I didn’t realize until recently the degree to which transparency reforms can benefit congressional staff.

Today’s Roll Call provides yet another example of how:

House e-mail server problems have left thousands of Capitol Hill staffers wringing their hands in frustration over the past two weeks as Congress has moved into its annual pre-August legislative crunch time.

Of about 20,000 e-mail accounts that the Chief Administrative Officer has responsibility for in the House, a total of about 7,000 have experienced delays for hours at a time due to an ongoing server glitch.

Even more background on the email issue can be found in this article from July 12th:

“While it’s great constituents now have so many additional tools to contact the Congressman, the system was never organized and structured to fully take advantage of the technologies that are out there,” said Pierson, who also heads the House System Administrators Association.

“It’s gotten to a point where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to manage,” he added.

…

But even though enterprise solutions have worked for other groups, Congress is facing a unique problem: Even some of the biggest corporations don’t deal with the amount of e-mail that Congress receives. When Goldschmidt met with a corporate analyst on the issue a few years ago, he was “flabbergasted” by how much e-mail Congress gets, she recalled.

“This analyst was shocked. No corporation could do it,” Goldschmidt said. “And if they had to, they could apply more resources.”

Congress faces a constant deluge of constituent emails, working with often outdated equipment and technical restrictions. The administrative structure of Congress has developed in response to the need to organize and coordinate the essential functions of the body. The press galleries multiply as our media does; new Senate and House seats are added, the CVC is built to house visitors, new committees are added and rearranged.

It seems, however, from the outside, that technical staff are struggling to keep up with a rapidly changing technological landscape, and the public expectations that come with it. Constituents expect responses, disclosure, reliable information. As well they should; information is fundamental to healthy democratic functioning.

We should make sure that the people making decisions on behalf of the country have the tools they need to do their jobs efficiently. Having an outdated email program, a small limit on attachment size, or antiquated restrictions on internet use don’t help legislators and staff do their jobs. In fact, it makes their work harder, and increases the gap between what the public expects and what Congress can deliver.

I hope that future appropriations and leadership decisions recognize that good policy is as much a result of procedure as it is politics, and that information capabilities go a long way in determining the ways our legislative body can engage with the substance of law.

Most of what we’re focusing on has to do with information availability from the end of the citizen, but for it to become publicly available, someone has to type it, upload it, organize it, and standardize that process, not to mention research it, debate it, or to try to enact it.

Transparent accessible government increases trust, and makes everyone’s jobs easier.