A recent report by the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF), a nonprofit organization that provides management advice to members of Congress and their staff, described improvements both congressional staff and advocacy groups should implement to improve the quality of communications to and from Congress in the Internet age.

From interviews, focus groups and surveys, CMF found that congressional staff are frustrated by the increasing quantity and decreasing quality of constituent communications. This has led to increased mistrust on Capitol Hill of grassroots communications and the organizations that generate them. The study also found that congressional staff feel that they are doing more work to answer less substantive messages, leaving them less time for other legislative work. This is a trend identified in various studies over at least the last fifteen years, whose roots precede the explosion of email communication.

Congressional staff, according to the study, believe that the Internet and e-mail have provided some clear public benefits that are encouraging for democracy. Seventy-nine percent believe the Internet has made it easier for a citizen to get involved in the public policy process; 55 percent believe it has increased public understanding of what goes on in Washington; while 48 percent believe it has made elected officials more responsive to their constituents. The Internet and e-mail have also provided grassroots organizations and citizens with new and exciting opportunities to organize around issues, to access and share information, and to communicate with elected officials.

Study findings relevant to citizen activists and grassroots organizations include:

1. Quality is more persuasive than quantity -- thoughtful, personalized constituent messages generally have more influence than a large number of identical messages generated by a form. Grassroots campaigns should place greater emphasis on generating high-quality messages and less on form communications. This mirrors pre-Internet communications survey findings that showed that personalized letters were more effective than postcard or fax campaigns.
2. The organization behind a grassroots campaign matters -- grassroots organizations should identify the source of each campaign, according to congressional staff.
3. Grassroots organizations should develop a better understanding of Congress -- the quality and impact of constituent communications would increase, if organizations better understood the legislative process and adapted their efforts to the way congressional offices operate.
4. There is a difference between getting noticed and having an impact -- bad grassroots practices may get noticed on Capitol Hill, but they tend not to be effective in influencing the opinions of members of Congress, and sometimes damage the relationship between congressional offices and grassroots organizations.

Key study findings for congressional offices include:

1. The communications environment has changed and Congress will need to adapt to it -- congressional offices are now deluged with email and have not developed a method to deal with the increased volume of correspondences.
2. Congress must improve online communications -- members of Congress should improve the timeliness of their responses, reach out to grassroots organizations to help identify better means for communicating, and answer e-mail with e-mail. On this last point, many offices still respond to email through U.S. mail.
3. Managing the new communications environment requires new capabilities and new thinking -- congressional offices may need additional staff and resources to manage the rapidly growing volume of constituent communications; they should expand the use of technology and adopt new management policies and/or establish a task force to identify solutions to communications challenges.
4. The new communications environment is beneficial to the members of Congress -- members should understand that new technology allows them to connect to thousands more constituents, better connect to politically active citizens, save money, and improve their image.

While elected officials communicate directly with constituents, so do a number of organizations. In fact, some organizations effectively serve as intermediaries, describing interactions between an elected official and his/her constituents. Although Congress is improving in this regard, most members do not have interactive websites that contain timely material. Advocacy organizations help fill that void by monitoring and reporting information to constituencies, and often providing an easy way for the constituent to contact his/her representative or senator. Consequently, how congressional staffers view and deal with mail is important to grassroots organizations.

The study raises important questions for advocacy organizations:

• Do "personalized or individual" messages that are "well-reasoned and articulate" truly carry more weight with an elected official or their staff? Some times raw numbers are just as important as reasoned arguments from constituents. After all, representatives and senators need large numbers for re-elected.

   

• Congressional staff indicated strong interest in methods of verifying the legitimacy of organizations that facilitate form letters. First, staff stated that they would want to contact the groups when thousands of emails are generated over one issue or piece of legislation. Second, they pointed out that it would be helpful when crafting a reply. One senate chief of staff explained, "I'm going to reply differently to a health care message sent by [a seniors group] then one sent by an insurance company." However, many advocacy organizations maintain that the origins of a letter should have little or no bearing on the outcome of that letter. If citizens are taking the time to send a letter on a particular issue or piece of legislation, regardless of the origin of its language, the citizen is concerned enough to get involved, they argue, and that concern should not be taken lightly. They wonder why the origin of a form letter's language should influence how a response letter is written.

   

• The study suggested that congressional offices may need more staff to cope with the increased volume of mail. However, given the prevailing belief among staff that answering mail is only a minor part of their job, it is unclear how additional staff would help the situation.

These issues may be addressed in three forthcoming CMF reports in this series. The next report will identify perceptions that citizens and the grassroots community have regarding their communications with Congress. The third in the series will recommend best practices to congressional offices for communicating with their constituents. The fourth and final phase of the project will facilitate discussion and problem-solving among congressional staff, citizens, and the grassroots community by convening a task force with representatives from the various sides of congressional communications.