Prometheus 6   

White House E-Mail System Becomes Less User-Friendly
By JOHN MARKOFF

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 necessary only to sit down at a personal computer connected to the Internet and dash off a note to [email protected].

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

Under a system deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week, those who want to send a message to President 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 e-mail system, at www.whitehouse .gov/webmail, is an effort to be more responsive to the public and offer the administration "real time" access to citizen comments.