The Task Force on Congressional Reform offers recommendations for reforms in six areas including staffing retention and diversity, new technologies, and congressional capacity.
A key goal of the APSA Presidential Task Force On New Partnerships was to encourage political scientists to engage with important public issues and debates, and to bring their expertise to bear in the public sphere, and through collaborations that cross traditional ideological lines. With these goals in mind, the task force developed the Research Partnerships On Critical Issues grant program. This program offers funding to collaborations between political scientists and practitioners that are aimed at 1. addressing pressing public issues and 2. disseminating their insights in accessible forms to the public and to key stakeholders.
The first project supported by RPCI funds was the Congressional Reform Task Force, chaired by political scientists Frances Lee and Eric Schickler, and co-sponsored by the Brookings Institution and R Street Institute. This task force brought academic experts on Congress together with individuals from across the think tank and advocacy community to consider recommendations for modernizing Congress. The group’s work was designed to complement that of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.
You can learn more about the Congressional Reform Task Force and their recommendations in their full report here.