e-Hail To the Chief

Staff members are responding to the feedback, albeit in a formal, official tone, compared with the conversational vibe of the campaign site. Answering a question on the ban on stem cell research -- one of the most voted-on questions -- Phillips's team wrote: "President-elect Obama is a strong supporter of Federal funding for responsible stem cell research and he has pledged to reverse President Bush's restrictions."

Using Change.gov, Tom Daschle, Obama's nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, is trying to mobilize people in support of health care reform. This month, the former senator invited people to submit their input online. About 3,500 comments poured in. In a video message, he then asked people to host group meetings in the coming weeks -- at their homes, in coffee shops -- and pass along the group's input. "We want people to share with us what ideas they have that might improve the system from their own experiences," Daschle says in the video.

But this being the Internet, not everything on Change.gov goes according to plan. The day after it was announced that the Rev. Rick Warren will deliver the opening prayers at Obama's inauguration, for example, a discussion forum focused on community service was instead filled with pages of comments from people opposing Obama's choice. Warren, a conservative evangelical pastor in Orange County, Calif., backed a successful state initiative banning same-sex marriage.

"Over and over, I've seen the kind of spiritual damage done by religious leaders, like Warren, who use their pulpits to verbally beat up gay people," one commentator wrote. Added another: "I wonder if Obama, who is black, would support someone coming to his inauguration and telling everyone that black and white people should not marry?"

The comments are still up on the site.

"This is a part of our Internet culture, and it's an emerging part of our political culture -- you, as a citizen, get to talk back to your government," says Google chief Eric Schmidt, who is also an Obama adviser. "I'm a child of the broadcast TV world. Aside from voting and watching TV and maybe joining a letter-writing campaign, what actual impact could I have on a specific policy? But the new set of tools online allow the government to open itself up and post a series of questions to its citizens. What should we do with health care? By asking that question, not only does the government become more porous, there becomes a much more dynamic dialogue between the government and its citizens. Change.gov offers hints as to how this works. We'll see if it transfers to WhiteHouse.gov."

Adds Al Gore, a senior adviser to Google: "This Internet revolution is still in its infancy, and its effects won't all be positive, of course. The fact is, we're all still trying to figure it out."

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Nothing typifies the disconnect between Capitol Hill and the Web more than the franking rules, which were established when lawmakers communicated with their constituents solely through snail mail. Until the archaic rules were revised this fall, legislators using their official congressional sites were prohibited from linking to YouTube and other commercial sites. (But many did it anyway. Even Pelosi, who has a YouTube channel and a blog called The Gavel, was violating the rules.)

Aided by Karina Newton, her director of new media, Pelosi has been telling committee chairmen since the beginning of 2007 that they needed to webcast committee meetings. In the summer of 2007, 11 House committees did. A year later, nine more followed suit. The upgrade isn't limited to Democrats. Republicans such as Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina have been early Web adapters. Their aim is to talk directly with their constituents.

But Internet-centered groups such as the Washington-based Sunlight Foundation -- which includes Craig Newmark of Craigslist and Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia on its board -- say legislators can do much more to increase transparency, especially when it comes to disclosing online which lobbying groups they're meeting with and what earmarks they're requesting. At the height of the $700 billion bailout of the U.S. financial system in late September, Sunlight started an online petition calling for all legislation to be posted online for a minimum of 72 hours before a vote. According to Sunlight, some 10,000 signed the petition within a few days.

"Every single day a member gets a printed-out version of his or her schedule. Why can't they put that up online? They know the list of earmarks they've submitted to their committee chairmen. Why can't they put that up online? The answer to 'Why can't they put that up?' is 'It's more information than they need to know.' I've had senior members of Congress use those exact words to me," says Ellen Miller, who co-founded Sunlight in 2006.