Government spending package includes money for House modernization efforts

Tucked within one of the full-year appropriation bills attached to the recently passed continuing resolution that ended the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history is new modernization funding for Congress. 

The Modernization Initiatives Account — established in 2020 to improve the operations of the House of Representatives — received $4 million in appropriations. 

This money could be helpful in funding ongoing modernization projects in Congress and implementing recommendations made by the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which ended in 2023 but lives on through a subcommittee on modernization within the House Administration Committee. 

“From providing closed captioning service in committees and the House gallery, to developing a first-of-its-kind legislative staff directory, to building a comprehensive constituent casework tracker, the MIA plays a critical role in bringing the best modernization ideas to life,” Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., chair of the modernization subcommittee, said in a statement. 

The $4 million is less than the $10 million requested for the account, but still doubles what the modernization fund received in fiscal year 2025.

One ongoing House modernization effort is the creation of an anonymized dashboard of constituent casework data — something that could help uncover systemic issues within agencies by showing what constituents are complaining about to lawmakers. 

It appears as though the upper chamber may go in a similar direction, too, according to the Senate report accompanying the funding law. The document asks the Senate Sergeant at Arms to provide the Appropriations Committee with recommendations on how it could support casework operations through initiatives such as tracking aggregate casework data, developing caseworker toolkits and more. 

That report also encourages the Sergeant at Arms, which provides tech support to the upper chamber, to partner with the House to develop modernization tools together. 

In the House, the Appropriations Committee notes that it’s considering the feasibility of an expanded contact list of congressional liaisons at executive branch and independent agencies, which it asked the Congressional Research Service to report on last year. 

CRS maintains a list of contacts for casework at agencies, but the Modernization panel previously recommended that CRS update that list with more regional contact information for federal entities. 

The House report also zeroes in on artificial intelligence, asking the House Chief Administrative Officer to send quarterly updates to the committees on Appropriations and House Administration on the progress of promoting AI. 

Danielle Stewart, advisor for congressional initiatives at the POPVOX Foundation — a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on modernizing Congress — says that the inclusion of these modernization efforts could help Congress keep up with changing technology.

POPVOX previously shared recommendations with House and Senate Appropriations committees for Congress to give staff AI training courses, explore remote voting technologies and provide even more support for congressional casework.

“This is an exciting and positive step towards innovating and modernizing the institution,” Stewart said in a statement.