For all those voters who think their congress person is reading all constituent e-mails, think again. Many such messages never get opened. That's because Congress is drowning in e-mail from constituents and grassroots organizations. Things have gotten so bad that in September, when Congress was debating the $700 billion financial bailout package, the flood of electronic messages from citizens caused the House's e-mail servers to shut down for multiple days.

The scope of this problem and more is explained by the Congressional Management Foundation in a new report. "This [current] system isn't working for anyone," said Tim Hysom, director of communications and technology solutions at the foundation, a non-profit group that provides management advice to Congress.

The report lays out some common-sense solutions for the problem including bringing together both Hill staff and vendors to develop a more effective technology platform for receiving e-mail. "The time is right for this collaboration," said Hysom.

The Foundation is now planning a task-force in the first quarter of 2009 to start the actual work of easing the dialogue between Congress and its constituents. So if you are a group that sends lots of e-mail to the Hill, you probably want to pay attention to what the foundation is up to.

                                                                                                               -- Bara Vaida