IP: U.S. Congress moves slowly into the e-mail age

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

From: Timothy Barmann <tim () ids net>


http://www.cybertalk.com/cybertalk/070796.htm


July 7, 1996


U.S. Congress moves slowly into the e-mail age


CYBERTALK
Copyright (c) 1996 by Timothy C. Barmann
Providence Journal-Bulletin


Technology has promised to make life easier, and in many ways it has.


Take sending electronic mail. With the most basic home computer, you can
whip off a message to your brother in Cleveland or to your old roommate in
Zimbabwe in seconds. There are no stamps to buy. It's almost as easy as
talking to yourself.


But that ease has created a problem for some people who get lots of mail:
Members of Congress.


It's so easy to send e-mail that the mailboxes of some legislators are
overflowing with digital "junk mail" they often view as useless.


Todd Andrews should know.


He works as a spokesman for Rep. Jack Reed, and inherited the e-mail address
of former Representative Tom Andrews of Maine.


Since January 1995, Todd Andrews has been getting Tom Andrews' electronic
mail, despite his complaints to the Senate computer center.


The messages sometimes total more than 100 a week, he said.


They're not personal messages, but mass mailings and form letters. There is
the periodic mailing from an ultra-conservative Texan who calls himself "The
Texas Conservatives News Bureau." And there is the newsletter on
middle-eastern politics "that is really not very useful at all," said
Andrews. There are the frequent messages from a man who writes about what he
thinks are important events in Europe.


Andrews said these newsletters are "of limited value to anyone except for
the person who is writing them."


They are certainly of little use to a legislator, such as Reed, whose main
concern is Rhode Island.


The problem is compounded by the fact that it's just as easy to send an
e-mail message to one legislator as it is to send it to the entire group of
legislators who are online. And many people do just that through several
free services available on the Internet.


(One such site on the World Wide Web is called the Congressional Mailbox
Server - http://www.tnet.com/congress/index.html - which was put up by a
private Arizona company.)


"It should be the ultimate in town hall representation where you get
instantaneous feedback from your constituents," said Andrews. "But
unfortunately it's not that way right now."


Neither Reed nor Rhode Island's other representative, Patrick Kennedy, has
an e-mail address yet.


Both legislators say they want feedback from Rhode Islanders, but their
offices say they fear an onslaught of e-mail from people outside their
constituency.


With e-mail, there's no easy way to tell where a message originated. Unlike
regular postal mail, there is no postmark. The only way to know is to wade
through the message to see if the writer included a return postal address.


"We just don't have the staff to answer all of them," said Andrews.


Larry Berman, a spokesman for Kennedy, cited the same problem.


"Patrick talks to his dad (Senator Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.) and we know the
level of e-mail he gets. We figure he would get a similar level," Berman
said. "If we put (an e-mail address) out for national consumption,
especially with a name like 'Kennedy,' we're going to get bombarded with
e-mail."


Reed and Patrick Kennedy are not alone. As of late June, 237 of the 435
representatives don't have public e-mail addresses, according to Chris
Casey, a Senate technology adviser who helps Democratic senators go online.


The Senate, however, is moving along at a much faster pace. Of the 100
members, 86 have e-mail addresses, said Casey. Those include Claiborne Pell
(senator_pell () pell senate gov) and John Chafee
(senator_chafee () chafee senate gov).


(Casey attributes the Senate lead to the fact that there are fewer Senators
and each has a larger constituency than Representatives.)


Casey, who authored a book called The Hill on the Net: Congress Enters the
Information Age, says there are some difficulties with e-mail, but those
shouldn't - and eventually won't - stop legislators from getting e-mail
addresses.


"E-mail is really the most critical component of Internet service a
Congressional office can make available," he said.


It gives the average citizen an easy way to participate in government and it
provides legislators with instant feedback, he said.


There are problems, but "those are the little kind of bumps in the road or
the hiccups that Congress will get used to," said Casey.


Both Pell and Chafee's offices have experienced some bumps and hiccups.


Recently, Pell's systems administrator, Kevin Wilson, had to call the
Senate's computer center to halt an endless loop of messages coming into the
Senator's mailbox.


A prankster figured out a way to make Pell's e-mail system and another
senator's continually send each other an automatic response over and over
again.


At Chafee's office, they had to deal with "a ton" of e-mail when the
Cleveland Browns moved from Ohio last year, according to press secretary
Josie Martin.


But, she said "e-mail is such a convenience for Senator Chafee's
constituents that we're willing to put up with some minor inconvenience of
some junk e-mail."


Bill Bryant, Pell's spokesman, said the onslaught of e-mail isn't nearly as
bad as they thought it would be.


"Everybody was worried about it," he said. But "we haven't had the flood we
were expecting."


Bryant said the amount of mail Pell gets varies substantially, depending on
the issues of the day. Typically, he may get a few hundred to thousands of
postal mail letters and postcards in one week. He may get 100 to 150 e-mail
messages during the same period.


Martin of Chafee's office estimated that they get 300 to 400 letters a week
and about 100 to 150 e-mail messages.


Both Pell's and Chafee's offices say they handle incoming e-mail the same
way regular mail is handled. It's spread out among all the staff to research
and answer.


Casey, the author, says its just a matter of time before all legislators
make the committment to adopting e-mail. He predicts that soon it will be as
commonplace on Capitol Hill as the telephone.


Advances in technology will overcome some of the problems members of
Congress are now having, he said.


Software will be able to scan incoming e-mail for a return postal address
and pull constituent messages to the top.


It will also be able to figure out the topic of the messages and sort them
accordingly.


Of course technology could advance to the point where a computer program
could actually write and send out the appropriate response to a constituent
without any human intervention.


Then sending e-mail to your Congressman or woman really would be like
talking to yourself.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Casey offers these tips in sending e-mail to legislators:


   * Don't blanket all of Congress with a form letter. Sending the same
     message to all legislators serves to dilute your message, rather than
     amplifying it.


   * Include a return postal address. That will let your Representative or
     Senator know you are their constituent. It will also give them the
     means to send you a response. Eventually, many will send responses via
     e-mail, but today, most only send an acknowledgement of your message by
     e-mail and send a reply to you via U.S. mail.


   * Before you write, check to see if your legislator has already posted a
     statement paper on the World Wide Web about the topic you are
     interested in.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy C. Barmann is a Journal-Bulletin staff writer. His column runs every
other Sunday on the On Line page. Send him comments via e-mail at
tim () cybertalk com or U.S. mail, c/o the Journal-Bulletin, 75 Fountain St.,
Providence, R.I. 02902.


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