Show me the service.

• Author: Weberg, Brian
• Position: Changes in legislative staff agencies - Includes related articles on legislative services in Idaho and Colorado

As legislatures change, so must staff agencies. There's a new focus on treating legislators as valued customers.

"In a very real sense, there are only two roles in organizational life: supplier and customer."

- Stephen R. Covey

It was Nov. 6, 1996, the day after the elections that brought 30 new members into the Iowa General Assembly. At the Capitol in Des Moines, staff were preparing an important mailing designed to be one of the first post-election items to arrive at the homes and on the desks of these new lawmakers.

Months of preparation, planning and production had preceded this moment. in a strategy inaugurated in 1994, freshly elected members to the Iowa General Assembly were to get an updated, 30-minute videotape about the services available to them from the four central, nonpartisan legislative staff agencies. The tone of the tape was welcoming, positive and confident. And the tape's message was clear. "We are your staff, and you can count on us."

Not far away, in Pierre, S.D., on that same brisk November day, staff at the Legislative Research Council were also preparing a mailing to new members. Just days after their first state legislative election victory, freshmen in South Dakota received The Legislative Briefing Book, a large, ring-bound notebook containing information on everything from the basics of the legislative process to staff resources to parking rules.

"We are the first on the scene with new members, "says Terry Anderson, director of the Legislative Research Council staff. "They become aware that they have a resource in us ... they come to us first. The Legislative Briefing Book is our main marketing tool."

LEGISLATORS AS CUSTOMERS

At legislatures in most states, the traditions, values, practices and products of the old, nonpartisan legislative staff agencies are being challenged by a new, more ideological, faster moving kind of legislator, by a technological revolution and by heightened public expectations of state government. Iowa and South Dakota reflect an awakening within many staff agencies brought about by rapid, unprecedented change and characterized by a new focus on service and the treatment of legislators as valued customers.

"A group of senior staff sat down and brainstormed about changes in the legislature and how we should respond, "says Diane Bolender, director of Iowa's Legislative Service Bureau. "We generated a list of new products."

One of those new products was the orientation videotape. Produced on a shoestring budget and with the help of state agency technicians, the video stars the directors of the legislature's four central, nonpartisan staff offices. They welcome legislators, describe their services and, perhaps most important, make a personal connection to those who will soon enter for the first time the often confusing, crazy world of legislative life.

Anderson and Bolender both are quick to point out that their post-election outreach efforts do not replace their legislatures' more traditional new member orientation programs. But the early outreach seems to enhance the value of those in-person orientations. "Previously, we did talking heads at orientation, but now we can do different things," says Bolender. "At orientation, new members came up to me and said 'I saw you on the video.'"

South Dakota's Anderson concurs. "About one month to six weeks after they receive the briefing book, we hold a two-day orientation program. Now we spend more time on the nuts and bolts of the legislative process and on issue briefings."

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