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RED CIENTIFICA PERUANA                                                 NOTIRED
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      UI undergrads contribute to White House e-mail system
 
By Andrea Lynn
 
Setting the White House electronic mail system up and running is just the
first hurdle in crossing the communication bridge between the public and 
the president. White House consultants and computer wizards still have 
many jumps ahead, says Noshir Contractor, a UI professor of speech 
communication and an expert in technology in the workplace.
 
On June 1, the White House announced that it would become electronically 
accessible to the public via electronic mail - commonly called e-mail. 
Before the hookup, the White House was, "if not in the dark ages, in the 
early dawn of an electronic era," Contractor said. "It was a one-way 
connection for the most part. You could send messages to the White House,
but you couldn't expect a reply." 
 
Over the last several months, the White House has been focusing on the 
"plumbing" of its e-mail system - getting the network in place and 
preparing to receive messages, Contractor said. Thus, officials haven't 
had much time to think through the organization and routing of messages, 
procedures for handling messages, or where the demand is likely to be 
greatest.
 
That's where Contractor and his students at the UI come in. They've done 
the White House's "homework" - figuring out how to set up a massive 
network with the Oval Office. More specifically, for his course on 
communication technology in the workplace this spring, Contractor and his
students studied the electronic correspondence between the executive 
branch and citizens. Collaborating with colleague Steven Corman and his 
students at Arizona State University, the Illinois group contacted White 
House staff to find out about their concerns. Then they conducted the 
first broad-based survey of users on the Internet, the world's largest 
computer network, asking what they wanted in a public access e-mail system
with the executive branch. The students analyzed responses, took part in 
semester-long group discussions and computer conferences, conducted 
individual research, and wrote a joint report. 
 
On May 28, Contractor, four UI undergraduates and Corman delivered the 
report to Jonathan Gill, White House director of public access e-mail. At
Gill's request, they sent their report to the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology group designing much of the White House e-mail software. 
 
Among other things, the class recommended using a "sender-based" 
preprocessing system, a "computer-then-human" processing strategy, the 
infrastructure of the Internet, and a phone-based "store-and-forward" 
network of bulletin board systems. 
 
Contractor said the White House "encouraged us to keep working, to provide
officials with information on structural features that people want from a
system."
 
On his way out of the White House, Contractor was given a "a bit of 
history"- the first White House business card to include an e-mail 
address. "They've come a long way," he conceded, but added that the White
House is "still behind many organizations, which have been printing their
e-mail addresses on business cards for several years."
 
The e-mail addresses for President Clinton and Vice President Gore are: 
PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV and VICE.PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV. 
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