E-mailing White House not easy

Do you want to send an e-mail message to the White House?

Good luck.

In the past, to tell President Bush -- or at least those assigned to read his mail -- what was on your mind it was only necessary to sit down at a personal computer connected to the Internet and dash off an e-mail note to president@whitehouse.gov.

But this week, Tom Matzzie, an online organizer with the AFL-CIO discovered that communicating with the White House has become a bit more daunting. When he sent an e-mail protest against a Bush administration policy, the message was bounced back with an automated reply, saying that he had to send it again in a new way.

Under a system that was deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week, those who want to send a message to Bush must now navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts by asking whether the message sender supports White House policy or differs with it.

The White House says the new system, located on the Web at whitehouse.gov/webmail, is an effort to be more responsive to the public and offer the administration "real-time" access to citizen comments.

To complete a message to the president also requires choosing a subject from the provided list, then entering a full name, organization, address and e-mail address. Once the message is sent, the writer must wait for an automated response to the e-mail address listed, asking whether the addressee intended to send the message. The message is delivered to the White House only after the person using that e-mail address confirms it.

Jimmy Orr, a White House spokesman, described the system as an "enhancement" aimed at improving communications.

He said that the White House, which gets about 15,000 electronic messages each day, had designed the new system during the last nine months in partnership with a private firm that he would not identify.

"It provides an additional means for individuals to inquire about policy issues at the White House and get a personalized response in 24 to 48 hours," said Orr, the Internet news director at the White House.

Some Internet usability experts think the new method for sending messages is not doing much to enhance communications between the White House and the public.

"Overall it's a very cumbersome process," said Jakob Nielsen, an authority on Web design who helps run a consulting group, Nielsen Norman Group, in Fremont, Calif. "It's probably designed deliberately to cut down on their e-mail."

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