Just like the Congressional Management Foundation, we’d like to single out Rep. Paul Ryan and the Committee on Education and Workforce for being awarded the Platinum Mouse for the #1 House Member and #1 Committee website. Here’s a list of all our award-winning clients:

Platinum (Best in Class)

• Rep. Paul Ryan
• Education and Workforce Committee

Gold (A+)

• Natural Resources Committee
• Rep. Mike Ross
• Rep. Mike Simpson
• Small Business Committee
• Rep. Mike Thompson

Silver (A)

• Budget Committee
• Rep. Ted Deutch
• Financial Services Committee
• Rep. Bill Huizenga
• Rep. Ed Royce
• Speaker of the House
• Rep. Steve Stivers

Bronze (A-)

• Rep. John Boehner
• Rep. Geoff Davis
• Rep. Silvestre Reyes
• Rep. David Scott

For those of us who work in the constituent relationship management (CRM) arena, this is not surprising news. E-mail, websites and social media have given voters new and easier ways to contact their representative, and as a result, the volume of constituent communications has grown dramatically.

The report reveals several important figures. The first is that responding to constituent messages continues to be an important effort in congressional offices. Of those surveyed for the report, 95 percent of Senate staff and 89 percent of House staff said responding to constituent communications is a high priority. There is a corollary in another recently released CMF report on social media that offices highly engaged on Facebook and Twitter “believe the Internet has improved the dialogue between citizens and Congress.” This is good news for both citizens and advocacy organizations.

The Internet has driven many good-government initiatives forward, such as increased transparency and accountability, but there has been concern that this influx of messages to elected officials would paralyze offices. This, however, has not been the case throughout Congress. The CMF reported that 58 percent of staffers said they spend more time on constituent communications than they did two years ago. Further, 46 percent said their offices have upped mail operation resources to handle the growing volume.

The second revealing figure indicates that many of the challenges offices face in responding to constituents can be solved with better processes and technology. Offices are increasingly using e-mail to respond to constituent correspondence. The CMF report notes that 86 percent of congressional offices answer all or most of their constituent e-mail with an e-mail. This is up from 37 percent in 2005. One contributing factor in this shift is that legislators and their staff are more comfortable using the technology, overcoming a past concern that “e-mail responses would be altered, which could result in the misrepresentation of the Member’s position.”

The senior managers and staffers surveyed for the CMF report all noted the same top challenges to responding more quickly to constituent correspondence. Senior managers and staffers concurred that mail volume is a major concern, but for the staffers whose primary task is answering mail, the “review and approval process” was indicated as an even bigger hurdle. The process for responding to a constituent inquiry or concern can be laborious and time consuming, requiring approval from multiple levels of the congressional staff hierarchy.

One solution to challenges with volume and approval is to adopt CRM technologies as quickly as possible. Technologies such as our Fireside CRM software make it easier for offices to interact with voters by bringing together all communications tools into a central hub. This means office staff spends less time managing casework and correspondence and more time serving constituent needs. It also means the arduous approval process can be streamlined. Fireside21 software, for example, offers notification alerts and better filters for more efficient viewing and approval.

Even in tough economic times and with office budget cuts, there are technological solutions available to Congress. To improve CRM capabilities, offices need not spend more but should spend smarter. The tools that facilitate constituent communications are available today, and as the CMF report shows, they can make all the difference.

Homepage Analysis

Items on your homepage receive the most attention, but it’s impossible to highlight everything on your homepage without it becoming cluttered.  Think about the natural path you would think to follow to find certain pieces of information. Nothing should be “buried” on your website, but highly-trafficked sections should be even easier to find. Check out your web stats to see how people navigate through your website.  If you notice that some popular pages aren’t easily found from your homepage, consider making an update to your navigation or Quick Links.

Internal Page Analysis

Your internal pages should follow a consistent organizational structure. Do you have internal navigation links on your sidebars?  Have they been updated to reflect the important features of a given section?  Perhaps you’ve added a new document type to your website in the past year.  Does your internal sidebar reflect this?  If you find that your internal sidebars are consistently longer than page content, perhaps you should consider consolidating some pages.  Remember, fewer clicks means people can get to information they want faster.

This Wrap Up brings an end to our CMF series, but the work of maintaining your Congressional website doesn’t stop here. We all pay a lot of attention to website content and organization leading up to the awards, but don’t forget that your constituents benefit from a great website all year long!  Feel free to reach out to us if you have questions about the CMF Gold Mouse awards or if you have ideas about how we can help you get your site it tip-top shape.

Other posts in this series:

• How to Win a Gold Mouse Award, Part I – Where Do You Start?
• How to Win a Gold Mouse Award, Part II – What’s Next?

5. District/State information

Your district pages are another area that don’t require a great deal of upkeep, but they should be informative. Be sure to include information specific to your district and state including demographic information, a map (or interactive map), and local resources that your constituents can use. Rep. Mazie Hirono and Rep. Lynn Westmoreland have very thorough District sections that highlight useful information for residents and visitors to their districts.

6. Accountability

By providing links to your Member’s sponsored and co-sponsored legislation, voting record, and key votes by issue, you are able to highlight your Member’s accomplishments and demonstrate all of the work being done on your constituents’ behalf.  While linking to the THOMAS and Clerk websites covers the first two items, you can also highlight specific votes on your Issue pages to tie everything together.

7. Legislative Process

If you look at your website as an educational resource for your constituents, you’ll be able to think of things that can be added to inform them about the legislative process. Dedicate a page (or more!) to explaining how Congress works. Where does your Member fit in the whole process?  Rep. Silvestre Reyes has a Legislative Information section which is highlighted in the navigation bar. This section provides information about the Legislative Branch, the legislative process, and invites visitors to learn more about the government.

8. Floor Proceedings

While the Member is busy doing work in DC, your constituents are curious about what’s happening. Rep. Mike Ross has a great Issues & Legislation section that breaks down what he is doing in Congress, what’s currently happening in Congress, and how Congress works.  Providing this information lets your constituents know all of the work that is being done while the Member is away from your district.

9. Media Communication

Your press releases are probably updated frequently in your office, but keep in mind that both quality and quantity count.  There are also other kinds of items that fall under the “media” umbrella including other kinds of written releases (i.e. columns and op-ed pieces), video, and audio.  Does your Member have a YouTube account?  Do you have a regular podcast?  If so, you should consider integrating both of these things into your website.

10. Communication Technology and Use of Social Media

Highlighting the Member’s social media accounts on your website is a great way to keep your constituents involved!  Linking your social media accounts on your website and vice versa allows visitors to reach out to the Member in the way that is most comfortable for them. Rep. Lamar Smith’s social media accounts are prominently displayed on the homepage. You’ll also notice that “share” icons are available throughout the site to encourage further interaction with social media. These are both great ways to keep the constituent conversation moving forward.

Other posts in this series:

• How to Win a Gold Mouse Award, Part I – Where Do You Start?

The most important thing to remember about the Gold Mouse Awards is that they aren’t about having a flashy design or a brand new feature that no one else has.  The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) is looking for websites that do an outstanding job of communicating with and advocating for constituents.  The bottom line–the Golden Mouse is about CONTENT!

There are four areas of the CMF rating criteria that you can initially focus on when evaluating your website:

1. Usability – How easy is it for visitors to find what they need on your website?

Congressman Geoff Davis was recognized by the CMF for having an easily-navigable website and you can turn to that site for an idea of what great organization looks like. His website’s navigation tools, menu sidebars, and content organization were highlighted for being very user-friendly. We love it when our clients are acknowledged for their great work!

A good way to think about your website’s usability is to put yourself in the position of different members of your audience. 1) If you want to do a search through content on the website, is there a search engine on the site that is easy to find and use?  2) If you’re a constituent who needs information on casework, how many “clicks” does it take to find out what you need and who you should contact to start a case?  3) If you’re a constituent or member of the press who wants to read all of the most recent news items on a specific issue, how easy are they to find?  4) If you have a comment or question for the congressperson, how long does it take to find his out where/how to send them an email?

• What you can do: Since you’re very familiar with the layout and organization of content on your homepage and internal pages, you could even ask a friend or family member to go through and find specific things on your website. Get feedback from someone who is less familiar with your website to see if they can find things quickly or if they can’t find certain things at all! After you’ve evaluated the usability of your website, you can make changes as necessary.  If you realize that there are some very important internal pages to your website that take a lot of “clicks” to find, you may want to feature those links on your homepage in a Quick Links section.  You could also develop a new page on your website that lays out where people can find some specific information that receives a lot of traffic on your website.  The web stats of your website will be very helpful in seeing which pages people seek the most.

2. Timeliness – Is the content on your website up to date?

While it’s usually a concern to keep your Newsroom up to date with press releases and articles, there are other areas that timeliness applies to as well. Issue statements, vote rationales, accomplishments, video, and audio updates are evaluated by the CMF in addition to your news items.

• What you can do: Keeping all of these sections of your website up to date will take a combined effort by staffers in your office. It will likely be overwhelming to consider everything at once, but you can determine which areas need the most work (perhaps your issue statements haven’t been updated for this session of Congress) and start there.  Even quickly checking to see if your THOMAS search box is searching the current Congress will put you on the right path for success in this area.

3. Information on issues – Do you have up-to-date information on current issues?

A lot of visitors to your website will be looking for your Member’s stance on various issues. Does your website include information about the district/state issues that are important to your Member?  Is there information about the work your Member is doing with regard to these issues? According to the CMF, the average Member website scored 3.6 out of 5 upon an evaluation of their issue pages.  Congressman Randy Forbes was recognized by the CMF for demonstrating informative issue pages.  In addition to having up to date issue statements, the Congressman’s website also draws attention to his work on specific issues including relevant letters, sponsored and cosponsored legislation, and votes.

• What you can do: Beefing up your issue pages does take a bit of work, but you already have all of the information at your fingertips–it’s just a matter of gathering relevant information for your visitors to find.  Look through your press releases and files and make sure that you’ve “checked off” which issues they are related to.  Browse through the Member’s vote record to see which votes should be highlighted on various issue pages.  Pulling all of this information together on issue pages helps your visitors see not only your Member’s stance on an issue, but also what is being done to promote that position.

4. Constituent services and casework – Do your constituent services and casework sections have information about the processes involved?

Generally speaking, your Constituent Services and Casework sections aren’t areas that require constant upkeep like some of the other areas of your website, but they shouldn’t be neglected.  They should inform your constituents about how your office can assist them and what happens when they reach out to you.  According to the CMF, nearly 50% of Member websites did not have information on how the casework process works.  This is very easy to remedy!

• What you can do: In order to improve these sections, you could consider the 5 W’s (and an H) we all learn about in school. WHO is visiting your website looking for assistance, WHAT kind of assistance will they need, WHEN can your office intervene and provide help, WHERE should your constituent look for more information, WHY is reaching out to your office a good idea, and HOW does the process work?

Once you go through all of those areas of your website, you’re all done, right?  Not quite, but don’t worry—Fireside21 has you covered.  Be on the lookout for the next two posts in our CMF Gold Mouse series so you can get your website in the race for Gold!  Also, feel free to check out our previous posts on the CMF Gold Mouse awards.

It looks like this competition was more difficult than ever. Since 1998, the CMF has assessed the quality of congressional Web sites to determine how Members of Congress can use the Internet to more effectively communicate with and serve citizens.

Here are the Fireside21 winners:

Gold Mouse

• Geoff Davis
• George Radanovich
• Ed Royce
• Don Young
• Committee on Natural Resources (Minority)
• House Republican Leader

Silver Mouse

• Mike Conaway
• Randy Forbes
• Pete Hoekstra
• Silvestre Reyes

Bronze Mouse

• Mary Bono Mack
• John Boozman
• Paul Broun
• Ginny Brown-Waite
• Dave Camp
• Joseph Cao
• Mike Castle
• Bill Posey
• Dave Reichert
• Dana Rohrabacher
• Lucille Roybal-Allard
• David Scott
• Henry Waxman

Finally, congratulations to the CMF for putting together a great event for the Mouse Awards and the announcement of their new Partnership for a More Perfect Union.

UPDATE: We received an email alerting us that Mike Ross was working with iConstituent at the time of the judging for these awards. My mistake–I’ve updated the list above. Nevertheless, I want to congratulate Mike Ross, as well as Paul Ryan and the Committee on Education and Labor (minority) who have all decided to migrate their award-winning websites to Fireside21.

Here are three rules to help:

Rule #1 – Have a Standard Navigation
The most fundamental tool of a web site to stay organized is its navigation. It seems pretty basic, but CMF notes many Congressional offices “break Web Site design and layout standards that Web users have come to expect.” I am a big fan of trying to “break the mold” and have a unique web site, but it is important to maintain certain best practices. Your navigation also presents the opportunity to start categorizing your content with drop-down menus.

Rule #2 – Organize Around Your Audiences
This brings up another important rule in keeping your site organized: know your audiences. Your site is visited by a wide variety of consituents, media and other inside the beltway types. In order for your site to organize content efficiently, these audiences need to be taken into account. One of the most overlooked assets in keeping track of audiences are your web site’s statistics. Take a look at what types of pages are getting the most traffic and work backwards to establishing your key audiences.

Rule #3 – Rank & Prioritize Content
I think that the most common mistake made by House offices is to have to much content on their homepage. There are too many services, too many legislative issues and too many news updates for everything to be dumped on your homepage. Instead, rank your content with 1, 2 or 3 for the number of clicks you want to require visitors to make to find different content. It’s going to be hard, but you need to try to have more 3’s that 2’s and more 2’s than 1’s! Another component to these rankings is timeliness. This stuff can and should change. Your featured issues this week/month should be different that those on your homepage next month.

So go forth and win your Gold Mouse Award, but remember even if you are one of the lucky few to be recognized by the CMF that your job is not done. This series of tips has been structured around the CMF criteria, but the goal is for you to provide a valuable resource for your constituents 365 days a year.

Other posts is this series:

• How to Win a Gold Mouse Award, Part I – Deal Breakers
• How to Win a Gold Mouse Award, Part II – Legislative Content

Anyways, on to the CMF recommended legislative content!

How Congress Works

This is intended to be an educational section of your web site, but it needs to be structured for a wide audience. Many offices have a “Kids” section about how Congress works, but there need to be grown-up resources too. Here are some questions you should seek to answer:

1. How does Congress operate?
2. What is the role of a Member?
3. How does a bill become a law?
4. How do committees work?
5. Who is in “Leadership” and what impact do they have?
6. How does voting work?
7. What are rules and how do they impact votes?

What Congress is Doing

What is happening right now, today? The Library of Congress, Clerk and Leadership offices are your friends! There is no need to keep all of this information up to date on your site if these external resources are clearly organizes (but be sure to test regularly in case these links break!):

1. Floor Information – there are a couple of resources including the Clerk and Leadership offices.
2. Vote Records – you can just link to the Clerk, but it would be nice to highlight a couple of your recent votes before offering the link.
3. Legislative Bill Searches – provide embedded searches or links to Thomas.
4. Congressional Record – hours of enjoyment.

Policy Information

This section is tough. No office like to say too much in writing about policy…it can only make people angry! At least, that seems to be the view of most offices. Nevertheless, this is the most common section of your web site that your constituent is going to visit. As the CMF says, “If constituents can’t find a Members stance or record on their official web site, they will find it elsewhere.”

You are going to need:

1. National issue statements – these are often pretty generic, but the need to be updated regularly.
2. Issues of importance to your boss – what are your office’s priorities? This often leads to committee or caucus pages too.
3. Links to more information by issue, like press releases or CRS files. The more the better.
4. Bill sponsor / cosponsor – there are external links you can use for both, but why not talk a little about all those bills that you are the lead sponsor?
5. State/Local issues – just because we’re in D.C. doesn’t mean you can ignore what going on in the district. Again, links to state and local legislative resources are acceptable.
6. Vote record – see above, but consider vote justifications.

BONUS Ideas

Here are some ideas not in the CMF recommendations that you might to consider:

1. Legislative Roadmap – what’s going to be debated this summer, fall and winter? What are the big reauthorizations this year? Sprinkle in some information about the appropriations calendar and your Legislative Roadmap could provide great insight to your constituents.
2. Policy Surveys – hey how about some interactivity? I mentioned above that most constituents visiting your site go directly to your issue pages. What I didn’t mention is that they are usually unsatisfied and find their way to your contact form. What if you had a bunch of surveys geared to each issue topic? While you are at it, don’t forget to ask you constituent if they want to subscribe for email alerts.
3. Video Issue Statements – get a Flip Camcorder and start recording short video segments of your boss on the issues. A little rough clipping and rearranging and you’ve got a 30 or 60 second segment to post to your issue directories.

Other posts is this series:

• How to Win a Gold Mouse Award, Part I – Deal Breakers
]]> http://www.fireside21.com/how-to-win-a-gold-mouse-award-part-ii-legislative-content/feed/ 0 http://www.fireside21.com/how-to-win-a-gold-mouse-award-part-i-deal-breakers/ http://www.fireside21.com/how-to-win-a-gold-mouse-award-part-i-deal-breakers/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 17:34:37 +0000 Ken http://www.fireside21.com/?p=523 This is the first in a series of post about the upcoming CMF Gold Mouse Awards.  CMF has announced that they are going to begin reviewing Congressional web sites in July.  So, do you want to win a Gold Mouse award?  Do you want to know how?  Here is where to start.

Deal Breakers
Just like Liz Lemon, the CMF has a list of things that will automatically take you out of the running for a Mouse award.  Here are some Deal Breakers for Liz Lemon:

And here are the CMF Deal Breakers:

1. Timeliness

Have you updated your web site this year?   I mean more than just press releases?  You need to have information on your legislative priorities along with current issue content for the 111th Congress.   To help with this task, we recommend that the web site be a shared responsibility among staffers to keep content fresh and accurate.  Use the Gold Mouse reviews to get your team focused on cleaning up all of your content.

2. Usability
Is it easy to find what you are looking for on your web site?   In order to answer this question, you need to take into account the various audiences that your web site communicates to, including press and various types of constituents.   Some constituents are looking for updates on the latest National headlines, others need help with agencies and some are only interested in sending you an email.   In looking at your homepage, is it quick and easy to navigate to these resources? Dedicated areas for “hot topic” links or buttons can be a great help.

3. Issue Content
This is related to the Timeliness Deal Breaker, but is worth repeating as most Congressional web sites miss out on awards because of the weight CMF puts on issue content.  The CMF evaluation will look for not only national issue content, but also information on state and local policy.   You might be best served by researching and linking to external resources.   External resources can be used to supplement you national issue content too.  Links to the clerk and Thomas for votes and legislative bill searches are pretty much required.

4. Constituent Casework
The final CMF Deal Breaker is not providing sufficient information about how your office can help constituents with federal agencies.   If a constituent is going online to research this topic, that information needs to be there on your web site.  The CMF does not like to see, “For information contact my office by phone.”  Now this might be debatable – I often prefer to speak to someone on the phone.  Many offices have procedures that have been in place for years and staff can be set in their ways of handling casework.  Often, to get past this Deal Breaker it may require some convincing of district staff to change how they disseminate information.

So those are the four CMF Deal Breakers that you are going to need to avoid to win a Gold Mouse Award.  More blog posts to follow with ideas on legislative, constituent service and press/communications content for your web site.

]]> http://www.fireside21.com/how-to-win-a-gold-mouse-award-part-i-deal-breakers/feed/ 2 http://www.fireside21.com/cmf-mouse-award-training-sessions/ http://www.fireside21.com/cmf-mouse-award-training-sessions/#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:31:04 +0000 Ken http://www.fireside21.com/?p=131 The CMF held two helpful training sessions yesterday to follow-up on the release of their Gold Mouse Report. If you did not get the chance to attend you should definitely download the slides from the presentations.

Among all of the criteria the CMF used in assigning grades to Congressional sites, they had four “Deal Breakers” that were weighed more heavily:



Here are the House and Senate slides (PDF) from the training sessions.

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