Senators Urge Congress To Update Technology Policies

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

In the wake of the Senate’s unanimous approval of a resolution to push greater adoption of the Internet of Things last month, two U.S. Senators have urged the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration to update Senate policies pertaining to the use of digital media and technology. The April 1 letter, written by Sen. Cory A. Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), encouraged the committee to revise the rules to better reflect the current availability and use of digital tools, which can be highly beneficial in increasing transparency and accountability, improving the quality of constituent service, and saving taxpayer dollars.

“Our aim is to remove unnecessary barriers to technological creativity while best serving constituents and saving taxpayer resources,” the senators wrote in the letter. “New technology is changing the way we all live and work, and we have exciting opportunities to harness new tools in the Senate to improve our work with constituents,” the senators wrote. “Innovation in government is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue; it is an American issue.”

Booker and McCaskill proposed the following recommendations:

1. Email Overhaul. The senators propose “simplifying and streamlining the process for new technology product vendors to become approved.” In particular, the senators want to make mass email newsletters and surveys distinct from paper correspondence for the same purpose, and to revise rules limiting “images and language,” stating, “We recommend writing entirely new guidelines to fit the unique uses of email as a communications tool.”
2. Data Collection. In terms of data collection, the two senators want to allow third-party tools to collect and track social media website traffic data. Under present rules, they are prohibited from collecting that data and measuring their effectiveness as communications tools. In addition, they want the Senate to publish legislative updates, amendments, and hearing transcripts in machine-readable XML format, rather than as PDFs and creating a Senate data site to mirror docs.house.gov.
3. Move To The Cloud. The letter also recommends migrating constituent data to the cloud, rather than keeping it on individual servers for each Senate office. They point to the use of cloud as the industry standard outside the Senate, including in nearly every federal agency, stating, “Virtual cloud-based server environments host some of the most sensitive information in the world because they are less vulnerable to many security threats than individual single-box servers.” To make the switch to the cloud could “save thousands of taxpayer dollars every year and keep constituent data secure and private by utilizing cloud-based virtual servers.”
4. Write It On WordPress. Booker and McCaskill also urged the support and encouragement of website development on more platforms. “Tools such as WordPress … are unfortunately blocked from use in the Senate,” they explain, despite the fact that such content management systems “are powerful and secure,” and the committee should review “the most widely used, stable and secure web-based content management solutions with deliberate haste.”
5. Simplify Contracting Rules For Product Vendors. Finally, the senators urged that contracting rules be more accessible to new entrants and that the contracting process should be more expedient, particularly for smaller project. They asserted, “Opening up the contracting process by simplifying the steps for consideration of approval would create a dynamic, competitive marketplace, which would save taxpayer money and improve product offerings.”