In 2025, the Levin Center conducted a study of all 50 states to examine how legislatures ensure government programs work effectively for citizens. Factors such as legislative oversight committees, routine engagement with executive agencies, collection of casework data, digital transparency tools, and user-centered policy evaluation were of particular importance. The full report can be found here.
State Summary #
In the Tennessee General Assembly, the public can complete “witness cards” online to express their opinion on a matter before a committee or request to testify (though the form cautions that “the submission of this form is not a guarantee that you will be allowed to speak”). Gaps in certain publicly available committee information make it difficult to determine how often this process is used in service of oversight activities or the effect that it has.
Legislators and staff in Tennessee previously used a system to manage and track constituent requests to individual legislators, but it was ultimately determined a wasteful expenditure due to the system being too complex for the task, and its use was discontinued.
The Transparent Tennessee tool, a product of the Executive Branch, includes a tool to track a number of key performance indicators across state departments. Along with more traditional goals and statistics to measure state government performance (e.g., decrease the number of escapes from correctional facilities, increase the number of state-chartered credit unions participating in a continuous feedback and improvement process), the indicators include many direct measures of public experience with government (e.g., decrease the average wait time across all Driver Service Centers by one minute, increase customer satisfaction in various surveys conducted by agencies).
