The Hill's Jordy Yager reported yesterday on the Gold Mouse Report, released Monday by the non-partisan Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) which:
"analyzed and ranked 618 House, Senate, committee, and leadership websites based on five major categories over three months: Clearly defining the site’s audience; tailoring the site’s information to the audience in a timely-fashion; the user-friendliness of the site; the ease and promotion of communication between user and the site; and the sites creative license while still maintaining user ease and interest."
Unsurprisingly (to any of you that have occasionally visited a Member's website), "62.3 percent of the sites received a 'C' or lower". However, Democrats enjoyed a slight edge, with 61% of Democratic websites receiving a 'C' or better compared to only 55% of Republican websites. The CMF Gold Mouse Report doesn't list the losers, but does name winners and consistently the websites of Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) win Mouse awards year to year.
With an estimated 215 million people in the U.S. using the Internet on a daily basis (including you), and more people using it for political information, (see some of my earlier posts RE: Pew polls,etc.) hopefully individual Members and Congress as a whole will work to improve their sites and internet presence (beyond the website), which is the stated goal of these awards and part of the work of our New Politics Institute (check out a few of our recommended New Tools).
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