Congress Struggles to 'Get' the Net

WASHINGTON--Congress is truly caught in the tangle of the World Wide Web. Most members hasten to appear digitally savvy and informed about tech issues. But some resort to shutting down e-mail boxes when they overflow.

It's been nearly ten years since seven members of Congress agreed to participate in a pilot e-mail project, and about eight years since the first congressional Web site went online. Today, all U.S. senators can be reached by e-mail--either via a public e-mail address or a form on a Web site. All but 28 of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives also have e-mail, according to Pam Fielding, principal at E-advocates, a cyber-advocacy organization. All 100 senators have Web sites and only four legislators on the House side do not.

But as legislators cautiously make use of e-mail and Web sites part of their day-to-day routine, they worry about the volume of e-mail to Congress, how to process it, and how to recruit staff skilled in this new method of communication. At the same time, elected representatives sent to Washington know they can't ignore the medium.

"Congress as we know it and the Internet is a marriage made in hell," says Stephen Frantzich, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. "Divorce is probably not possible."

Fielding and Frantzich spoke recently at a panel discussion on the impact of the Internet on Congress sponsored by American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. Panel participants said citizens who want to use the Internet to communicate with Congress are becoming frustrated because they perceive the elected officials as unresponsive online. But members are frustrated at people who insist on sending their message to every member of Congress, and who don't understand how Congress works.

E-Mail: It's Just Too Easy

Either way, the ease and relative low cost of e-mail have made it a very popular way to write to Congress. The House of Representatives gets about 1 million e-mail messages monthly. The Web sites of House members receive about 1.5 million hits each month, according to the manager of the House's e-mail servers.

A report by the Congressional Management Foundation finds the volume even higher. For example, in December during the presidential election ballot recount, members of the House received 7 million e-mail messages, according to the report.

Some members of Congress have started to shut down their public e-mail accounts because of this onslaught. That leaves Web-based e-mail forms the only electronic option for communicating with officials, Fielding says. Because this usually requires the sender to enter a zip code, it filters e-mail from non-constituents. It's not a favorite method of organizations like Fielding's.

Screening e-mail is an unfortunate trend, because often the correspondents don't expect a response, but simply want their opinions heard, Fielding says. She contends they shouldn't have to fill out a form on a Web site to voice their concerns, especially if they're writing to congressional leadership, which has a major role in passing legislation.

Underusing Technology

The effectiveness of e-mail messages sent to Congress is a whole other question, and the critics suggest Web sites aren't used to their full potential either.

In floor speeches, only rarely do members of Congress mention reading their e-mail, Frantzich notes. Only about a dozen House members offer electronic newsletters, points out Donald Wolfensberger, of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. And congressional sites are often out of date. Sometimes surfing constituents can't even find how their representatives voted on key legislation, Wolfensberger says.

Many officials still take a "cold sweat letter" more seriously because they take more effort to compose and send than an e-mail message, Frantzich notes.

And Congress clearly doesn't work at Net speed, he adds. Internet activists tend to want immediate reactions, but members can't always respond rapidly.

Congress also makes the mistake of considering the Internet a broadcast medium, which is not how people use it, he says.

Internet users are "nomadic information gatherers," Frantzich says. "If Congress thinks that the Internet is a big bulletin board that they are going to use to get their message through to people directly, they missed it."

He also calls it a "mixed media" means of communication, encompassing interaction and immediate and easy access to archives. Congress remains "woefully prepared" to make use of mixed media, he notes.