Fresh Air

With all the national reviews, federally commissioned reports and recommendations for improvement on issues of public interest, we are still missing focus on one primary sector: the legislative process. 

There are no national reports or commissions for legislative performance improvement or process improvement. 

And some better and some worse functioning legislative processes exist within foreign borders, there remains no formal international insight on improvement work. As fate would have it, global health and medicine is an internationally connected venture. And, health and safety legislation is uniquely tied to the public’s health outcomes. 

We have the opportunity to fulfill this collective destiny. We can hold governments to formal process improvement, and we can start this work using the healthcare agenda. We can begin conversations on international insight as well.   

Delivering fresh air should start where it is needed, and it is needed most in the stagnate U.S. Congress. Delivery of fresh air, so that democracy and human health thrive, should be strategic. Plans, developed through recommendations, will be debated. However, consensus in expertise - such as political scientists, legislators themselves, local and state government associations and non-profit government accountability advocates - can be achieved. Consensus on formal recommendations can be tasked. 

Just as we do with major health topics, review of reports and extraction of recommendations for comparison should be available as an opportunity. We cannot pull from stakeholders, because there is no upfront group responsible to, nor commissioned to report on, Congressional operations and outcomes. Publicly available recommendations for legislative process improvement, and the comparison of these recommendations by nonprofit and advocacy group, is not an available opportunity to our democracy currently. 

Delivering fresh air to a stagnant entity, an entity that unwisely attaches incumbent votes as a performance outcome indicator, is critical. It is important to remind Congressional lawmakers that maintaining one position for decades doesn’t mean that the position should remain poorly run.

Fresh air should include: 

* A place to be directed to. A location, online or otherwise, where every day people can find the major reform recommendations. A location where white papers and collaborative work and other nonprofit and government-commissioned work is catalogued. 

* A review of political scientist work. 

* A review and report of legislature work on performance improvement, including state associations [1]

* A required Congressional budget for a multi-agency report on Congressional performance improvement. 

* Consideration of the oversight that Congress does not have, such as some executive branch oversight, as a component to performance and process improvement. [2]

* A measurement to the health of Congressional deliberation, if that is to remain a core function. [3]

* A requirement of public oversight to any Joint Committees [4] on reform that Congress might enact. It is not enough for process and performance improvement to be managed solely by the ones in need of shaping up.

* Comparison of current tools used to address Congressional performance improvement, such as the Legislator Effectiveness Tool [5]. Compare, determine if evidence-basis is even achievable, and initiate standardization of tools used. 

* Comparison of current tools to measure public satisfaction. [6]

* Comparison of current tools used to measure legislative processes and operations. [1]

* An outline lessons learned, disadvantages and benefits from harmonizing health legislation across countries[7,8]

* A collaborative review of world health and other public health entities to quantify, qualify and map recommendations for studies on public health outcomes [9,10,11] and legislation.

* A collaborative review of world health, law and public health entities to quantify, qualify and map recommendations for legislative process improvement, with a health focus.   

A focus on any of these elements will bring energized, fresh opportunities. However, for sustainable impact, the focus needs collaborative management. Additionally, we need thorough, vetted and peer-reviewed specialist insight, regardless of field in play. 

Let’s deliver that fresh air, together. 

References

1. https://www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislators/trust-for-representative-democracy/public-participation-and-confidence-in-the-leg541.aspx

2. https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/improving-congressional-capacity-to-address-problems-and-oversee-the-executive-branch/

3. https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/370809-3-reforms-for-repairing-congress-the-broken-branch?rl=1

4. https://time.com/4514717/congressional-reform/

5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/29/senators-used-to-excel-at-lawmaking-now-not-so-much-heres-what-needs-to-change/

6. https://www.american.edu/spa/ccps/upload/final-draft-of-thurber-s-what-s-wrong-with-congress-what-should-be-done-about-it-3.pdf 

7. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.6295

8. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9017-8_18

9. https://www.who.int/westernpacific/activities/using-laws-to-improve-health

10. https://cdc.confex.com/cdc/nic2005/techprogram/paper_7830.htm

11. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(14)70496-6/fulltext