*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** I should note that my motivation for sending my follow-up was based on a rapid discussion on the Parliaments Online Forum that I run. As Ryan pointed out just now on the telephone no one enjoys being critiqued and organizations use different measures. Here it is the ten minute citizen view versus I guess what a political junkie might find in 30 minutes. Other comments welcome for DO-WIRE: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Steven Clift Democracies Online ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 12:40:20 -0400 From: Ryan Turner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Response to DO-WIRE Notice of State Legislative Web Sites Report Steve, Thank you for circulating the executive summary of our state legislative website report to the DO-WIRE list. We must take great exception, however, with the mischaracterization of your follow-up posting to the list. If you had taken time to contact us prior to your message, you would have a better understanding of what we did. The report itself was not a scientific study, and is clearly labelled as such. Much like the press accounts which did not bother to speak with us directly, your notice implies that shoddy research was done. This project was designed to set a starting point for citizens, public interest groups, and applied and academic researchers to determine how best to measure those online resources which provide an entry point into the state legislatures as a whole, rather than the individual chambers of a legislature, or each legislator web page. We state pretty explicitly our rational for doing so in the report. We worked directly with Prof. John McNutt at Boston College's School of Social Work (also cited in the report) to help derive a baseline set of measures, which required a review of what little research is out there in both the commercial and e-government literature that applies directly to state legislatures. In the three weeks since the report was released, and the press and state legislatures picked it up, we have indeed generated a lot of debate and discussion. Unfortunately, most of it, like your post, centered on a misreading of what we actually did and found. Using a 10-minute window (which is slightly more generous than the average amount of time users spend on commercial websites), we tried to locate some 80 features from a citizen's perspective. While we have definitely received a few harsh words from some individuals, for the most part, the states themselves have been very receptive to having attention focused on their efforts and the constraints they are bumping up against-- including limited public participation in developing resources to meet citizen needs. They have communicated not only useful critiques of our findings, but also their appreciation that we paid attention both to possible gaps as well as potential solutions for bridging those gaps. The areas of privacy and accessibility, for example, remain a constant concern for the state legislatures themselves, and they need public input on things they might not catch. We did our examination at a fixed point in time, while legislatures were out of session because, frankly, we would argue that while information changes and is constantly (hopefully) updated and maintained, at a minimum, placeholders for that information should be easily found whenever citizens want access. We did not rank or rate states because, honestly, it sets the wrong type of attention and motivation for the work states are trying to accomplish, and turns what should be a citizen-oriented effort into a horse race where flash wins out over substance. We did not "penalize" nor "praise" states based on what their sites looked like. We merely provided, again, a starting point for future research to take place. We also clearly state in the report that elements "not found" may very well exist, but that to the end user unfamiliar with the terminology or layout of these online entry points, the overall usefulness and experience can be a challenge at best. We should have foreseen that people would go directly to the tables and not read the report, although we stated that no does mean -not found in the actual text of the report. Cite us for a failure to set things up for human nature. We are not "updating" the report, which is not a "draft." Throughout April, we are providing an "addendum" of state responses that allows citizens and researchers to see what starting points for future work are available. Our next report in this area will not be focused on the online entry points, as a number of researchers-- and even the National Conference of State Legislatures <<http://www.ncsl.org> itself-- are already undertaking more through examination, measures, and evaluation. Rather than have researchers contact us for update requests, we encourage researchers, public interest groups, and individual citizens to begin sorely needed dialogue with state legislatures and their IT staff to see what great things are underway, and how they can help improve what is going on. We would be more than happy to assist in that work in whatever way we can. Matt Carter Kay Guinane Ryan Turner OMB Watch 1742 Connecticut Ave, NW Washington, DC 20009 (202) 234-8494 (202) 234-8584 (fax) http://www.ombwatch.org<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param> *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
