Lorelei Kelly
I often describe democratic infrastructure as a peace and security issue. That perspective comes directly from my own experience.
In 1989 I was living in West Berlin researching nuclear arms control at the twilight of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a defense posture that placed the world at existential risk. I became involved in democratic movements across Eastern Europe—from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia to Hungary and East Germany—and saw firsthand how freedom and civil rights depend on the norms and laws produced by democratic institutions.
A decade later, I started my work in Congress on arms control and weapons of mass destruction policy, but quickly saw how the definition of “security” had expanded. Congressional offices were confronting pandemics, climate change, terrorism, cyber threats, and financial corruption alongside traditional national security concerns. I was working in Congress on September 11, 2001, and that catastrophe exposed how poorly our institutions had adapted. We had moved from a world where strong states were the primary threat to one where weak states, networked actors, and proliferating knowledge posed new dangers. Our institutions struggled to absorb, much less act on that complexity.
That experience led me to a systems-level insight: if we want the most powerful legislature in the world to understand complex threats and produce peaceful outcomes, we have to change the information architecture of the entire system.
Congress sits at the center of Article I in our Constitution because the country was founded on the idea that civic voice should shape government. The First Branch of government owns much of the credible data of democracy. Federal Depository Libraries are part of the First Branch, for example, and can integrate with Congress as public serving information assets. Congress’ duties in the First Amendment are Assembly and Petition, constitutional rights that are ripe for updating with deliberative technology.
Yet Congress still operates using outdated information systems. It’s expert support agencies only left the free version of Zoom last year. With 541 offices communicating simultaneously, the institution functions as a massive information intermediary between communities and national power—but without modern infrastructure to manage that flow. In centuries past, the petition process dominated the knowledge sharing workflow of Congress–but was outsourced to federal agencies after WW2. Congress lost its street level sensemaking and redress function. Essentially, Congress exchanged democracy for efficiency and has never fully recovered civic voice in its workflow.
This gap has allowed well-resourced actors to dominate the information environment. Decisions like Citizens United amplified the role of money in shaping political communication, while Congress still organizes civic input as if it were 1980. The Loper-Bright (Chevron) decision in 2024 places an urgent knowledge mandate on Congress because now the institution can no longer rely on expert agencies to clarify ambiguous law. Higher Ed should take advantage of geographic locations and organize a data map for the state congressional delegation. This map should match their committee assignments and policy passions with home state expertise. The Legislative Branch Innovation Hub can help.
Authentic civic voice inside democratic institutions is now the frontier of representative democracy. If our democratic system is to produce stable and peaceful outcomes, we must rebuild the channels that connect communities to governing institutions.
Higher Ed can play a crucial role.
Higher education institutions are hubs of research, community engagement, and public problem-solving. They can help Congress experiment with new deliberative technologies that gather structured civic input. One example is Civil Society Field Hearings, a model that adapts congressional hearing formats to community listening with local public witnesses, producing documented testimony that policymakers can use. One possibility is to develop a participatory visioning model for budget requests.. Earmarks returned as member directed community grants in 2022–with strict ethics rules. Congress still lacks a standard, expansive way to solicit ideas and surface ideas from constituents. This is ripe for a participatory budgeting prototype..
Universities can also help modernize Congress’s information infrastructure through public data projects, policy repositories (a place to maintain labelled public witness testimony!) and public-interest AI that helps policymakers navigate complex issues. A timely idea: Communities should help communities prepare demands ahead of time for corporate data center proposals. Air and water issues are vital, but so is data capacity. How about a municipal cloud? A civic voice repository? Our taxes subsidize this modern infrastructure, so we must make sure that the public benefits. Higher ed can produce this reliable research.
Finally, campuses can build public service capacity through certification programs for congressional staff—particularly district-based staff outside Washington—and by recognizing democratic renewal as a meaningful form of public service within faculty professional development and tenure incentives.
Strong democratic infrastructure is the foundation for social cohesion and national resilience. For the first time in my career, I believe we have the technology, networks, and civic energy needed to redesign our system.
Campus Compact members are hubs of knowledge and community collaboration. They should be leading the way