Grace Cooper:
Whether for security concerns or lack of access to proper technology, many offices still rely on paper. With Congressional staff and constituents facing unprecedented challenges during this time, it’s increasingly important to have the ability to perform office processes completely online. Here are three easy ways your office can easily digitize and streamline your current processes.
Privacy Release Forms
With most district office staff working from home, constituents and staffers need to be able to handle privacy release forms digitally. IQ integrates with digital privacy release form technology to allow constituents to initiate casework and sign a privacy release for federal agencies via an online web form, which can be linked on your Member’s website or sent directly to a constituent.
After a constituent signs and submits the form, the casework request and privacy release PDF are securely transmitted into IQ as an open case and your office can begin its typical casework processes. Digitizing this process gives constituents open access to constituent services and makes receiving assistance from federal agencies easier, faster, and more user-friendly.
Postal Mail
As an add-on service, offices can opt for their incoming US mail to be scanned directly into IQ where it is stored like other messages, allowing offices to receive postal mail even when staffers are not physically in the office. This also streamlines the response process, taking out the unnecessary step of opening and scanning each piece of mail by hand. Learn more in our quick reference guide:Â How to Find and Process Digital Mail.
Paper Forms
IQ users can easily create forms in IQ, customizing templates with user defined fields and your office’s own branding. The digital forms you create in IQ can be immediately embedded on your website or emailed out, and the information that your constituents submit will be pulled into IQ, automatically creating a new message or service record affiliated with an existing or new contact record for each constituent.
In order to protect constituents’ private data, entries in IQ’s web forms are not emailed but encrypted and sent directly to the IQ Connect server. IQ then checks in with the server to intake the encrypted data from your office’s web forms. This allows Congressional offices to take advantage of the convenience of web forms without having to sacrifice their constituents’ privacy. Read more in our blog post about digitizing your offices past forms with IQ.
While most Congressional staff are working remotely, this is an important time to revamp your office processes for current and future staffers. If you have any questions about the above topics or want to learn more ways that your office can digitize internal processes, contact us at house.sales@leidos.com.
