The National Association of Legislative Information Technology, NALIT, had a great session entitled Interactive Technologies. It was attended by around 40 people, many of which appeared to be legislative staff.

Panelists included House Majority Leader Steve Harrelson from the Arkansas House of Representatives. He spoke about his site, Under the Dome. Senator John Valentine, President of the Utah State Senate spoke about his site, The Senate Site which is the “Unofficial Voice of the Utah Senate Majority”.

They spoke about these sites being unofficial sites, financed either individually, as is Rep. Harrelson’s case, or by a PAC in Sen. Valentine’s case. In Sen. Valentine’s case, they have a staffer who works part time for the State Senate and part time for the Senate Republican PAC. The staffer clocks in and out of each job according to the task he is working on. The PAC has bought its own computer and pays $25/month for electricity, internet access and desktop space in the Utah Senate office.

One advantage of having these sites be independent is that it avoids some of the issues around freedom of speech and who can moderate what on the site. There was a lot of discussion about maintaining a level of discourse that encourages intelligent discussion and not the brow bashing so common on many blogs. Sen. Valentine noted the difference between having an opinion and being well informed.

One person, talking about the importance of strong moderation asked the question, “How many of you legislators would allow town meetings where people speak with brown bags over their heads?” It was suggested that technology rarely changes human behavior and many people suggested the people you see on the blogs are the same gadflies you see all the time. The question was posed about how to reach a broader audience.

Jeffrey Griffith, former Associate Director and Chief Legislative Information Officer for the Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service spoke about his recent research into efforts to bring legislative information systems to various organizations in Europe. He noted independent research done on one British Member of Parliaments constituent emails which resulted in 25% of the respondents claiming they had had their opinions changed and had voted for the MP as a result of his email outreach. This study indicates that at least in some cases, internet outreach is changing opinions and reaching new audiences.

Sen. Valentine observed that his traditional mail hasn’t decreased as his email increased. Instead, older constituents continued to use traditional mail and younger constituents used email.

I asked if any one was doing anything to reach beyond the current online groups, using Facebook, MySpace or similar sites. Rep. Harrelson spoke about his Facebook and MySpace presence as well as mentioning the Democratic Party’s PartyBuilder.

I asked about people doing anything to widgetize or deportalize their websites. Rep. Harrelson spoke about his blog’s RSS feed being picked up by Arkansas based aggregators and Sen. Valentine spoke about having a large number of people subscribing to his site via email. Sen. Valentine also spoke of the importance of media crossover when information from the blog would be talked about in the newspapers or during drive time radio.

It was good to hear about various state legislative bodies here in the States, as well as people in Europe making strides to build communities that engage in intelligent discussion about the issues. We need more of that.