On Friday, we told you about the happy ending to months of negotiations to modernize the Franking rules that govern how members of Congress can use the Internet to communicate with us about their work. The new rules just passed by the House and Senate allow members of Congress to communicate with us on sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr without recrimination. (We advocated for these rules changes through our bipartisan collaborative effort, the Open House Project, and through our popular Let Our Congress Tweet campaign, the first Twitter-based petition to Congress, which hundreds of you joined.)

Before these new rules were passed, lawmakers could not officially embed a YouTube video on their official Web site, nor could they join us in political conversations around the popular virtual water cooler that Twitter has become.

To celebrate this historic precedent, we created Capitol Tweets, a widget you can embed on your site that updates you every 10 minutes with the latest tweets from members of Congress who use Twitter.

Download the widget, and while you’re watching the tweets fly, check out this effort by David All (who co-wrote the Open House Project chapter on Franking reform with Sunlight’s Paul Blumenthal) to grade them on their tweets.

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Last year, the Open House Project proposed the loosening of rules governing what lawmakers can post to their official web sites. Last week, the Senate Committe on Rules and Administration approved new rules to allow lawmakers to post content from third party sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and so on.

The new rules, while not immediately available for public review, appear to be far different from the ones proposed earlier this year. Earlier, Rules and Administration proposed to “keep a list of “approved Web sites” that agreed to provide pages free of advertisements or partisan leanings.”

In contrast to this proposal Republicans on the Committee offered a plan to allow lawmakers to post at their discretion, and in accordance with long-standing standards, with review by the Committee if necessary. The approved plan mirrors the Republican plan.

Kudos to the Senate for taking a step forward by allowing senators to more freely communicate across the Web.

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Wednesday night, we launched Let Our Congress Tweet so citizens could voice their demand that Congress should be allowed to freely connect to us on the Internet, even on sites that don’t end in .gov

How would people respond?  Can Twitter really be used to influence lawmakers?  Well let’s just say that tweets can get pretty loud! As of right now, we have almost 400 tweets and great support in the blogosphere, including a great plug on the Twitter blog.  Mark at Mashable.com does a great job summarizing how this controversy got started and why it is important.  However, Tim O’Brien at O’Reilly said it best “This is much larger than just letting Congress Twitter, this is about letting social networks help to evolve the very concept of governance.”

This is not nearly the end, fair friends.  We are on a roll with new tweets all the time and even more members of Congress using the medium.  I think the comment from Mr. Christopher Glenn sums it up “…I wasn’t even aware who my representative in the House was, and now I’ve got a direct line to a real live human being that’s representing me in government, so I can let him know if I disagree with him, and why, and he can fill us in on what he’s voting for, what’s going on in Washington and heck, what he had for lunch if he likes. And that’s awesome.”

Yes, Chris, it is awesome.  So keep on tweeting and tell all your friends to join the movement!

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Shouldn’t members of Congress be able to connect with all of us freely and easily online? I’d guess most of you would think that’s a good idea. So, when Sunlight’s Open House Project Google group got riled up this week about this issue, we were inspired to do something to rally citizens to ensure lawmakers can freely connect with us all online.

In that spirit, we are launching a new campaign, Let Our Congress Tweet, to urge Congress to make clear guidelines that do not inhibit lawmakers from freely interacting with constituents where they already go online to share ideas-through Web services like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Join our petition right now and make your voice count.

Last year, Sunlight’s Open House Project issued a report recommending straightforward technological reforms to increase transparency and public access to the work and members of the U.S. House of Representatives. One of our major recommendations was to permit lawmakers to take full advantage of Internet resources. Wonks will know this as our recommendation to modernize the Franking Rules that govern how members of Congress use the Internet to communicate with constituents, primarily through their official Web sites.

Unfortunately, these rules are decided ad hoc in advisory opinions. (A guidebook given to lawmakers about all their activities includes some rules about their Web use. When Congress first developed rules governing lawmakers’ use of the Internet, it viewed the new medium as an extension of telephones, mail, radio and television, putting e-mail and member Web sites under the purview of franking regulations. Franking regulations were developed to restrict lawmakers’ sending of unsolicited mailings to constituents, but today the differences between the old and new forms of communication are so great that a rethinking of franking policy over electronic communications is necessary.

Under the current system, members of Congress are forced to break rules to use new technologies and services to do what their constituents ask of them: connect, listen and be held accountable. So, that YouTube video you saw on a lawmaker’s Web site? Illegal! Couple that with the vagueness of only having ad hoc opinions to guide lawmakers in their Internet communications on a case-by-case basis, and you get confusion as to what lawmakers are or aren’t allowed to do…resulting in a chilling effect.

As Congress reconsiders the restrictions placed on congressional Internet use, you can tell Congress to embrace the communication technologies that we already use. Join us and tweet the petition now.

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Earlier this year, David All and I wrote a section of the Open House Project calling for the House to review and rewrite arcane franking regulations as applied to member Web sites. According to Roll Call, it looks like this is actually going to happen. If you’ve ever been to a congressional Web site you’ve probably noticed the lack of interactivity, multimedia, and linking that is common in today’s Internet. That’s because of unwritten, nonspecific, arbitrary rules that are unevenly applied across member Web sites. Members can’t post YouTube videos, link to MySpace, ask people to Digg something on their site, or have a blogroll. All of that may be changing soon:

Regulations prohibit content that can be construed as an advertisement or as purely personal information, such as links to fundraisers or support for partisan causes. Now, the new phenomenon of social networking sites — and the increasing use of them by Members — is testing the application of such rules in a multimedia world.

House and Senate officials say several Members are not in compliance, though none apparently have been disciplined. It’s time, they say, to update the rules to match the technology.

The House Administration Committee has been drafting possible changes for months, as has the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

“The Internet increasingly has become a more effective means of communication,” said Salley Collins, spokeswoman for House Administration ranking member Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.).

“Technology is continually evolving. Therefore, the rules themselves need to evolve so Members can utilize technology to the fullest,” Collins added.

Turning official member Web sites into actual interactive portals to engage constituents and talk to the member’s office is the next wave in change in the member-constituent relationship. Member Web sites have made leaps and bounds this year alone as hubs of information and they beginning in integrate interactive elements and break the boundaries of these now irrelevant rules. Here are a few numbers concerning what’s going on on member Web sites:

At least 44 members have blogs, 30 of which have been updated in the last month. Three of them have blog rolls.

At least 7 members use YouTube for the videos on their Web site. At least 8 members use Google Maps on their Web site.

And a few other members link to other sites like Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Eventful, and iCal.

All of these tool should be approved for use. Member Web sites should also get rid of the ridiculous requirement to have a jump page if they link to a non-governmental Web site. People have been on the Web in large numbers for over a decade now. It is common sense that a link may take you to another Web site. We don’t need to be warned.

I eagerly anticipate the release of new rules so that members can finally engage with their constituents through their Web sites.

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