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。一种已经开始受到大量学术关注的潜力。这种关注集中在技术对公民社会的潜在变革性影响，以及在政治领域，互联网如何改变政治话语。然而，研究人员很少关注互联网将如何改变连接公民与民选官员的现有制度。这种关系是代议制民主的基本组成部分，自开国元勋时代以来，随着我们国家的发展，随着国家参与的事务数量成倍增加，这种关系受到越来越大的压力；随着政策问题变得越来越复杂。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。引人注目的是，这种变化的潜力在很大程度上没有得到认识和研究。虽然关于互联网对政府、治理和社会的影响已经有相当多的学术研究，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并与之互动的系统研究却很少。这项研究有定性和定量两个组成部分，其中每一个组成部分都是相互补充和相互联系的。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之间的传播模式。所有国会网站都将根据其信息价值、可访问性、可用性和互动性等方面进行评估。将收集可能影响采用决策的因素的数据。，包括选区特点、议员特点、国会信息传播机制等。定性部分将需要在大约12个办事处进行实地工作，按采用网络技术的程度以及按政党和任期进行分层。这个深入的领域将允许研究动态的微过程，这些过程是技术扩散的基础和最终解释的总体模式，并将允许探索国会办公室如何管理数字媒介信息和选民反馈的内部实践和相对效率。国会管理基金会将是这项工作的一个重要合作伙伴，它将提供对数据和个人的独特访问。这个项目的智力价值有几个方面。该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。该研究将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做出直接贡献。这项研究还将有助于政治科学家和社会学家对创新扩散过程的研究，并将是第一个研究社交网络在美国国会中采用新形式的治理和立法代表新机构时所扮演的角色的研究。研究小组由通过哈佛大学国家数字治理中心（NCDG）联系在一起的4所主要研究型大学的政治学和信息技术（it）研究人员组成。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出版书籍。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获得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.