Recognizing the Best Web Sites on Capitol Hill
selected charts
- Figure 4. Overall Distribution of Grades
- Figure 6. Comparison of Features on House and Senate Member Web Sites
- Figure 7. Comparison of House and Senate Overall Grades (Member, Committee and Leadership)
- Figure 10. Comparison of House and Senate Committee Grades
- Figure 11. Comparison of Democratic and Republican Overall Grades (Member, Committee and Leadership)
- Figure 20. 2003 Winners Receiving Mouse Awards in 2006
Figure 4. Overall Distribution of Grades
As the Internet continues to grow more and more commonplace, it becomes increasingly important for congressional offices to have not just an online presence, but to have sites that provide helpful, up-to-date information to their constituents. To accomplish that, offices should have qualified as a “B” or “C.” But 38.6% of sites were substandard or failing. Regrettably, the most common grade earned was a “D”.
Figure 6. Comparison of Features on House and Senate Member Web Sites
This is a selection of the more interesting features—and not an exhaustive list—of what we looked for in our evaluations.
Click here to view a larger image of this chart.
Figure 7. Comparison of House and Senate Overall Grades (Member, Committee and Leadership)
Senate sites overall (including Member, committee, and leadership offices) are doing better than their House counterparts. Senate sites earned 7.7% more “A”s and “B”s than House sites. The House had a higher percentage of sites that were substandard or failing (4.5%), and a significantly higher number of “D”s (almost 11% more). However, the Senate had considerably more “F”s than the House—18.3% versus 11.9%, respectively. In sum, while Senate sites (including Member,committee, and leadership) are doing better overall than their House counterparts, both chambers will need to improve their Web sites if they are to catch up with user expectations.
Figure 10. Comparison of House and Senate Committee Grades
House committee Web sites perform better than their counterparts in the Senate. House committee sites received 4.1% more “A”s than Senate committee sites. Not only did more than three-quarters of the House committee Web sites get at least a “C” or better, none of the House sites received a failing grade, compared to 17.4% of Senate sites receiving “F”s.
Figure 11. Comparison of Democratic and Republican Overall Grades (Member, Committee and Leadership)
Republican congressional Web sites (including Member, committee,and leadership offices) are generally better than Democratic* sites. Republicans had a higher percentage of “A”s and “B”s: 5.8% more Republican sites scored above a “C” than did Democratic sites, and Democrats had 9.7% more “D”s and “F”s than Republicans. Almost two out of three Republican sites received at least a “C,” compared to slightly over half of Democratic sites.
Figure 20. 2003 Winners Receiving Mouse Awards in 2006
One notable finding was that those offices that won awards when they were last given out in 2003 continued to excel in 2006. Past Gold Mouse winners have stayed particularly strong. A high percentage of award-winning Member office sites have received awards in the past: 54.6% of 2003 Gold Mouse winners won a Mouse Award this year, with 18.2% of them again winning a Gold Mouse award.
Only three Member sites have won an award all three times the Mouse Awards have been given out (in 2002, 2003, and 2006): Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) and Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT). While all three have earned "A"s every time, only Sen. Leahy won a Gold Mouse all three times. In the House, no Member office that won an award in the past scored below a “C.” This suggests that the best sites are keeping up with the pace of growth online, while those sites lagging behind have failed to make up ground in the years since the sites were last evaluated.
* For the purposes of analysis, Independents were counted with the party with which they caucused.
additional information
View the 2006 Mouse Award winners!
Download the entire 
2006GoldMouseReport.pdf (5.59 MB)
(Note: If you have trouble downloading due to its large filesize, please contact us at cmf(at)cmfweb(dot)org and we will e-mail it to you.)
88 pages
Copyright 2007 by the Congressional Management Foundation
ISBN: 1-930473-97-4
