State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

So Many Tweets and Calls, So Little Time: How Governments Can Manage It All

Governing: When Chicago City Councilman James Cappleman took office in 2011, his staff almost immediately ran into a problem: constituent communication.

It wasn't an issue of inexperience. Tressa Feher, Cappleman’s chief of staff, had years of experience connecting politicians with their constituents, both in Washington, D.C., and at the Illinois state Capitol in Springfield.

The problem was volume.

About 53,000 people live in Ward 46 on the north side of Chicgao, just north of Wrigley Field. Each day, Cappleman’s office received 50 or more phone calls, along with dozens of emails, texts and messages on social media. Feher and her staff were able to manage the responses, but each activity -- combing through Facebook, monitoring Twitter, listening to voicemails, checking text messages and reading emails -- was a separate task.

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