How many Americans can get their U.S. Senator on the line? Whose call does your Congressman take: yours or the deep-pocketed lobbyist’s or campaign contributor? Democracy suffers when citizens have little meaningful access to or influence over elected officials or a news media focused more on the ‘boxing match’ than issues relevant to citizens’ lives.

With Capitol News Connection's interactive Ask Your Lawmaker website (www.askyourlawmaker.org) and customizable content-rich widgets, anyone with an Internet connection or a cell phone can hold power to account on the issues that matter where they live and work. Ask Your Lawmaker gives citizens a powerful voice: It is our experience that asking questions can help shape policy and the news agenda. Bad stuff happens when no one is watching, and our elected representatives need to know citizens are watching them – closely.  Ask Your Lawmaker utilizes the interactivity, customizability and viral nature of the Web to connect citizens both to each other and to their Congressional lawmakers. It raises the level of discourse and debate and shines the light of transparency on the political process.

By adding a variety of mobile services and applications, AYL plans to extend its reach beyond the Internet so that people can participate any time, any place, and away from their desktops or laptops. Whether submitting a question via SMS, finding out who your Congress person is via GPS or a street address, mapping a question, recording audio of your question on an iPhone, listening, sharing or ‘truth-squading’ an answer, CNC's proposed suite of mobile solutions will make lawmaker's ears as accessible as the phone in your pocket.

The plan is to start simple with SMS. By allowing users to pair their cell phone number with their AYL user account they will be able to: send question to ‘All U.S. Congress’ and individual lawmakers, receive notifications when their questions have been answered, and share answers with their friends – all using text messaging.

A more advanced application will also be developed for different smart phone platforms (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile). These more feature-rich applications will replicate the existing functionality of the widget. It will allow users to toggle between questions and answers, ask and vote on questions, read and listen to answers, comment and share answers and ask follow up questions. It will also feature the same customization options offered by the widget, allowing users to configure by topic (Climate Change Qs&As, Bailout Qs&As), location (California Qs&As), individual lawmaker (Speaker Pelosi’s Qs&As) and by user ID (“My Qs&As).  Additionally, new functionality will let users figure out who their lawmaker is (GPS or street address), submit questions, share content with friends, ‘truth squad’ answers and collaborate around new questions.

Ultimately – and we recognize this a year or two down the line, but ultimately – we plan to develop more sophisticated applications that turn mobile devices into multimedia, multiplatform reporting or newsgathering devices. With such a technology, users could submit audio and video of their own questions directly to the system, as well as a lawmaker’s answer gathered by citizen ‘super users’ when lawmakers are home in their districts. Using the same technology, CNC reporters would be able to get an answer to the question using the same technology and post the answer with audio and video back to the website and the user’s phone. We understand this requires some heavy lifting (video capable cell phones, higher capacity networks, and reliable speech to text conversion) but by looking ahead of the curve and anticipating needs we hope to successfully fundraise and deliver cutting edge solutions. In addition: Capitol News Connection's mission is to ensure voters are engaged and lawmakers accountable towards an informed democracy. Since 2003, the nonprofit CNC has been providing innovative, independent and investigative coverage from Congress to 3 million public radio listeners in 200+ markets across the country. As CNC transitions to a multimedia, multiplatform news service, its priority is to involve citizens in the newsgathering process as it continues to create the same exclusive investigative coverage focused on local impacts of national decisions that have won us awards and accolades in public radio. CNC is emerging as a unique ‘hybrid’ between citizens and professional journalists, each story emerging as a ‘long-tail’ social network of its own over time. With the launch of Ask Your Lawmaker in January 2008, CNC has provided a web platform that empowers voters to be more active and effective civic participants. Increasingly user questions inform our journalism and result in news coverage of impact. By informing users about the issues, their lawmakers and decisions made in Congress – and providing a mechanism for those users to ask and socialize around questions for lawmakers – CNC is leveling the playing field by giving citizens a seat at table. Lawmakers cannot sidestep a question asked by 7,934 people, especially if a journalist makes sure they answer the question in full, and asks the oft-neglected but important follow-up question. Leveraging the power of web 2.0 and G3 with the accredited ‘shoe-leather’ access of CNC journalists, the mobile Ask Your Lawmaker will further empower citizens – as individuals and in aggregate – to set the legislative and media agendas, influence policy and hold their lawmakers accountable by asking important questions other media avoid to bring lawmakers' attention to problems, challenges and solutions.