Comments on: Can U Read This? http://www.drdigipol.com/2006/09/18/can-u-read-this/ Caring for Politics in the Digital Age Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:05:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1.2 by: sgorden http://www.drdigipol.com/2006/09/18/can-u-read-this/#comment-440 Fri, 06 Oct 2006 16:01:27 +0000 http://www.drdigipol.com/2006/09/18/can-u-read-this/#comment-440 Thanks, Alan, for posting on the recent research that was overseen by Dr. Dennis Johnson and produced in conjunction with Capitol Advantage. I appreciate your support for our methodology. I would like to add an important point: some of the practices by the vendors themselves have contributed to some congressional offices deciding to throw up additional requirements on their Web sites. When an office requires a phone number, there are legitimate reasons to ask for that information. Those reasons might include a staffer wanting to be able to contact the constituent directly and/or trying to determine if the message sender resides in the congressional district. Likewise, Capitol Advantage's system supports that request. We don't provide false information. But that is standard practice for a number of the vendors in this space. And you can see why congressional staff starts to question the legitimacy of email communications that they receive if the information they receive isn't accurate. I'm not saying that the onus rests entirely on the vendor coalition, but we do bear some responsibility. A good starting point in our negotiations with Congress would be agreeing -- as an industry -- that we will not provide false information. Communicating with Congress should be a two-way street. I think one of the points where we perhaps disagree is WHY Congress is adopting these new requirements. Your blog entry implies that Congress is doing this to block constituent communications. In fact, according to the Congressional Management Foundation, the real reason offices are doing this is to help them with the administrative burden of answering this new inflow of e-mail. Further, we have always supported the notion of additional funding for staff to deal with the increase in constituent communications. And we think it would be great if the House and Senate would adopt uniform standards for online communications. But Congress rarely works in concert and funding is getting tighter with increased budget limits. So Capitol Advantage plays with the hand we are dealt. Our research shows that we are doing the best job of providing the services that our customers pay for -- delivering legitimate email communications to the most congressional offices. And that will continue to be our emphasis. Because advocacy should never be an afterthought. Sincerely, Bob Hansan President, Capitol Advantage Thanks, Alan, for posting on the recent research that was overseen by Dr. Dennis Johnson and produced in conjunction with Capitol Advantage. I appreciate your support for our methodology.

I would like to add an important point: some of the practices by the vendors themselves have contributed to some congressional offices deciding to throw up additional requirements on their Web sites. When an office requires a phone number, there are legitimate reasons to ask for that information. Those reasons might include a staffer wanting to be able to contact the constituent directly and/or trying to determine if the message sender resides in the congressional district. Likewise, Capitol Advantage’s system supports that request. We don’t provide false information. But that is standard practice for a number of the vendors in this space.

And you can see why congressional staff starts to question the legitimacy of email communications that they receive if the information they receive isn’t accurate. I’m not saying that the onus rests entirely on the vendor coalition, but we do bear some responsibility. A good starting point in our negotiations with Congress would be agreeing — as an industry — that we will not provide false information. Communicating with Congress should be a two-way street. I think one of the points where we perhaps disagree is WHY Congress is adopting these new requirements. Your blog entry implies that Congress is doing this to block constituent communications. In fact, according to the Congressional Management Foundation, the real reason offices are doing this is to help them with the administrative burden of answering this new inflow of e-mail.

Further, we have always supported the notion of additional funding for staff to deal with the increase in constituent communications. And we think it would be great if the House and Senate would adopt uniform standards for online communications. But Congress rarely works in concert and funding is getting tighter with increased budget limits. So Capitol Advantage plays with the hand we are dealt. Our research shows that we are doing the best job of providing the services that our customers pay for — delivering legitimate email communications to the most congressional offices. And that will continue to be our emphasis. Because advocacy should never be an afterthought.

Sincerely,

Bob Hansan
President, Capitol Advantage

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