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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(Cross-Posted from the Open House Project)

Yesterday, after months of negotiations and proposals, the House joined the Senate in updating the arcane guidelines that govern how Members of Congress use the Internet.

In May of 2007, the Sunlight Foundation released the Open House Project report, which included an entire chapter on the issue of Franking Reform. That chapter, prepared by David All and Paul Blumental, has guided our advocacy and discussions of web use restrictions since then.

Those discussions simmered until earlier this summer, when tensions between Members of the Franking Commission briefly escalated (the part of the Committee on House Administration that handles Web restrictions). This summer’s discussion caught some media attention, and unsettled some web-savvy Representatives, and ultimately engaged both parties’ leaders in the House.

The Sunlight Foundation capitalized on the chaos, creating the first twitter-based petition in the site, Let Our Congress Tweet, which amassed twitter-based signatures, and displayed vigorous support for updated rules from online communities across the political spectrum.

While House officials maneuvered publicly, the Senate passed similar reforms with a bit less fanfare. As recently as last week, agreement looked unlikely from the House committee, with Roll Call reporting that an attempt at negotiations ended in “an emotionally charged hearing and a breakdown in negotiations.”

That’s why we were suprised and delighted to get word from the Committee on House Administration that a new agreement had been reached. This measure wasn’t just a slight rewrite, however. The new guidelines represent an enormous change, one which has new media staff from both parties glowing.

Speaker Pelosi’s statement calls the revisions a “significant step forward toward bringing the House rules into the multimedia age and allowing for members to effectively communicate with their constituents online… I also thank citizen initiatives such as the Open House Project for their thoughtful recommendations and continued efforts to encourage Members to engage their constituents through internet technologies.”

Ranking Member Vern Ehlers was similarly laudatory of the new rules, and of Chairman Brady’s leadership: “Mr. Brady recognized the need to allow enhanced constituent communication, and demonstrated outstanding leadership that enabled this Committee to adopt a long-overdue change,” Ehlers stated. “It is imperative that Members have the ability to use whichever web services they feel will best inform their constituents about the important issues facing this country.”

The new rules, as written, make a very important distinction, and one we’re delighted to see considered: Member web use will be evaluated based on the “official content,” and not the venue in which the materials are posted. This puts new media communications on similar footing to traditional media, where Op-Eds and TV interviews are proximal to commercials without causing a conflict of interest.

The revisions should cause a renaissance in official political Web-use, with eager new media staff and savvy Members now able to confidently engage with their constituents. We can’t wait to see what they come up with, and can only hope that all government reform arguments have such happy endings.

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(For everyone looking for an update or an explanation about Congress examining its web use restrictions, I just sent the following email to the Open House Project google group, explaining why the issue is important, and what I think that community has to offer.  If you’d like to be involved or follow that discussion, you can sign up for the group.  -John)

The issue has raised a larger question than the one originally intended to be addressed in the house — video.

The Senate is in the midst of reconsidering their recommendations too (see congress daily today, sub only).

The question now before the Franking Commission is how to update what Pelosi and Capuano have both admitted are “antiquated” restrictions.  They have to balance legitimate concerns — decorum, commercialization, and improper taxpayer funded political content — against what all involved parties have recognized as immense potential online.

Clearly, the current rules are unclear, unevenly enforced, and poorly understood.  That this “hooptedoodle” (great word!) is even possible is evidence of that point, which I don’t think is in question by anyone.  The need for an update, revision, loosening, recodification, or whatever, is well accepted on the hill.

Dismissing the argument as being about a trendy web service misses the more interesting thing that’s going on here:  We’re seeing the leadership from both parties in the House affirm the role of technology and public engagement in representative democracy, in an explicit, practical way.  Of course it’s adversarial, that’s what party leaders do.

There are a ton of other reforms I’d like to see addressed, and I’m hoping that we’ll soon have a slew of other accomplishments and issues to focus on, public congressional video (go Carl!) among them.

The useful thing we can do, though, is to recognize that the people on this list are probably the best equipped people to help define what acceptable web use looks like.  It isn’t an easy problem.

I’m trying to focus on what’s clearly the case.  The rules need to be updated, confident engagement online with clear standards is the goal, and right now the chilling effect of a combination of restrictive and unclearly enforced rules is keeping Congress from doing as much as it should online.  (I talk a lot more about this in my interview with Dave Witzel here, especially starting at “what’s the steak without the sizzle?)

So, I’m hoping we can start to talk more about the details of member web use restrictions.  What really constitutes commercial endorsement?  When does conduct become unacceptable or undignified?  What role should Congress play in enforcing those questions online?  Where do the edges of “official duties” lie anyway?  Are we treating the Internet differently than we do traditional media?  (See Boehner’s recent post for an expansion on this theme.)

Probably more importantly, what are the principles we can use to approach those questions with clear minds?

I’d like to expand on the question of how we can reasonably approach those questions, but I think this email was necessary to clear the air first, and explain what I think the discussion should be about, and what I think this list has to offer the dialog.

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New lines are being drawn about the restrictions Members face when using the Internet.

House Minority Leader Boehner today released a memo, entitled the “Internet Freedom Alert”, criticizing a letter sent by Rep. Capuano to the Chairman of the Committee on House Administration.

Member Web use restrictions are among the main Open House Project priorities, and one of the chapters of the report is about the restrictions set by the Franking Commission, which operates under the Committee on House Administration. (This chapter was written by David All and Paul Blumenthal.)

Boehner’s letter today rightly sounds the alarm about Capuano’s newly proposed Franking commission guidelines. In his letter, Capuano admits that Web use restrictions need to be redesigned, and proposes that acceptable Web sites and uses be compiled by the Committee, and that content from Members, when posted on outside sites, should “meet existing content rules and regulations”, and should “not be posted on a website or page where it may appear with commercial or political information.” (pdf)

While reconsidering or reforming these antiquated restrictions is a laudable goal, the proposed guideline reforms are only a half-measure toward modernized engagement online, and don’t address the underlying problems with these unnecessary restrictions.

The Committee on House Administration and its Franking Commission are tasked with making sure taxpayer money isn’t spent on commercial or political advertising on the Web. While there is good reason to limit incumbents’ advantage to be gained online, Capuano’s memo overstates the liability that comes when Members of Congress use popularly accepted communication tools.  Exaggerating the risks online hamstrings Members and staff at exactly the time when they should be boldly engaging with constituents.

Communicating online involves only negligible cost, which means that the potential advantage given to incumbents, or the potential for a conflict of interest, is only very slight. Imagine a traditional example. No one would impugn the motivations of a Member who grants an interview to a very small newspaper in their district, where perhaps their grandchild is a journalist. Even though such an interview has a distinct financial benefit for the small paper, Members are free to speak with whomever they wish, and can be confrontational, or only pick interviews with sympathetic figures, at their discretion.

This discretion is important. Members need to be able to communicate freely, and the financial consequences of where their voice is featured are tiny compared to the possible consequences of trying to limit Members’ speech.

Has it ever occurred that a Member gives interviews to only one particular newspaper? I doubt it. That just isn’t the way motivations work in a political world.

If the potential for conflict of interest or political advertising is so low the context of the traditional press, then why are we treating the Internet differently? Is the Internet so unfamiliar, so public, that it should be considered undignified to have a video on the same page as a link that might link to pornography? That worry was reasonable in 1995, but not now.

People generally understand the potential of digital communications tools. Most services are provided without cost, and are open to public viewing, and, increasingly, public content submission. While this opens the door for disruptive participation, it also provides us with the immense potential of our shared digital connection, with consequences as fundamental as those of the printing press or the telephone.

If Members can use whatever brand of inkpen, or any brand of paper, or buy whatever shoes they want, they should be given radically expanded freedom to use the Internet, and make the same empowering discoveries that their constituents are. Even if that same pen was once used to scribble a ransom note.

The Committee on House Administration still has a line to draw, and plays an important function through the Franking Commission in preventing abuse of taxpayer funded resources. The restrictions, however, should reflect a balance between the liability they’re meant to avoid, and the potential benefits Congress could realize. The conflict of interest (or undignifiedness), is minimal, at best, and the potential benefits are nothing short of revolutionary.

Citizens are overcoming their fears about engaging online, and Congress should follow suit.

Congressional staff working on reforming Franking restrictions should be praised for their efforts, and Republican Leader Boehner should be praised for his bold stance on such reforms.

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