From: lkk@panix.com (Larry Kolodney)
Subject: congress online
Organization: The Devil's Advocate
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 08:35:33 GMT

The Power of Isis
by Joe Abernathy
(Village Voice, January 12, 1983)

Technicians in Washington are turning on the juice to a new suite of
communication technologies that could strengthen the ties between the
people and their representatives in the incoming Congress.  But --
surprise! - - the system, called ISIS (for Integrated Systems and
Information Services), has been designed only to extend the power and
reach of those in Washington -- even though it could just as easily
empower the public.  With this in mind, a group of electronic
activists are trying to set things straight.

"This is out there.  You paid for it.  Shouldn't you have access?"
asks James P. Love, director of Ralph Nader's Taxpayer Assets Project.
TAP has been lobbying for greater access to the Congress for some
time, in the hope that average citizens could become desktop
lobbyists.

ISIS, which gets hooked up this month, will allow any lawmaker who 
requests it to have electronic mail access to the global Internet computer 
network and all of the so-called X.400 e-mail gateways, which include AT&T 
Mail, MCI Mail and other business-oriented systems.  All told, ISIS will 
allow Congress to reach out to nearly every significant business leader, 
researcher, and educator in the free world-tens of millions of people.  Yet 
the plan omits one key detail:  Publishing a directory of electronic mail 
addresses so that you can write to *them*.

"A lot of congressmen are not too keen on that," says Love.  "Several 
members have Internet access right now, but it doesn't do much good [for 
citizens] unless you have their address, and they consider that private."  The 
reason Congress wants to retain that privacy is obvious: legislators already 
consider themselves besieged by numerous interest groups - the last thing 
they want is to give the electorate yet another medium for getting in touch 
with them..

In addtion to ISIS, there's another important congressional on-line 
technology that is off-limits to the public although developed with public 
funding.  Known as LEGIS, this databank is the command information center 
for most of the work done in the Congress. It contains the full text and 
synopses of bills before the House and Senate, information on all foreign 
treaties, background investigations on pending administration appointees, all 
new government research papers, a breakdown on how members voted on 
various topics, and the Congressional record.

LEGIS was paid for by the taxpayers, it contains Information that is
part of the public record - although the way things stand now, you
would have to physically be in Washington to examine most of the
material - and TAP things that you ought to be able to tap in.  Noting
that LEGIS already serves 30,000 people, administrators of the system
say there's no reason, technologically or legally, why it couldn't
serve the public at the marginal cost of laying down a few telephone
lines.

"A couple of guys in the House just have to say it's done, and it's
done," Love notes.  "That information system should be available to
every member of the public.  It's simple; it's there; it's ready."

Like nearly every area of computer technology, on-line access to the
government raises new twists on thorny old constitutional issues.
Experts contend that such direct access -- along with ideas such as
Ross Perot's electronic town hall -- would disproportionately empower
a citizen elite that has access to personal computers.

So at Love's urging, the Office of Technology Assessment - an
investigative arm of Congress -- has begun studying the whole issue of
how lawmakers can best embrace electronic democracy.  The fear, of
course, it that the months and years the OTA spends exploring the
minutaiae of the issue could give Congress a further excuse to delay
granting the public access to the system.

There are a number of things you can do to speed along this process.
The first is to contact your local congress member and express a
desire for his or her office to use the ISIS system and electronic
mail.

To request that the public be granted access to the LEGIS system, you
should send letters to two gentlemen:

The Honorable Charlie Rose
House of Representatives
Washington, DC  20515

The Honorable Wendell Ford
United States Senate
Washington, DC  20510

The same addresses will work, respectively, for your local representative 
and senator.  To phone anyone in the Congress, dial 202-225-3121.

*********
Author's Email: edtjda@chron.com
Compuserve: 73060,3343; ECHO: JOEA


-- 
larry kolodney:(lkk@panix.com) 
_(*#&)#*&%)@(*^%_!*&%^!)*&#+!*&$+!?&%+!*&^_)*&#%)*&^%#+&
The past is not dead, it's not even past.   - Wm. Faulkner