was going to devastate jobs, but, frankly, I thought that was five or seven years away," says Plinio Ayala, CEO of the job training company Per Scholas.

• "The pandemic accelerated that. The number of jobs that existed before the pandemic will not be the same number after, and most of those jobs were occupied by people of color and women."
• "I’m concerned about a real uneven recovery.

Most Secure Election in History

  From the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA):

The members of Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee... released the following statement:

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result. 

“When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.

“Other security measures like pre-election testing, state certification of voting equipment, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) certification of voting equipment help to build additional confidence in the voting systems used in 2020.

“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”

Race and Online Deliberation

Ken Broda-Bahm at JD Supra;

As the coronavirus pandemic drags on and intensifies, courts around the country are moving toward reopening in fits and starts, with distancing, temperature checks, masks, and hand sanitizer. Some courts are also exploring distanced alternatives, including in some cases trial by Zoom, or by other web-conferencing tools that allow jurors to stay home. Including jury deliberations is “the final yard” in this transition, with some courts using the technology only for jury selection, while others are exploring deliberations as part of demonstrations or actual online trials.
...

If courts continue to move in this direction, what differences can we expect in deliberations? Will the medium of communication — in person or online — lead to differences in who participates? Discussions of online jury representativeness have focused on access to technology and to internet connections, and how they can be addressed (for example, by providing technology access in private rooms of courthouses or libraries). But what if the medium itself also causes differences in access? A large scale research project comparing in-person to online deliberations (Showers, Tindall, & Davies, 2015) was conducted five years ago, but now has new relevance. A team of Stanford researchers looked for demographic differences in comparing quality of participation across the deliberation styles, and while they found no significant differences based on gender, age or education, they did see a difference based on race. Online deliberation led to reduced black participation and increased white participation.

Showers, E., Tindall, N., & Davies, T. (2015, August). Equality of participation online versus face to face: condensed analysis of the community forum deliberative methods demonstration. In International Conference on Electronic Participation (pp. 53-67). Springer, Cham.

Journalists and Police Violence

Laura Hazard Owen at Nieman Lab:

As Black Lives Matter protests spread across the country one week after a white police officer allegedly murdered a black man, George Floyd, it’s becoming clear that attacks by police on journalists are becoming a widespread pattern, not one-off incidents. While violence against press-credentialed reporters covering the protests may still be dwarfed by violence against the American citizens who are protesting, incidents are piling up — and are getting more attention in part because the journalists being attacked include those from large mainstream news organizations.

A number of efforts are underway to try to track the attacks on journalists, which are often first documented on Twitter. Bellingcat senior investigator Nick Waters had documented 138 incidents by 12:20 PM ET on Wednesday afternoon (#101 occurred outside the White House, when federal law enforcement attacked a group of protestors and journalists with tear gas, allowing the president a clear path to walk to a photo opportunity in which he held a Bible in front of St. John’s Church.) ...

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker counts 233 total press freedom violations, which it categorizes like this. Most of the documented violations have taken place in Minneapolis.

Scott Rosenberg at Axios:

In the 1960s, television news footage brought scenes of police turning dogs and water cannons on peaceful civil rights protesters in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama into viewers' living rooms.

• The TV coverage was moving in both senses of the word.

In 1991, a camcorder tape shot by a Los Angeles plumber named George Holliday captured images of cops brutally beating Rodney King.

• In the pre-internet era, it was only after the King tape was broadcast on TV that Americans could see it for themselves.

Over the past decade, smartphones have enabled witnesses and protesters to capture and distribute photos and videos of injustice quickly — sometimes, as it's happening.

• This power helped catalyze the Black Lives Matter movement beginning in 2013 and has played a growing role in broader public awareness of police brutality.

Between the lines: For a brief moment mid-decade, some hoped that the combination of a public well-supplied with video recording devices and requirements that police wear bodycams would introduce a new level of accountability to law enforcement.

• But that hasn't seemed to happen, and the list of incidents just grows.
• Awareness of the problem increases, but not accountability for police actions.

Most Americans Live in Wireless-Only Households

From CDC's National Center for Health Statistics:

Since 2007, the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Early Release Program has regularly released preliminary estimates of the percentages of adults and children living in homes with only wireless telephones (also known as cellular telephones, cell phones, or mobile phones). These estimates are the most upto-date estimates available from the
federal government concerning the size and characteristics of this population.

In January 2019, the NHIS launched a redesigned questionnaire. Among other changes, it is now possible to estimate the percentage of adults who live in wireless-ly households and have their own wireless telephone (wireless-only adults).

Estimates in this report are based on the first six months of 2019. During this time period, 59.2% of adults and 70.5% of children lived in wireless-only households.
In comparison, a slightly smaller percentage of adults were wireless-only adults (58.4%). Four in five adults aged 25–29 (80.2%) and aged 30-34 (78.3%), and three in four adults renting their homes (75.1%), were wireless-only adults.

...
Many health surveys, political polls, and other types of research are conducted using random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone surveys. Most survey research organizations include wireless telephone numbers when conducting RDD surveys. If they did not, the exclusion of\ households with only wireless telephones (along with the small proportion of households that have no telephone service) could bias results. This bias— known as coverage bias—could exist if there are differences between persons with and without landline telephones for the substantive variables of interest.

McMaster to Zoom

A release from Zoom:

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) today announced that it has appointed Lieutenant General Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster as an independent director on Zoom’s Board of Directors, effective May 6, 2020, and hired Jonathan “Josh” Kallmer as its Head of Global Public Policy and Government Relations, effective May 26, 2020.

McMaster was the 26th assistant to the president for National Security Affairs. He served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for 34 years before retiring as a Lieutenant General in June 2018. McMaster currently serves at Stanford University as the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Susan and Bernard Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, and a lecturer at the Graduate School of Business. He is a bestselling author and historian who writes and lectures on military and diplomatic history, national security, and leadership.

...
“Zoom does significant good for our society, allowing people to connect and collaborate face-to-face from anywhere. This extraordinary capability is vital now more than ever,” said McMaster. “My goal is to help the company navigate rapid growth and assist in meeting Zoom’s commitment to becoming the world’s most secure video communications platform.”
...
“General McMaster is a welcome addition to our Board. During his decorated military career, he has built an expertise in leading through challenging situations and has demonstrated tremendous strength of character. His leadership will be invaluable as Zoom continues to enable people to connect on a global scale,” said Eric S. Yuan, CEO of Zoom. “

International Ph.D. Students in STEM

From the Congressional Research Service:

According to the National Science Foundation’s 2017 survey of STEM doctorate recipients from U.S. IHEs, 72% of foreign doctorate recipients were still in the United States 10 years after receiving their degrees. This percentage varied by country of origin; for example, STEM graduates from China (90%) and India (83%) stayed at higher rates than European students (69%). There are several avenues—both temporary and permanent—by which foreign students may remain in the United States after graduation (see “Selected Options” in the text box), but some categories have annual numerical limits (“caps”). Practical training programs that give U.S. work authorization to students to be employed in their field while enrolled in school or after graduation do not have caps and have seen a steady increase (see Figure 4). These programs also allow foreign students to remain in the United States legally while they pursue longer-term options, such as H-1B or LPR status

Public Sentiment and Coronavirus

From Pew:

About twice as many Americans say their greater concern is that state governments will lift restrictions on public activity too quickly (66%) as say it will not happen quickly enough (32%).

... 

Democrats are largely united in their concerns over state governments easing bans on public activity; 81% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say their greater concern is that governments will lift these restrictions too quickly. Yet Republicans and Republican leaners are evenly divided. About half (51%) say their bigger concern is that state governments will act too quickly while slightly fewer (46%) worry more that restrictions on public movement will not be lifted quickly enough.

Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

Americans' evaluations of the economy have abruptly turned negative amid the coronavirus pandemic. Gallup's Economic Confidence Index is now -32, down from +22 in March. The 54-point drop is the largest one-month change in Gallup's trend dating back to 1992, and it comes on the heels of last month's 19-point drop, which had been one of the largest monthly declines to date. Just two months ago, economic confidence was the highest it had been in 20 years.

Lydia Saad at Gallup:

As the country endures an unprecedented shutdown of public life to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, more Americans are worried about contracting the illness (57%) than about experiencing severe financial problems from the disruption caused by it (48%).

Katherine Schaeffer at Pew:

While a plurality of Americans (43%) say the new coronavirus most likely came about naturally, nearly three-in-ten (29%) say it most likely was created in a lab, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted from March 10 to 16, 2020, as part of the Center’s nearly yearlong Election News Pathways project. Around a quarter of adults (23%) say it is most likely that the current strain of coronavirus was developed intentionally in a lab; another 6% say it was most likely made accidentally in a lab. A quarter say they aren’t sure where the virus originated.

  Monica Anderson and Brooke Auxier at Pew:

Six-in-ten Americans say that if the government tracked people’s locations through their cellphone it would not make much of a difference in limiting the spread of the virus, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted April 7-12, 2020. Smaller shares of Americans – about four-in-ten – believe this type of monitoring would help a lot (16%) or a little (22%) in limiting the spread of COVID-19.

 Justin McCarthy at Gallup:

Americans increasingly say they feel less connected to family and friends as most of the country is under stay-at-home orders amid the coronavirus pandemic. More than a third of U.S. adults (37%) say they have felt less connected to family and friends in the past week -- an eight-point increase from the 29% Gallup found in late March.

Social Distancing

Lydia Saad at Gallup:

Americans this past weekend stepped up their already considerable efforts to engage in social distancing in response to the novel coronavirus. Seventy-two percent of U.S. adults now say they are avoiding public places like stores and restaurants, well ahead of the 54% reporting this last week. Nearly as many (68%) are forgoing small gatherings of friends and family, up from 46%.

These shifts are notable because they suggest that the unprecedented efforts by federal, state, local and private-sector leaders to get the public's attention -- a combination of formal closures of transportation, schools, and workplaces, as well as public appeals for voluntary efforts -- are working.

Even larger percentages of Americans are avoiding events with large crowds (92%) and are staying away from air travel or mass transit (87%). Most Americans were already avoiding these activities last week as businesses en masse began shuttering their doors, and widespread government and corporate travel bans took hold.

Geoffrey Fowler at WP:

If you have a smartphone, you’re probably contributing to a massive coronavirus surveillance system.

And it’s revealing where Americans have — and haven’t — been practicing social distancing.

On Tuesday, a company called Unacast that collects and analyzes phone GPS location data launched a “Social Distancing Scoreboard” that grades, county by county, which residents are changing behavior at the urging of health officials. It uses the reduction in the total distance we travel as a rough index for whether we’re staying put at home.

Comparing the nation’s mass movements from March 20 to an average Friday, Washington, D.C., gets an A, while Wyoming as a whole earns an F.

Of course, it is not completely fair to compare a big, densely-populated city to a very rural state where one must often drive many miles just to get gas or groceries.

Remote Voting in the House

At LegBranch.org, Joshua Huder acknowledges that the House might have to use remote voting in emergencies, but argues that it should not become routine.

Most proposals would limit remote voting to “noncontroversial” measures–basically, bills considered under “suspension of the rules,” a process requiring two-thirds passage (290 votes in the House). Many bills are noncontroversial. Congress renames a lot of post offices and regulates federal lands, among other bills of relatively minor significance. But even “noncontroversial” legislation can be a big deal. The “Doc-Fix,” which affected billions of dollars of healthcare spending, frequently passed under suspension of the rules. The second coronavirus assistance package, set to pass this week, is currently lined up on the suspension calendar. Suspension bills have retooled agencies’ prosecutorial authority, empowered inspectors general, and significantly changed how programs operate. Yes, the suspension calendar is primarily a vehicle for less controversial legislation, but not all non-controversial legislation is insignificant legislation.

Even worse, remote voting distances members from the policymaking process. Among the worst features of the current process is the gulf between rank-and-file members and the substance of legislating. Members are shut out of the floor amendment process. Leaders structure major agreements and present them take-it-or-leave-it packages. Omnibus legislation forces members to accept sometimes dozens of policy riders that would otherwise receive greater vetting if voted upon individually. Agencies receive less routine oversight and formal direction because regular but important reauthorizations fail to garner enough political or media attention. Agency spending bills escape scrutiny by passing en bloc rather than separately. If we want more individual member influence, putting distance between members and the process does the opposite. It gives leaders even more opportunity to legislate in secret, manipulate the process, and otherwise keep rank and file in the dark. For rank-and-file members to hold their congressional leaders accountable – whether committee chairs or party leaders – they need to, at a minimum, be physically present. “Remoting it in” has consequences.

A Victory for Modernizing Congress

From the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress:

Nine out of 10 House members don't agree on much, but they do agree it's past time to make an array of modernizing changes to the place they work.

So the vote was 395-13 on Tuesday to implement 29 unanimous recommendations from a special bipartisan committee, with six members from each party, who worked on the package for almost a year.

Their work is designed to bring the technology, purchasing, travel, and human resources practices into the 21st century, at least on half of Capitol Hill. The ultimate goal is to help strengthen legislative branch muscles that have long been atrophying, for an array of political reasons, in hopes that Congress can perform a bit better in balance-of-powers matchups that presidents of both parties have been routinely winning for decades.

"Trying to solve 21st century problems with 20th century technologies is a disservice to the American people who rightfully expect timely action from their representatives," Derek Kilmer of Washington, the committee's Democratic chairman, said during the brief debate.

There is broad agreement that an essential step in making democracy work better is making Congress more functional, and an essential part of that is returning much more cross-partisan collegiality to the place.

To that end, the House voted to expand the orientation for new members, starting with the class elected in November, to introduce courses where Republicans and Democrats would study together the House's rules, parliamentary procedures and best practices for decorum and mutual respect.

Other parts of the package developed by the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress (as the panel is formally known) are designed to create more times and places on Capitol Hill where members from both sides can congregate. Such bipartisan socializing has almost disappeared in recent years, in part because of the pressure to spend so much time fundraising, even as there's a universal recognition that strong personal relationships are essential to policymaking collaboration.

Improving staff retention and increasing diversity, by making the House a better workplace, is also addressed in the package. While personnel policies are currently set by each of the 435 members, the House voted to create a human resources hub for all of them to use. And an Office of Diversity and Inclusion was formed to help committees and members recruit, hire, train, develop, advance, promote and retain more people who are not white men.

Hours after the vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi named Kemba Hendrix, who runs a staff diversity program for the Democrats, to take on the job for the whole House.

The House vote took only a small step, however, toward addressing another major impediment to making Congress work better. The measure will pay for an outside firm to recommend whether the pay scale for aides should be increased along with the size of personal office and committee staffs. Salaries have not kept up with inflation in the past two decades, and staff rosters have shrunk as Congress has decided to apply more fiscal constraints to itself than to most federal agencies.

Low experience levels and high turnover, with the best talent heading to corporate or lobbying jobs, has been a consequence.

The House voted to extend the life of the committee through this year, and its members are mulling an array of additional ideas for improving the place's workplace culture and legislative clout.

Election Security and Human Error

At R Street, Kristen Nyman and Kathryn Waldron write that human error is the top threat to election systems.  Errors include failure to recognize and avoid phishing attacks.

While problems with voting technology can bedevil any election — as was amply illustrated by the chaos surrounding this week’s Iowa Democratic caucuses — human error is a major vulnerability in any voting system. Tales of worker error in elections range from optical scanners left unplugged to distribution of ballots to the wrong precinct. One study of poll workers in California reported several such breaches of standard operating procedures, including leaving a memory card with vote totals at the polling site at the end of the day and leaving the door to a ballot box unlocked.

A majority of poll workers are older than 60, which is unsurprising given that most people under that age are too busy with work or school to take off the time. And without proper training, many older poll workers lack an adept understanding of technology and cybersecurity. This leads to an insecure voting environment.

Additional training may sound discouraging to counties that already struggle to recruit poll workers, and local governments may feel that additional time commitments will only exacerbate that problem and increase their financial burdens. This could explain why election officials in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania told NBC that they never received cybersecurity training.

Also, the U S election system is decentralized -- which is both an asset and a liability.  On the one hand, it would be impossible to mount a simultaneous national attack on such a fragmented system.  On the other hand, standards and capabilities vary widely.

Science, Engineering, America, and China

Elizabeth Redden at Inside Higher Ed:

The U.S. share of global science and technology activity has shrunk in some areas even as absolute activity has continued to grow, as China and other Asian countries have invested in science and engineering education and increased their research spending.

That’s one of the main takeaways of the "State of U.S. Science and Engineering" 2020 report, published by the National Science Board Wednesday. The report has historically been published every other year, but starting with this year's edition, the NSB is transitioning its format from a single report published every two years to a series of shorter reports issued more frequently.
...
The report found that employment in science and engineering has increased more rapidly than for the workforce overall, and now accounts for 5 percent of U.S. jobs.

Women accounted for just 29 percent of the science and engineering workforce in 2017, up from 26 percent in 2003. Underrepresented minorities made up just 13 percent of the scientific workforce in 2017, up from 9 percent in 2003 but below their share of the college-educated workforce.

Foreign-born workers account for 30 percent of all individuals employed in science and engineering-related occupations.
...
Global research and development expenditures have more than tripled since 2000, growing from $722 billion in 2000 to $2.2 trillion in 2017, fueled largely by growth in China. The U.S. and China together accounted for nearly half of all research and development spending -- 25 and 23 percent, respectively -- in 2017.

In the U.S., federal spending for research and development has increased since 2000, but the share of research and development funded by the federal government -- as opposed to businesses or other entities -- declined, from 25 percent in 2000 to 22 percent in 2017. Among higher education institutions -- which perform the largest amount of basic research, of which the federal government is the primary funder -- the share of research and development funded by federal sources declined from 57 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in 2017

Modernizing Congress

Recommendations of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress:

Making Congress More Effective, Efficient and Transparent

1. Streamline the bill-writing process to save time and reduce mistakes.
2. Finalize a new system that allows the American people to easily track how amendments change legislation and the impact of proposed legislation to current law.
3. Make it easier to know who is lobbying Congress and what they’re lobbying for.
4. One-click access to a list of agencies and programs that have expired and need Congressional attention.
5. One-click access to see how Members of Congress vote in committees.

Streamline and Reorganize House Human Resources

6. Creating a one-stop shop Human Resources HUB for Member, committee, and leadership staff.
7. Making permanent the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
8. Examining and updating the staff payroll system from monthly to semimonthly.
9. Raising the cap on the number of staff in Member offices.
10. Regularly surveying staff on improving pay and benefits.

Overhaul the Onboarding Process and Provide Continuing Education for Members

11. Allowing newly-elected Members to hire and pay one transition staff member.
12. Offering new-Member orientation in a nonpartisan way.
13. Making new-Member orientation more comprehensive.
14. Promoting civility during new-Member orientation.
15. Creating a Congressional Leadership Academy to offer training for Members.
16. Making cybersecurity training mandatory for Members.

Modernize and Revitalize House Technology

17. Reestablishing and restructuring an improved Office of Technology Assessment.
18. Improving IT services in the House by reforming House Information Resources (HIR).
19. Requiring House Information Resources (HIR) to prioritize certain technological improvements.
20. Requiring House Information Resources (HIR) to reform the approval process for outside technology vendors.
21. Requiring House Information Resources (HIR) to allow Member offices to test new technologies.
22. Creating one point of contact for technology services for each Member office.
23. Creating a customer service portal to improve technology services in the House.
24. Leveraging bulk purchasing of the House by removing technology costs out of Member offices’ budgets and moving into a centralized account.
25. Prioritizing a “rapid response” program at the Congressional Research Service for nonpartisan fact sheets on key issues.
26. Developing a constituent engagement and services best practices HUB for Members.

Make the House Accessible to all Americans

27. Improving access to congressional websites for individuals with disabilities.
28. Requiring all broadcasts of House proceedings to provide closed caption service.
29. Requiring a review of the Capitol complex to determine accessibility challenges for individuals with disabilities.