Coping with the Deluge: The Future of Mass Email Campaigns
Try sending an email to your U.S.
senator or congressperson these days, and you may find that you have to
put your comment in the lawmaker's own webform (rather than sending
directly from your favorite organization's website) or you must solve a
“logic puzzle” or a scribbly “CAPTCHA” to prove you are a real
person. Some lawmakers have concerns about the authenticity of letters
received through mass email campaigns, and put up barriers to block
these campaigns.
These kinds of defenses help
understaffed congressional offices by greatly reducing the volume of
incoming messages, allowing offices to focus on letters which are not
part of mass mail campaigns. Advocacy groups, however, strongly oppose
the new barriers, which they say stifle democracy and discriminate
against visually-impaired people. The Internet has given millions new
access to their elected officials, and made those communications more
effective because people can quickly organize and act in concert
through advocacy groups. Rather than creating barriers to
communication, we must make those communications easier for Congress to
accept, sort, read and understand.
This session will bring key congressional staffers together with
advocacy group representatives to find common ground. The panel will
discuss new ideas for easing congressional staffers’ email-related
workload, without resorting to the use of online barriers. Participants
will explore new opportunities to work cooperatively and leverage the
Internet’s power to provide lawmakers with unprecedented visibility
into the minds and attitudes of the voters they represent.
Chair: Jeff Dircksen - Director of Congressional Analysis, National Taxpayers Union
Jeff Dircksen is Director of Congressional Analysis for NTU Foundation. Dircksen oversees the research and analysis for the Foundation's BillTally and VoteTally systems, as well as research on tax reform and other subjects. The BillTally and VoteTally systems have been designed to analyze the impact and intent legislators have on the size and scope of government. In addition, he has written on a number of issues for the Foundation ranging from marriage penalty tax relief to charging tolls on interstate highways. His works on tax cuts and Social Security reform have appeared in numerous newspaper outlets. He has made several television appearances discussing tax reform and budget issues.
Before joining NTUF, Dircksen was the lead personal income tax analyst for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Department of Revenue. He was involved in Pennsylvania's 1997 S corporation tax reform efforts, the introduction of Medical Savings Accounts, and changes to the tax forgiveness program for low-income taxpayers.
Dircksen earned a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Hastings College, Hastings, Nebraska, and an M.S. in Public Management and Policy from Carnegie-Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, Pittsburgh.
Judson Blewett - Systems Administrator, U.S. Senate
Judson has been a systems administrator and webmaster in the Senate for about seven years now. A two time CMF Gold Mouse winner, he’s strongly committed to advancing technology in the Senate to cope with the changing face of American constituencies.
Daniel Bennett - Former Practitioner-in-Residence, Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet
Prior to joining IPDI as 2007 Practitioner-in-Residence, Daniel Bennett was the Chief Technology Officer of @dvocacy Inc. He also founded DotGov Communications, the first private webhosters for Members of Congress. He set up the first federal legislative branch RSS feed. He previously was president of the House Systems Administrators Association, co-chair of the Legislative Documents Technical Committee of OASIS/LegalXML and winner of the Federal Computer Week's Fed 100 Winner in 2000. Daniel was Technology Liaison for Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, representative from California 's Silicon Valley . He is a writer on technology and politics, including co-writer of "The Net Effect: How Cyberadvocacy is Changing the Political Landscape" and was a columnist for The Cloakroom, a web site for the National Journal. Daniel Bennett received a BA degree from Hampshire College, Amherst, MA.
Rob Pierson - President, House Systems Administrator's Association
Rob Pierson is the President of the House Systems Administrator's Association, an organization of System Administrators from congressional offices. He is also the Online Communications Director for Congressman Mike Honda of Silicon Valley and Vice President of Technology for Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman - Director, Sara Fine Institute
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman is Director of the Sara Fine Institute in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also the founder and Director of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at Pitt’s University Center for Social and Urban Research, which is a fee-for-service coding lab working on projects funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, DARPA, and other funding agencies. He has been Principal Investigator and Project Director on related National Science Foundation-funded research projects focusing on electronic rulemaking, human language technologies, coding across the disciplines, digital citizenship, and service-learning efforts in the United States. Dr. Shulman is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics.
Chris Burley - Director of Online Campaigns, Defenders of Wildlife
Chris Burley is Director of Online Campaigns at Defenders of Wildlife, where he manages all online advocacy campaigns. In 2007, Defenders of Wildlife's online campaigns generated more than 1.5 million constituent responses to decision makers, making the organization's online advocacy program one of the most active in the country. Prior to joining Defenders of Wildlife, he was Communications Director for the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law and the Creative Director at Taxpayers for Common Sense."
|
|
