Senator Warner's office joins the late 20th Century but you can't tell from the timing
One of the things that tends to annoy me a bit, as an info system professional, is the fact that contacting and conversing with my elected officials by such advanced communications technology as e-mail has been difficult if not impossible. All the Federal Senators and Representatives have web pages, now, with e-mail forms to “send e-mail” to your elected reps (which isn’t really sending e-mail, but rather using a web form to collect text) but something odd happens after you use one.
You get a reply in the snail mail.
Yep, that’s right. I can “send e-mail” to my elected reps using a web form that requires me to enter an e-mail address but those officials have never used it to respond to a specific communication from me. Until today. Popping into my e-mail box this morning was a note from Senator John Warner responding to a letter I had written about the decision by NASA to hide the results of an aviation safety survey. The situation made steam come out of my ears and I wrote to all of my elected reps literally the moment I was done reading the article. Congressman Frank Wolf responded in hardcopy in the regular mail, as I’ve described. Senator Warner responded in e-mail and had this to say:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in particular its recent air safety survey. I appreciate your thoughtful inquiry.
As you may know, the Associated Press had requested a copy of a NASA database of airline pilot surveys on air safety, which NASA initially refused to grant due to possible concern over public’s fear of the information. On October 23, 2007, the House Science Committee held a hearing on this matter in which NASA Administrator Michael Griffin testified. During the hearing, Administrator Griffin stated that NASA intends to release the contents of the database to the public via its website (www.nasa.gov) by the end of the year. Additionally, the Committee has requested a copy of this database and continues to examine this issue. Please be assured that I will certainly keep your views in mind should related legislation come before the full Senate for consideration.
(Please note, the link is as it appears in the e-mail. Kudos to the Senator’s staff for knowing how to embed a link!) I’d like to welcome the Senator and his staff to the Internet and offer my praise and encouragement for their efforts to utilize this technology to speed up the interaction with their constituents.
However… I would like to suggest that writing that response on December 18th regarding an issue that was front and center back on October 23rd kind of renders the speed increase you get from using e-mail a moot point. The Senator is busy, I know but 2 months to respond to an e-mail query with no more information than was widely reported within a week of the story breaking is giving a new definition to the word “slow.” Perhaps this is all new to them so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Seriously, folks, you need to get a bit more timely or provide information that hasn’t been widely reported.
Thanks for the note, tho.
