So maybe I was wrong. Maybe not all elected officials are jokingly dismissive of the impact technology can have on their constituents. Today, hanging out with the FastCompany.tv crew as Robert Scoble, his son Patrick, his producer Rocky, and Warren Communications’ Andrew Feinberg, I heard three very different elected officials speak with similar enthusiasm for and knowledge of technology: Senator Tom Coburn, Congressman Tim Ryan, and Congressman John Culberson.

My note-taking capabilities were somewhat hindered during two of those interviews (thank goodness the video will be up and/or is up soon), but I did have my Moleskine notebook and mechanical pencil handy for Senator Coburn.

Three-quarters of what Senator Coburn’s office hears from his constituents in Oklahoma comes from email and blogs. “Technology,” said Senator Coburn, “sets us free and brings transparency to politics.”

For example, Americans want to know about government waste because it has a direct impact on them. Only 11% of Americans have confidence in Congress, said Senator Coburn. Putting information about spending online will bring pressure on elected officials more inclined to play above the table.

Do what you are doing [as voters online] to make us better and more transparent.

In elected office, Senator Coburn said at the beginning of the interview, “motivations are pure, but the management style is out of the 1950s.”

Scoble asked Senator Coburn about the issue of brain drain in science and technology. Senator Coburn discussed a four-tiered process to encourage innovation, education, and research and development:

1. Create a better corporate tax system (Senator Coburn’s words were “create a corporate tax system that’s not the second highest in the world).
2. Create a research and development tax credit.
3. Make higher education rewarding (my note: especially in science, technology, and engineering).
4. Don’t harm the technology system we have now.

Elected officials “should get out of the way, so companies can reinvest in R&D,” said Senator Coburn.

Some of those same points – especially the emphasis on technology as the medium of transparency echoed throughout the interviews today.

Thoughts on this?

It looks like a lot of people are unhappy with their communications with Congress, according to a new report by the Congressional Management Foundation called Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement.

• 92% of Internet users who contact Congress through email, web forms, etc. want a response.
• Only 63% recall receiving a response.
• Almost half (46%) were dissatisfied with the response.
• More than half (64%) say the response did not address their concerns and that the response was too political biased.

It gets (a little) worse: only 39% of those who contacted Congress (and 36% of those who had not contacted Congress) thought the information they received from their Senators and Representatives was trustworthy.

More than half said they did not think their Members cared about what they had to say (55%) or were interested in what they had to say (62%).

That’s a lot of disgruntled voters, but there is a silver lining, according to Kathy Goldschmidt and Leslie Ochreiter, authors of the study. Despite their dissatisfaction, voters want their Senators and Representatives to update them on their activities and the policy issues they are addressing in Washington. As Goldschmidt and Ochreiter reveal, almost half of Americans contacted a U.S. Senator of Representative in the past five years (44%), providing elected officials with an opportunity to create more positive moments with constituents who communicate with their offices – if they use the technology effectively.

This is where Communicating with Congress transitions from being just a research study into a handbook. Goldschmidt and Ochreiter spend half of the publication reviewing the implications their research has on Congress and suggestions tactics to help Congressional offices better communicate with constituents – and help the advocacy community better communicate with Congress.

One recommendation asks Congressional offices to “reconsider the tone of your responses”:

many [Congressional offices] use their responses solely as opportunities to talk up the Senator or Representative and explain all the actions and votes he or she has taken on the issue. These messages often sound like press releases or marketing materials. When people express their views and opinions, responses which “sell” the Member may not be the best approach, as it amounts to an exchange of opinion without a meeting of the minds. Congressional offices may want to consider how to craft response with the primary goal of acknowledging constituents’ key concerns and a secondary goal of conveying the Member’s accomplishments.

This may go some (but perhaps not all) of the way toward turning potential dissatisfied constituents into satisfied constituents.

While I focus on satisfaction in this post, some of the Goldschmidt and Ochreiter’s most interesting findings look at the role advocacy play in citizen communications with Congress. You can find a copy on the Congressional Management Foundation website.

It’s 2008. We call this the digital era. Yet, in the United States we seem to lack political leaders with a vision for technology, much less an interest in the ways technology can make all levels of government services more efficient, effective, and accessible to regular voters.

Yes, indeed, the rumblings are starting to get a little louder – snuggled, as they currently are, within our niche community of tech-savvy politicos and politics-friendly techies. Is a technology transformation upon us?

For some, the transformation begins when elected officials use technology to listen. There’s a word – listening. In the middle of an election season that has seen a glut of staged conversations, online and offline. Andrew Feinberg rants about some of these so-called listening exercises today at Capitol Valley. There’s a difference between talker at voters and listening to them.

Talkers get headlines. Listeners get things done.

Like fixing potholes and handling case work, increasing the efficiency and efficacy of government programs. A year ago, IPDI published Constituent Relationship Management: The New Little Black Book of Politics, which looks how political campaigns and elected office can use online and offline feedback loops to run case management and constituent communications. Many elected officials and political candidates already use database platforms to help this process.

The next step? Government institutions that employ tech-enabled feedback loops to deliver better goods and services.

In their Politico column, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry write about some of the ways in which foreign citizens and governments are using technology to listen and act, including e-petitions in the United Kingdom and the government of New Zealand’s wiki for a new Policing Act. As Rasiej and Sifry put it, you can use the Internet to file your taxes, but you can’t use it to make suggestions on how your tax dollars ought to be spent:

Imagine then, that the next time you file your taxes online, your government asks for your feedback on how those tax dollars are being spent. Or it takes your suggestions on how to make a law more understandable. Or it helps you find groups near you that are doing things that benefit your community. It may sound mundane, but today in America, it would be the equivalent of a revolution. How much longer do we have to wait to bridge yet another digital divide?

What about tech policy?

At the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Robert D. Atkinson writes,

we need a debate in America that focuses on the most important issues like to get fast broadband networks to all Americans; how to use IT to transform our health care system, transportation system, education system, and government; and how to encourage all organizations to become digital, thereby driving productivity and income growth and a better quality of life.

Atkinson thinks that better private-public partnerships can help create an environment of “digital transformation.”

Over at Open Left, Matt Stoller blogs about the successful efforts of blogger and member of the California Democratic Party platform committee, Dante Atkins, to get Net Neutrality in the party platform:

California Democrats, in order to promote vigorous free speech, a vibrant business community, and unfettered access to all information on the Internet, support policies to preserve an open, neutral and interconnected Internet. California Democrats strongly agree with recent rulings by the Federal Election Commission that political communications, including blogging, which take place independent of a political party, committee or candidate, receive a media exemption from campaign finance regulations. California Democrats further reaffirm their support of the right to free speech as expressed in the First Amendment, including the right to critique any elected official or comment on any and all public policy, whether during war or peace, without fear of reprisal.

 Perhaps it is time that we — voters that we are — begin to expect more from our elected officials and encourage digital leadership on our blogs as well as in our voting booths.

Amid all the excitement around Iowa and the upcoming New Hampshire Primaries, we want to step back, take a breath, and look at what happens when all the excitement is over and Election Day is yesterday’s headline.

In 2007, we saw (to some degree) that politicians are, in fact, interested in obscure-sounding things like “interactivity” and “online communications channels” and “technology-infused conversation” – especially when reaching people online increases fundraising dollars and votes (and who can blame them, really?).

Then what? Do we expect our elected officials to chuck their techno-powered promises of creating conversations and communicating at the podium after their acceptance speeches? What responsibilities do elected officials have to continue using technology in a democratic way? What about the issue of access?

I am inclined to think that the role of digital leadership should receive increased emphasis over the course of the next few years. How does one lead, govern, and create policy in an Internet era?

Steve Clift has a few things to say about what technology-powered politics should look like after the confetti drops:

Information access, considered the safe starting point for government accountability online now mostly presents the public a daunting needle in a huge haystack. This system is so complicated that the valuable and substantive information that government produces is often ignored in the increasingly interactive public lives of active citizens. . The lack of real and effective online access to governance will substantially increase cynicism about and distrust in government among a public that demands a more participatory representative democracy.

This quote is taken from Clift’s essay, Join the Evolution – Ten Practical Online Steps for Government Support of Democracy. Clift is coming to DC to lead a discussion we are hosting on January 9^th called Great Expectations: After the vote – citizens online, e-democracy in governance, and White House 2.0. Register by Wiki at http://pages.e-democracy.org/Great_Expectations.

We’ll continue the conversation during a plenary discussion at our 2008 Politics Online Conference, chaired by Ari Schwartz (Center for Democracy and Technology) and featuring Ellen Miller (Sunlight Foundation), Tom Steinberg (mySociety.org) and former congressman Rick White (Wood Bay Group). Details at http://polc.ipdi.org.

Last Thursday I went to the Senate Hart building to mingle with Americans for Prosperity.  They had been running around the Hill all day and were there to hear Senators McCain and DeMint speak; I was there for McCain and some schmoozing.  I couldn’t find the registration table where my credentials were at, so naturally, I walked around as if I didn’t need them.  I spoke with a few people, all of whom were friendly.  I talked politics with a couple of ladies from Ohio.  They, like a lot of people, were undecided and unimpressed with their choices.

The rest of our conversation was cut short by McCain taking the podium.  He spoke for a bit and received a few rounds of applause.  He got a round of applause, from myself as well, when he called on Congress to permanently ban the Internet tax before the moratorium ends November 1.  I then proceeded towards the entrance/exit hallway so I could watch McCain get mobbed on his way out.  And that’s exactly what happened.  To his credit, he took plenty of time to shake hands, pose for pictures, and answer questions.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Thursday afternoon.