Federal Computer Week
By William Matthews

Official documents, comments on proposed rules, consumer complaints — the stuff the federal bureaucracy thrives on — languish by the ton, sealed in bags waiting to be decontaminated by radiation at a plant in Ohio.

Three weeks after anthrax-spiked mail halted postal delivery in much of Washington, D.C., many federal agencies still were not receiving paper mail. Instead, officials are praising the efficacy of e-mail.

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The paper mail disruption may have hit hardest on Capitol Hill, where members of Congress have felt cut off from their constituents and have urged voters to contact them via e-mail.

An announcement on Rep. George Gekas' (R-Pa.) Web site states, "Please note...Rep. Gekas' D.C. office is open, but mail is still being held at the Capitol complex mail-processing facility until further notice." Paper mail sent to the Capitol office "will not be delivered for quite some time."

Congressional offices reported 200 percent to 400 percent increases in e-mail volume, according to the Congress Online Project. House and Senate members received 80 million e-mail messages in 2000, but may be in line to receive 300 million before the end of this year, the organization projects.

Senate offices are installing a sophisticated e-mail management system that automatically screens e-mail messages and can be set to respond to some of them.

First, the system flags threatening e-mail messages, then automatically filters out spam, duplicates and out-of-state messages.

Usually, that cuts the e-mail volume by about half, said V.A. Shiva, chief executive officer of EchoMail Inc., the Cambridge, Mass., company that developed the system.

The remaining mail is then analyzed by pattern-recognition software, which Shiva said can tell the attitude of the writer — whether it's positive, negative or neutral — sort the mail by subject and route it to the appropriate staffer.

The system can also respond to some e-mails with a prepared message. Constituents who write about stem cell research, for example, might automatically be sent an e-mail message stating the senator's position on the issue. However, more complicated messages typically would be forwarded to a staffer for response.

The system is already in use in 37 Senate offices and will be installed in the rest by the end of January, Shiva said.

Coping with anthrax

After anthrax halted mail delivery to Congress, lawmakers turned to information technology to stay in touch. The Congress Online Project, which advises House and Senate members on IT use, surveyed congressional offices and found:

* At the start of the crisis, only 10 percent of congressional offices answered e-mail with e-mail, although 50 percent have the technical capabilities to do so.

* Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry e-mail devices were often the most reliable form of communication between staffers and their elected bosses.

* Less than 5 percent of congressional offices had the capability to update their Web sites remotely. Thus, many congressional Web sites have remained unchanged for days or weeks.

* Sen. William Frist (R-Tenn.), a medical doctor with Web savvy, become a frequently sought source for information on anthrax. Visits to his Web site soared from 4,000 a week in September to 111,000 a week by the end of October.