"More than eight months after anthrax spores crippled the Capitol Hill mail system, the House is preparing to launch a program that could fundamentally change the way Americans communicate with their representatives in Washington.

In the next few weeks, dozens of lawmakers' and committee offices will be selected to participate in a voluntary pilot program in which their incoming mail will be opened by private contractors, scanned into computers and then delivered electronically.

Ultimately, the goal is for the digital mail program to replace the current mail distribution system for the House's 700 member, leadership and committee offices.

"This would obviously be a tremendous difference in how we get mail," said Stacey Farnen a spokeswoman for Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the Committee on House Administration.

The program, spearheaded by the House Office of the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and the House Administration Committee, is being touted as a way to speed mail delivery without sacrificing safety.

Heightened security in the wake of the anthrax attacks has slowed mail delivery to a crawl. After being shipped to New Jersey for irradiation and aired out for days, letters take more than two weeks to arrive in a congressional office, an increase from the five days it took before the anthrax scare.

Under the digital mail program, private contractors would receive unopened, non-irradiated mail and have 24 hours to scan the contents into the House computer network. Congressional staffers then would log on to access mail that was addressed to their office.

Staples and other fasteners would have to be removed from letters to allow them to be fed into high-speed scanning machines, said Bill Brewster, director of document imaging at Pitney Bowes Inc., the company that operates the House mail-processing center and is competing with more than 20 other vendors to run the digital mail program.

After being scanned, documents would be subjected to decontamination and quarantine before eventually being delivered to the intended offices.

Griping about sluggish mail delivery has become a popular pastime on Capitol Hill. Jim Forbes, a spokesman for Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Administration Committee, said several lawmakers have said they are interested in participating in the digital mail pilot program to try to get their mail faster.

But many congressional aides are concerned about the program and said they doubt their offices would participate. They cited issues ranging from constituents' privacy to the potential impact on requests for American flags.

"The mail is intended for the congressional office and not for the contractor. It's not like it's addressed, Dear Pitney Bowes,'" said Jared Hautamaki, an aide to Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). "Some of the stuff our constituents write to us is about court cases and complaints against corporations. Some of those are kind of sensitive."

"Clearly the privacy a person puts in a letter to their congressman is of real importance," said Lou Zickar, who runs the office of Rep. William M. "Mac" Thomberry (R-Tex.). "That's a fundamental principle."

The CAO's office has acknowledged the concerns. In its recent request for bids to operate the digital mail program, the CAO said the contractor would have to provide "a secure environment for mail processing and delivery and employ appropriate security procedures to protect against unauthorized disclosure of information."

Other aides worried about how a digital mail system would affect their office's operations.

The office of Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) keeps hard copies of all letters it receives from constituents. Press secretary Darin Schroeder said that although the office would eventually receive the original mail, it would be difficult to process correspondence that comes in both electronic and paper formats.

Aides also worried about what would happen when constituents write to their representative requesting an American flag that was flown above the Capitol. Those letters often include checks to pay for the flag, and they could be misplaced if envelopes are opened before arriving in congressional offices.

Rick Shapiro, executive director of the Congressional Management Foundation, said the myriad criticisms of the digital mail program are "just resistance to change."

"In the short term, [the program] is going to be viewed as problematic by congressional staffers, but, in the long term, I am projecting that they will come to find that easier," Shapiro said. "It's a process that offices might come to say that it's really been a blessing for us." " (David Enrich, Washington Post, July 8, 2002)