Constituent Voice: A Key Tool for More Effective Administration of Government Programs
This report examines how systematically gathering and acting on feedback from program users can improve government social services.
The paper draws from interviews with 260 beneficiaries of Medicaid, SNAP, and WIC programs, as well as 31 agency staff, to highlight how engaging those who directly use social services can surface hidden barriers and drive meaningful improvements.
It documents persistent administrative burdens and illustrates how current feedback systems often rely too much on constituents initiating contact and provide little clarity on whether their input leads to actual change. Finally, it proposes four guiding principles—removing the burden on users to provide feedback, creating multiple channels for input, ensuring feedback influences decisions, and communicating how it’s used—to build more responsive, trust‑enhancing public programs.
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