Logic Puzzles Put Congressional Mail Delivery On The Table

05:00 PM Jul 18, 2006

The "logic puzzles" recently deployed by a few House of Representatives offices to hinder constituent communications have had the happy effect of kick-starting wide-ranging conversations on the too-long-dormant question of the whole congressional message delivery regime -- a case where path dependency has forced the whole space into a communications model markedly inapt for everyone involved.

The major vendors (including DemocracyInAction) have formed a steering committee to work with Congressional IT staff, which are themselves evaluating their approach and seemingly open to discussing win-win solutions to the current technological mess.

Everything in Congress moves like molasses, so nobody's holding their breath on a revolutionary fix, but at least it's on the table. That's considerable progress. We'll stay abreast of those conversations in this space as well as confidentiality permits.

Thanks to Alan Rosenblatt for flagging the Congressional Management Foundation's current Congress Online, a handy background primer of the issues at stake and the actors involved. (CMF, which is a widely trusted entity, is likely to be a significant player in brokering solutions.)

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