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

互联网有潜力改变我们的民主。一个潜力，已经开始得到大量的学术关注。 这种注意力集中在技术对民间社会的潜在变革影响上，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如何改变现有的机构，将公民与民选官员联系起来。 这种关系是代议制民主的基本组成部分，随着我们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，随着政策问题变得更加复杂，这种关系受到越来越大的压力。 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。引人注目的是，这种变化的潜力在很大程度上没有被认识到，也没有被研究。 虽然有相当数量的学术研究互联网对政府，治理和社会的影响，但很少有系统的研究国会议员如何使用或应该使用互联网提供信息，并与他们的选民互动。这项研究有一个定性和定量的组成部分，其中每一个组成部分的补充和通知对方。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。 所有国会网站都将沿着信息价值、可访问性、可用性和互动性等维度进行评估。将收集可能影响收养决定的因素的数据。例如，关于地区的特点，议员，国会的信息传播机制，等等。定性部分将需要在大约12个办公室进行实地调查，根据网络技术的采用程度以及政党和任期进行分层。 这个深入的领域将允许研究的基础，并最终解释技术扩散的聚合模式的动态微观过程，并将允许内部实践和国会办公室如何管理数字介导的信息和来自选民的反馈的相对效率的探索。这项工作的一个重要伙伴是国会管理基金会，它将提供获得数据和个人的独特途径。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。这项研究将直接有助于国会行为和机构的政治学研究，特别是对美国众议院立法者创业行为的新兴文献。该研究还将有助于政治学家和社会学家对创新传播过程的研究，并将是第一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方面所发挥的作用。 该研究团队包括四所主要研究型大学的政治科学和信息技术研究教师，他们通过哈佛大学的国家数字治理中心（NCDG）联系在一起。 该研究将产生一系列会议论文，学术期刊文章和关于数字时代民主的学术出版物。 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.