Study Finds Missed Messages On Capitol Hill
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When citizens send e-mails to their congressmen through the Web sites of lobby groups, they expect those messages to zip electronically to the place they intended. Qorvis Communications LLC has bought Sparky's Garage. No, the fast-growing public relations firm isn't going into the auto repair...
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A technological weapon against unwanted &#39;&#39;spam&quot; e-mails that has been embraced by leading Internet companies doesn&#39;t work as well as its developers had hoped, according to a new study.
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E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 White House officials who had electronic message accounts with the Republican National Committee, the House Oversight Committee said Monday.
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A congressional Democratic leader says he's being ignored in requests for more information about the reported disappearance of messages exchanged by the likes of Karl Rove.
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Arms have always been twisted during close congressional votes on major legislation, but an ethics report rebuking House Majority Leader Tom DeLay added something the public rarely learns: what lawmakers really say to each other.
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Their appeals were met by rebukes from lawmakers of both parties, who warned that time was running out.
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The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed...
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House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has asked the Justice Department to cast a wide net in its investigation of lewd e-mails sent by a Republican legislator to young pages, even looking into whether other lawmakers learned of them and failed to notify authorities. But legal experts said yesterday that...
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U.S. House members spent $20.3 million in tax money last year to send constituents what's often the government equivalent of junk mail Â meeting announcements, tips on car care and job interviews, surveys on public policy and just plain bragging.
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Spam messages are increasingly plaguing e-mail inboxes, but more Americans are accepting them as a fact of life, a new study finds.
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Some outside scientists wondered whether a Department of Veterans Affairs panel was stretching thin data to tell veterans what they wanted to hear in the committee's recent report.
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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is hampered by having to report to 88 congressional committees and subcommittees, the Washington Post said.
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By CHARLES BABINGTON WASHINGTON - E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 White House officials who had electronic message accounts with the Republican National Committee, the House Oversight Committee said Monday.
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Congress returned this week to a lengthy list of unfinished business and a late election-season opportunity to build on its meager record.
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Poor information-sharing both inside and outside government is threatening homeland security, congressional investigators said Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - Many of the Web sites for members of the U.S. Congress lack basic information such as information on office hours or where to go if the reader has problems with a federal agency, according to a report released Monday. The overall state of congressional Web sites is "disappointing," said the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonprofit group advocating for a more effective Congress. The group gave only about 14 percent of the 615 lawmaker and congressional leadership Web sites it surveyed A grades for user friendliness. The top group of A-graded sites earn CMF's Gold Mouse award. Thirteen percent of the congressional sites received F grades, and another 25 percent received D's. "It's things that are missing, things that aren't updated," said Beverly Bell, CMF's executive director. In many cases, congressional offices seem to see Web sites as one-way communication mediums, she said. About 49 percent of the sites did not include sufficient information on how to contact the office about a problem with a federal agency, CMF said in its report. Just over 26 percent told visitors the best way to communicate with their offices, and 32 percent did not include links to sponsored or cosponsored legislation. Just 11 percent of House Web sites and 5 percent of Senate Web sites posted their office hours. "It's how you view your Web site," Bell added. "Are you seeing your Web site as a service center for constituents? There's not as much of that as we'd like to see. Or, are you seeing it as one big press release for yourself?" CMF produced two previous reports, in 2002 and 2003. Only three lawmakers have received awards in each of the Gold Mouse Reports: Representative Mike Honda, a Democrat representing part of Silicon Valley in California, Senator Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, and Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat known for his interest in tech issues. But overall, Republican sites scored higher than Democratic sites, with 66 percent of Republican sites scoring at least a C compared to 56 percent of Democratic sites. In some cases, lawmakers seem to believe that Web sites create more work for their staffs, and congressional staffs haven't substantially increased in size since the 1970s, Bell said. But a well-designed Web site can reduce workload by cutting telephone calls from constitutions about information such as sponsored legislation or visitor tours, she said. The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the University of California-Riverside, and Ohio State University assisted CMF with the report.
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More than 1 million pages of historical government documents &#151; a stack taller than the U.S. Capitol &#151; have been removed from public view since the September 2001 terror attacks, according to records obtained by The Associated Press. Some of the papers are more than a century old.