The work grew from a pilot study he conducted with former U.S. Rep. Sam Coppersmith, D-Ariz. Today, all six Arizona congressmen and both senators are on-line. Typical information found at each Web site includes a photo, biographical sketches, phone numbers, and e-mail as well as and snail mail addresses for offices in both Washington, D.C., and Arizona. In some cases, position papers, speech transcripts, and meeting schedules are also available. This technology makes the government a lot more accessible to people.
Constituents think it makes the people in Washington, D.C., a lot more observable.
No longer is it the domain of the 40-something, white male businessman. Corman says that survey findings also indicate that more and more of those browsing the Web are less and less experienced with computers and the Internet. This technology allows non-technical people to visit a web page, type a natural language description of the information they seek, submit it to the system, and get a more defined search list than what is presently available on the Internet. Those searches tend to be pretty non-specific. The communication professor wants to make it easier for non-experienced computer users to find the information, people, or agencies they need.