Wired house

Congress is not completely a tech-free zone:

Individual members of Congress and congressional committees have launched World Wide Web sites to keep the public informed of hearing dates and to provide hearing transcripts. A July 1999 congressional report indicated that the House of Representatives has recorded more than 40 million hits a month.

Plans are in the works to improve the Legislative Information System and the document management system, both of which provide information on legislation to congressional staffs. The new DMS will allow for the exchange of documents via the Internet without converting formats. The new system also will allow staffs to receive information on actions taken on the floor and link to resources relevant to the issues on the legislative agenda.

This will allow staff members to respond to constituents' inquiries more efficiently and accurately.

During the last Congress, several committees began to cybercast hearings over the Internet. The Science Committee upgraded its hearing rooms to include data ports to the House network to enable multimedia capabilities.