Collaborative Research: Connecting to Congress: The Adoption & Use of Web Technologies Among Congressional Offices

互联网有可能改变我们的民主。这种潜力已经开始受到学术界的大量关注。这种关注的重点是技术对公民社会的潜在变革影响，以及在政治领域，互联网可能如何改变政治话语。然而，研究人员很少关注互联网可能会如何改变现有的连接公民和民选官员的机构。这种关系是代表性民主的基本基石，随着我们的国家自建国以来的发展，随着国家参与的事务数量成倍增加，以及政策问题变得更加复杂，这种关系面临着越来越大的压力。互联网提供了一套工具，可能有助于遏制这一趋势，并从根本上改变公民参与与其代表协商进程的程度。令人惊讶的是，这种改变的潜力在很大程度上没有被意识到，也没有被研究过。虽然关于互联网对政府、治理和社会的影响已经有了相当多的学术研究，但关于国会议员如何使用或应该使用互联网向其选民提供信息和与其互动的系统研究很少。这项研究既有定性的部分，也有定量的部分，其中每一部分都是相辅相成的。在统计部分，将收集纵向数据，以解释基于网络的技术在国会办公室中的传播模式。所有国会网站都将从信息价值、可访问性、可用性和互动性等方面进行评估。将收集有关可能影响收养决定的因素的数据，例如，关于地区特征、成员、国会信息传播机制等。质量部分将需要在大约12个办事处进行实地工作，按采用网络技术的程度以及政党和任期进行分层。这一深入领域将允许研究支撑并最终解释技术扩散总体模式的动态微观过程，并将允许探索国会办公室如何管理数字中介信息和来自选民的反馈的内部做法和相对效率。这项工作的一个重要合作伙伴是国会管理基金会，它将提供对数据和个人的独特访问。该项目的智力价值有几个方面。这项研究结合了严格的定量和定性研究，以解决有关立法环境中数字政府实践的新问题。这项研究将直接有助于对国会行为和制度的政治学研究，特别是对美国众议院议员创业行为的新兴文献。这项研究还将有助于政治学家和社会学家对创新扩散过程的研究，并将首次研究社交网络在美国国会采用新的治理形式和新的立法代表机构的时机中所扮演的角色。研究团队包括四所主要研究型大学的政治学和信息技术研究人员，他们通过哈佛大学国家数字治理中心(NCDG)联系在一起。这项研究将产生一系列关于数字时代民主的会议论文、学术期刊文章和学术新闻书籍。此外，国会管理基金会和美国国会本身将通过一系列最佳实践报告、汇报会议和年度会议，帮助确保通过这项研究产生的知识将有助于改变国会对数字技术的采用和使用。

The Internet has the potential to transform our democracy.a potential that has begun to receive substantial scholarly attention. This attention has focused on the potential transformational effects of the technology on civil society, and, in the political realm, how the Internet might transform political discourse. Researchers have devoted little attention, however, to how the Internet might transform existing institutions for connecting citizens to elected officials. This relationship is the fundamental building block of a epresentative democracy, and it has come under increasing strain as our country has grown since the time of the founders, as the number of matters the state is involved in has multiplied; and as policy problems have grown more complex. The Internet offers a set of tools that might help to arrest this trend, and to fundamentally alter the level of participation of citizens in the consultative process with their representatives. Strikingly, this potential for change has largely been unrealized and unstudied. While there has been a considerable amount of scholarship on the impact of the Internet on government, governance, and society, there has been little systematic research on how Members of Congress use or should use the Internet to provide information to and interact with their constituents. This research has both a qualitative and a quantitative component, where each of these components complement and inform the other. In the statistical component, longitudinal data to will be collected to explain the diffusion patterns of web-based technologies among the congressional offices. All congressional websites will be assessed along such dimensions as their informational value, accessibility, usability, and interactivity. Data will be collected on factors that might plausibly affect adoption ecisions.e.g., regarding the characteristics of districts, Members, the mechanisms for information spread in Congress, and so on. The qualitative component will entail fieldwork in approximately 12 offices, stratified by the degree of web technology adoption, as well as by political party and tenure. This in-depth field will allow study of the dynamic micro-processes that underlie and ultimately explain the aggregate patterns of technology diffusion, and will allow exploration of the internal practices and the relative efficiency of how congressional offices manage digitally-mediated information and feedback from constituents. An important partner in the work will be the Congressional Management Foundation, which will provide unique access to data and individuals.The intellectual merit of the project has several dimensions. The research combines rigorous quantitative and qualitative research to address novel questions regarding the practice of digital government in legislative settings. The research will contribute directly to the political science research on congressional behavior and institutions, and in particular to an emerging literature on entrepreneurial behavior among legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives. The research also will contribute to political scientists' and sociologists' research on the processes for the diffusion of innovations, and would be the first study of the role social networks play within the U.S. Congress in the timing of adoption of new forms of governance and new institutions for legislative representation. The research team includes political science and information technology research faculty at four major research universities, who are linked through the National Center for Digital Governance (NCDG) at Harvard University. The research will produce a series of conference papers, academic journal articles, and an academic press book on democracy in the digital age. In addition, the Congressional Management Foundation and the U.S. Congress itself will help to ensure that the knowledge that emerges through this research will help to transform the adoption and use of digital technology in Congress through a series of best practice reports, debriefing sessions, and annual conferences.