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Mr. Dreier. Well, thank you very much, Scott. Thank you, Dr. May, for hosting us at Pueblo Community College.

Now, let's charge ahead with our colleague, Mr. Ehlers. Sorry for that, Vern.

Mr. Ehlers. Absolutely no problem. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Dreier. Thank you.

Mr. Ehlers. Just, first of all, a very brief history of my involvement in this. When I came to the Congress in 1994, within a week after I was here, Mr. Gingrich asked me to try to help bring the Republican Conference up to speed in computer matters. He became aware of my history of computerizing the Michigan Senate and asked me to repeat that experience here. In 1995, he_we managed to fulfill his pledge to the American public of putting documents on the Internet. While he was giving his inaugural speech, after being sworn in as the new Speaker, we flipped the switch and the House documents that were ready on the computer were made available over the Internet.

In addition, he asked me to develop a plan to computerize the House, which has resulted in the CyberCongress plan, which we are now in the process of implementing. And by the end of this year, we hope to have in place a good hardware and software infrastructure which can serve as a basis for growth in the future.

The objective of what we are trying to do, first of all, is to have all of the materials, documents, et cetera, available to both the Members and the public as soon as possible after they are prepared. We are hoping to develop a common messaging system and directory for the House of Representatives and, eventually, for the entire Hill, including the Senate and the ancillary organizations such as GPO, the Library of Congress, and so forth.

We are trying to develop a common document format and language, developing it in the SGML language, which will have some real implications I will mention in a moment if I have time.

We are trying to have complete connectivity on the Hill between every computer and every other computer and also complete connectivity to the Internet. Our goal is to have all members sign on to the Internet and be able to receive e-mail and have a home page that the public can view.

We also hope that we can have all Members and staff become not just computer literate but computer knowledgeable. We hope to improve staff and Member efficiency through the system we are developing. We also hope to reduce the use of paper, probably one of the most important and perhaps the most unachievable objective that we have.

We hope to have videoconferencing readily available and we hope_we are well on the way to developing an intranet for use on the Hill.

In terms of the future and what we are working towards there, these are not well-defined objectives, not established by the committee or anything, but things I have in mind: videoconferencing at every desk, which is readily achievable, so that if you want to talk to a colleague or two or three colleagues before a committee meeting about a topic, you simply dial them up and use your computer to communicate with them.

We expect to have many more remote committee meetings, such as this one. By remote committee meeting, I mean all types of variations. It could be a hearing here with witnesses in a remote location. For example, when we were considering the national park bill for the California desert, it would have been very helpful to allow the citizens there to testify before the committee here without having them travel here or us travel there. Or we could just have an occasional remote witness or involve a remote committee member, as we are doing with Mr. McInnis right now. I expect we will have more remote speeches to constituents where we communicate with our constituents through videoconferencing.

I expect fairly shortly we will be able to get into a large number of paperless administrative transactions on the Hill: the vouchers, the payroll, those standard documents that flow hither, tither and yon. And we expect to have those all on computer and paperless, with electronic signature. And that may require some rule changes on your part to validate those electronic signatures.

I expect to seek considerable development in group ware, group ware in daily use on the Internet, that I mentioned we are hoping to develop. And I hope that we will see common use of Personal Digital Assistants. You see a few Members carrying these around now, but they are still a bit cumbersome and not as useful as they should be; but I expect within 5 years or so, instead of carrying the schedule card that we all carry, we would have our little Personal Digital Assistant. Each morning, staff would simply plug that into their computer. Your schedule for the day, for the month, and for the next year would be on there and it would be uploaded daily so that you would have all the information you need for that day. Also notes on committee meetings, et cetera, could all be there and you could review these instantaneously just by pulling it out of your pocket.

The few things that I think we should not expect_and I have some strong feelings on some of these_I would not expect that we will have remote voting on the Floor or in committee. I have a personal bias against that, and that is where I am with Mr. Beilenson. I think that personal contact, the involvement in discussion both at the committee level and on the Floor is necessary for intelligent voting; and I would be opposed to any remote voting, although it is technically feasible. We could install that and have it operational within a week or two if we wanted it. I think it is something that we should not have.

I think we should not expect less personal interaction between Members. I think the personal action, interaction, is what makes the work flow around the Congress, and we should continue that.

Also, I do not expect a reduction in staff as a result of computerization. So many people put in computers with the expectation they are going to pay for themselves through reduction in staff. It doesn't work that way. You can do much more, but don't expect that you will be doing it with less staff.

A great example, before I went to the Michigan legislature I used to be frustrated. I would write letters, never got responses. When I got there, I found out why. They had one secretary for three members using a typewriter. Most letters just were read and pitched into the wastebasket. By the time I left, all the constituent mail was answered, both the House and the Senate_the same staff level, but much more work being done.

What will the impact on Congress be of these changes? First of all, there will be, I think, a considerably changed role for the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate, and also for the Government Printing Office and the Library of Congress in terms of how information is handled. Just as an example, I expect that we will have print on demand and rather than having GPO print 5,000 copies of a report so that they have enough on hand to supply an anticipated need, they would produce the bare minimum necessary. Anyone else requesting a copy would have one printed on demand or you could print it in your own office, if you wish, using the Internet.

I expect rules changes are going to be required. We are going to have to standardize certain procedures, practices, documents, et cetera. This is particularly true of committee documents. And this is going to require rule changes, perhaps even some statutory changes, to ensure uniformity from one committee to another both in terms of availability and practices.

We have to formulize our_formalize our document initiation, maintenance, purging and availability practices. And I have compiled, which I will be working through the process in the House Oversight Committee and other committees_this is nine pages, fairly small type, as you can see_all the documents that I could discover are being produced with some regularity on the Hill. And if we want to make those available to the public, we have to have a mechanism for deciding who initiates them, who maintains them, who purges them, gets them out of the system, and on what schedule.

I believe we have to make these available to the public as soon as possible. Right now, oftentimes, these are delayed 3 or 4 weeks because the committee Chairman has not yet approved the document.

We have to look at the financial aspects, which costs of the new system are allocated to individual Members, which costs to committees, which to the general agencies such as House Information Resources, the Clerk or to other accounts.

And we have to establish some rules about how to handle remote hearings, remote witnesses, the swearing-in process, things of this sort. There is much ground to be touched here that is within your bailiwick. Legislative changes are also going to be required.

Currently, CRS documents by law are the property of the Congress and the Congressman in particular who requested a specific report. They are not on the Internet now and cannot be made available on the Internet without changing the law, and that is an issue of some importance that we have to discuss. We may also need legislative changes so that we can do our job better and ensure that we have access to certain executive branch documents.

Now, that is going to be a very touchy balance-of-powers issue, separation-of-powers issue, but I think we can_our Appropriations Committee could function much more effectively if they had on-line access to the Department of Treasury computers and could follow the trends as quickly as Treasury employees do. They could determine account balances, see where the money is flowing. We would just have a much more knowledgeable Congress, and we could make much more intelligent decisions.

But again those would require legislative changes. Perhaps even constitutional issues would be raised there.

Just, in closing, a few dangers. The danger is, as Mr. Beilenson said earlier, less personal interaction. I said I do not expect less personal interaction. By our very nature, we tend to be gregarious or we tend not to get elected, so we are still going to require and expect personal interaction. But there is that danger that we can become more remote ourselves, and I think we should fight that.

Another danger is the undue influence that technology-savvy individuals or groups might have, and that is readily possible now. With_if someone currently can watch C-SPAN, get on the Internet, get a copy of the bill off the Net, get a copy of the amendment that is being debated on the Floor and fire off an e-mail message to their Congressperson, which is fully possible now for those Members on the Net, those individuals who have that equipment and that ability could have an undue influence on legislation.

You also have to watch out_there is a class distinction at the moment because those individuals tend to have more money to be able to afford this. I think that distinction will disappear in a few years, as computers' attachment to the Internet becomes very inexpensive. But then you still have to worry about the class distinction of the working versus the nonworking. The retirees or the unemployed who have the time to sit and watch C-SPAN and dial in and get the information and let us know what they think would have much more impact on the process than those who are working and don't have the time to do this; and so we have to be very careful about that particular danger.

And one last danger I wanted to mention, and that is the possible public revulsion at their ability to watch this process more closely. And I mean that in all seriousness because if your experience is like mine, when you try to explain to the public what has happened in a particular case_yesterday, the minimum wage, is a classic example. Did I vote for or did I vote against the minimum wage? I voted against the amendment, to add it to the bill, but I voted for the bill. Trying to explain that to the public is difficult and the public is watching the complexities of our internal process here. We have to be concerned about them not fully understanding it and developing a certain revulsion at the process and just saying, those guys don't know what they are doing, or why don't they make it more simple, et cetera.

Now, that is a quick summary of some thoughts on this issue, Mr. Chairman; and I am sorry I don't have time to go into more detail on those, but that may emerge in the discussion. Thank you very much.

Mr. Dreier. I hope we will be able to. Thank you very much. We appreciate having your expertise here.