Congressional Web “Masters”?Um, not so much

Do you get frustrated when looking up information from congressional websites? You're not alone. A news study shows that there is no cooperation among the 535 House and Senate web managers, and that basically, they aren't interested in whether you find their sites helpful or useful. From Government Computer News:

“Strikingly, we find that there are relatively few efforts by offices to evaluate what constituents want or like on their Web sites,” state the researchers in their paper, “Members of Congress Websites: Diffusion at the Tip of the Iceberg.”

David Lazer, the lead researcher for the project and a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, presented the results at the annual conference of the Digital Government Society of North America recently in Philadelphia.

The research team interviewed 100 individuals who held primary responsibility for maintaining official Web sites for individual members of the House or Senate. They found “strikingly little effort” on the part of managers to find out what features or information constituents wanted and what elements of the Web site worked or did not work.

Only one office sent out a survey form asking what features users would like to see. Other offices relied on what they called informal feedback such as e-mail. Lazer said the lack of a formal feedback mechanism could be problematic if it leads citizens to view the sites as of little help and could even cause them to become more disengaged from the political process.