I am trying to get a list of email addresses to all elected officials from the federal government, so I thought I’d just ask for it. I went to USA.gov to find out how to Contact Elected Officials. I looked for email addresses on the contact pages of U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, and State Governors, but did not find a single public email address. Let me know if you find one. So I clicked on USA.gov’s Web Chat feature, hoping to get some answers.
The Web Chat page only asked for my first name. I assume this is to protect my privacy. I entered my first name and was put in a short queue to textually chat with a nice person named Maria. I did not know exactly who I was talking to. There was a level of anonymity between us. The site only displayed her first name and the initial of her last
name, at least I assume it is her real name. I felt like an anonymous customer talking to an anonymous employee of a large corporation - well, maybe that’s the way it was designed.
That we are only using text chat is another filter between us. Anyways, I asked the USA.gov representative some questions about whether they can provide me with the public email addresses of elected officials. I’ve enclosed the transcript of my communication below:
Maria A.: Hi, my name is Maria A.. How may I help you?
Will: hi mariaWill: i have a question about contacting elected officials
Maria A.: How may I be of assistance?
Will: does the government have a publicly available list of email addresses to all federal, state, and local elected officials.
Maria A.: Unfortunately, we are not aware of such list.
Will: do you know why so many elected officials do not publish their email addresses?
Maria A.: We would not have that information.
Maria A.: You may contact both senators and representatives by e-mail via their homepage.
Maria A.: Would you like information concerning how to contact elected officials?
Will: the senators and representatives only have web forms, which do not publish their email addresses
Will: i want a way to send an email directly to elected officials
Will: without using their web forms
Maria A.: You will need to contact their office directly and request an e-mail address.
Will: do any of the federal agencies have a list of publicly available email addresses?
Will: do you have a directory of email addresses for federal agencies
Maria A.: Again, we are unaware of such listing. You may wish to contact the Government Printing Office (GPO) to see if such list exists.
Will: thank you very much for answering my questionsMaria A.: You may access the GPO homepage at: http://www.gpo.gov/
Maria A.: I hope you find this information helpful. Do you have any other questions?
Will: can i get an email receipt of this conversation?
Maria A.: Just one moment.
Maria A.: Unfortunately, we can not provide you with an e-mail receipt of our conversation.
Will: is there any way i can prove to others what you have told me?
Maria A.: You can copy and paste this conversation to a word document and print it out.
Maria A.: That would be my only suggestion.
Will: an email receipt would be better proof than copying and pasting
Will: this is why i don’t want to use webforms. they lack receipts
Maria A.: I apologize.
Will: thank you for your time and help.Maria A.: It was a pleasure to chat with you. Thank you for contacting USA.gov. We would like your feedback on our performance. You can let us know what you think by copying and pasting following link into your browser’s address bar: http://www.info.gov/NCCsurvey.htm
Maria A.: Have a nice weekend : )
Will: you too.Maria A.: Thanks!
Even though Maria A. works at the federal government’s premier e-government web portal, she could not provide me a simple list of email addresses to elected officials. I’m not blaming her personally; just the design of the system. The government has provided the public with a sophisticated live chat feature, but it cannot or will not disclose a list of email addresses to public officials. I wasn’t asking for the private email addresses of government employees; I was asking for some basic electronic contact information in order to communicate openly with my government as a citizen.
To hold our government accountable, it’s really important for citizens to have the ability to record and publish their communications with government employees. We need this ability to authentically express our grievances and to exercise our First Amendment right to petition. The information and communication technologies we decide to use really impact our potential for political communication. In many ways, the design of digital media is the design of our democracy.
As a citizen, we have a right and an obligation to openly and fairly communicate with our government electronically. That our public officials may be contacted by many of us, and that they have to deal with voluminous communication, is no reason to limit our important communication. We cannot blindly accept how elected officials prioritize and filter our communication with them. As part of the communication equation, we must demand the most basic first step - to be able to send them free form text electronically via email.
I’m still looking for the public email list of elected officials.
If it doesn’t exist, we need to build it. If it does exist, we need to get it. As a first step, let’s compile a public list of contact information for elected officials.
I’ve enclosed screenshots of my communication for your review:
9 responses so far ↓
1 David M Howell // Jul 25, 2008 at 10:03 am
I enjoyed your blog but have a few issues that I feel need to be addressed.
1. Why is it the responsibility of the federal government to maintain a list of e-mail addresses of all state and local elected officials? Why is that not the responsibility of the individual entities?
2. When you state above “I wasn’t asking for the private email addresses of government employees; I was asking for some basic electronic contact information in order to communicate openly with my government as a citizen.”, you negate that fact that there are other means of communication that are just as effective as e-mail communication. Have you ever thought of using the regular USPS mail system. The postal service can even provide you with a receipt to confirm the delivery of any letter you send.
3. I would logically assume the reason you cannot get the email addresses of elected officials is the same reason you cannot get the phone number to the oval office. If these pieces of information were given to the public, the ability of the officials to do their job would be inhibited.
The webform serves as a means to allow open electronic communication with the government and is used so that the person most appropriate to answer the question or address your concern receives your message.
2 David M. Howell // Jul 26, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Will,
I tried to edit my last post, but was unable to do so.
I have something to add to make my position more clear. In the above article you state “this is why i don?t want to use webforms. they lack receipts”. This is a false statement, for the webforms do produce receipts as proof of delivery. Here is a receipt for a message I sent yesterday:
Thank you for contacting me. Representing the State of Georgia in the
United States Senate is an honor and a privilege.
I appreciate hearing from you and knowing your concerns. This automated
response serves as a receipt of your e-mail message and allows me to
respond to your direct question or comment in a more timely manner.
*** If you are having a problem with a specific government agency, the
Federal Privacy Act of 1974 requires that I have your written
authorization, signed by you, in order to contact the agency about the
problem. Since electronic communications do not meet the requirements of
the Federal Privacy Act, please call 1-800-234-4208 or visit my website
and select “How Can We Help?” from the menu at the left, then select “Help
with Federal Agencies” for information on beginning the process.***
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me. I look forward to
staying in touch.
Very truly yours,
Saxby Chambliss
—–Original Message—–
From: “WebServer Reserved UID”
Sent: 7/25/2008 1:55:32 PM
To: webmail@chambliss-iq.senate.gov
Cc:
Subject: Womens Suffrage
Sender’s IP address = 71.70.90.154
SCCMAIL
Mr.
David
Howell
878 peachtree street
Apt 628
Atlanta
GA
30309
770-312-6213
davidmhowell@comcast.net
civright
reply
Mr. Chambliss,
Women are suffering daily in the United States. More needs to be done in
the Senate to end Women’s Suffrage. Please help! With the strength and power of this great nation, we can end Women’s Suffrage for good!!!
David Howell
Please respond via e-mail
Submit Form
3 Stephan // Jul 27, 2008 at 12:31 am
Each of the representatives have a telephone number on the web site you mention, presumably to their office. You could just call them up and ask for the email address? Then on the other hand, I’m doubtful that an email will be cared for with higher priority than the web form.
4 Stephan // Jul 27, 2008 at 12:34 am
Ah, and I just looked through the source code of some of the web forms, seems like email addresses are sometimes in there. One I found: senator_bennett@exchange.senate.gov
5 Will Riley // Jul 27, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Thank you David and Stephan for your thoughtful responses. You each raise several important issues. I will try my best to answer them in order.
Let me start with the issues David raised in his comments.
1. On the USA.gov website, the federal government attempts to provide us with contact information to state and local officials. They provide us with a link to multiple websites, where we are supposed to find contact information. So the federal government is already attempting to help provide the latest contact information. I think their attempt falls far short of their obligation. I don’t think the debate is whether or not the federal government should help us contact our elected representatives - they apparently are already doing that; the debate is to what extent. I would agree with you David that individual officials should publish their public contact information. I think that the federal government has a responsibility to also provide this information in aggregate. Moreover, I don’t think that providing such public information would in any way violate federal, state, or local laws.
2. I don’t think it is a “fact” that other means of communication are “just as effective as email communication” in every respect. You are correct to point out that there are multiple ways of contacting a politician besides email, such as by telephone, postal mail, by visiting the office of your elected official. Each of modes of political communication has different strengths and weaknesses. All should be available.
3. I don’t think that the email addresses to elected officials are comparable to the telephone number of the Oval Office, but I take your point that we need a way to filter incoming messages, so that those with the highest priority take priority, and those with lower priority take lower priority. If we were to publish the telephone number of the Oval Office, but not screen the calls, we would have a very dysfunctional oval office. The question is how should we filter incoming messages to public officials - not if we should allow people to submit a message to a public official. I think it is reasonable to publish the telephone numbers and email addresses of elected officials. Every person has a right to post a reasonable message to his or her elected representatives. The use of web forms recognizes this right to some extent. There is a way to submit a message. The question is whether this entry point is accessible enough to accommodate the intended message. I contend that the current web forms on the websites of many elected officials are not accessible enough because unlike ordinary email addresses, they inhibit public disclosure of the message; user’s cannot CC or BCC their friends or family, and they cannot engage in a conversation with back and forth replies. Moreover, unlike emails, where users can specify the subject, web forms often require the use of pre-selected categories, categories which may not adequately frame the intended message. If web forms are required, it is possible to redesign the webforms, perhaps make them more like an email system, to address these concerns. Until then, we should open up the channels of communication with our elected officials by publishing a list of their email addresses.
Finally, David, I agree that many elected representatives, such as Senator Saxby, have configured autoresponders to automatically reply to your web form submissions, but these confirmations are impoverished receipts because they do not include the text that you sent them. I think that including the text is really important evidence that they actually received your message. For privacy reasons, the receipt should be optional.
Stephan, thank you for the email address and for the suggestion. I think we should call their offices and ask them. They may happily give it to us; we just need to check. If they don’t want to give it to us, we should check the source code as you suggest.
6 Will Riley // Jul 27, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Oops, I forgot to include the senator’s last name. For the record, his full name is Saxby Chambliss.
7 Will Riley // Jul 27, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Also, David. I apologize for the current inability for comment authors to edit or delete their posts. I will make this a priority to fix. Let me know if you find a WordPress plugin that does this. Ideally, it would archive revisions.
8 Ari Herzog // Aug 6, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Indeed, Will, there should be a central repository of congressional email addresses, Twitter links, Facebook profiles, etc. But with 540 members of the 110th Congress, who should be tasked with updating the data?
But it can be done. For the email address question, check out this link from the UMichigan governmental library.
Ari Herzogs last blog post..Military Official Confuses Social Media
9 C. McGone // Aug 15, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Mr. Riley you are absolutely right. The Federal Government should provide a complete list of direct email addresses. It is basis common sense, no matter what others here may argue. The web forms do not always work. You cannot attach any relevant support data concerning your inquiry and any correspondence going to a Federal Government Office via USPS must go through a security screening process which results in a delivery time of 4 WEEKS. We should be provided with EASY access to our government officials, but as it stands today, no Federal Government Agency provides direct email access. By the time you have filled out their web mail, either found that it will not work or you cannot convey your concerns/comments completely or in a way you would like without supporting documents, you simply give up. This is by DESIGN. They have taken full advantage of the security measures implemented after 9/11 to further isolate themselves from the great unwashed masses they claim to serve. I say, lose the web mail entirely and replace it with a simple link — to an email ADDRESS.
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