Locked out of the Hearing Room(.com)

[Gary Ruskin]

Congressional Reform Briefings		May 22, 2000

Here is a great example of how the U.S. Congress won't put its own
documents on the Internet.  

Phil Angell is starting a company, called HearingRoom.Com, which will
give you Internet access to every congressional hearing -- at a cost of
about $5,000-$15,000 per year.

You read that right.  What a slap in the face to the taxpayers.

Congressional hearings are public information.  We taxpayers paid for
these hearings.  We ought to be able to read them, on the Internet, for
free.

HearingRoom.com brags that "Once we begin full production, we will cover
every hearing - full committees, subcommittees, mark-ups, Senate or
House....Complete transcripts of hearings will be available in the
archives after coverage has ended. Exact timing of transcript
availability depends on which product is selected. Transcripts of
real-time coverage are available in the archives twenty (20) minutes
after the hearing concludes; availability of near-time transcripts is
two (2) hours after the gavel."

Of course, the high cost of HearingRoom.Com locks out almost everyone
except corporate lobbyists, trade associations and law firms.  So they
get special access to the inner workings of Congress while the rest of
us remain in the dark.

You can do something about this.  Tell your Members of Congress to put
Congressional hearings on the Internet.  The Congressional switchboard
phone is (202) 225-3121.  To find the names, fax numbers and e-mail
addresses of your Members of Congress, see
<http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html>.

Following is a May 22, 2000 article in the Washington Post about
HearingRoom.Com.

A Hill Hearing Aid 
By Dwight Thompson
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46296-2000May21.html>

Much has been said and written about the new economy overshadowing
Washington's old world of politics and government.

Phil Angell's HearingRoom.com is out to use the former to transform the
latter. He's the latest Washington area entrepreneur to use new
technology to change the way citizens communicate with the federal
government and find out about its workings.

HearingRoom.com delivers the content of one of the most basic of
congressional functions: the hearing. Using voice-recognition
technologies and the Internet, the company claims to be able to deliver
in near-real time transcripts of any congressional hearing.

Angell, 55, was chief of staff to former Environmental Protection Agency
administrator William D. Ruckelshaus and later directed government
relations and corporate communications for Browning-Ferris Industries
Inc., the waste-removal company, and Monsanto Co., the chemicals giant.
Angell said those experiences made him keenly aware of the tightly
controlled market for information on congressional hearings and the
current system's limitations.

"What this is really about is the speed of getting the information out,"
Angell said. "Media gets the info out like a jack rabbit, business like
an antelope, yet Congress is a tortoise. We're creating a business that
is like puttting a jet pack on the turtle."

The surest way not to miss anything at a hearing on legislation that
could affect an industry or a client--actually planting someone in the
hearing room--has in recent years grown increasingly difficult. And the
two main providers of congressional transcripts, Angell said, cover only
a fraction of the total number of hearings, rarely provide transcripts
in under 24 hours and are not taking full advantage of new technologies,
mainly speech recognition and streaming text and audio on the Internet.

Angell believed he could develop and apply these new technologies to
overcome the competition's limitations and deliver a product he knew
from personal experience was in high demand. There is an ever-increasing
number of companies, individuals and interest groups affected by federal
lawmaking, he said. Last May, he decided to turn his idea into reality.

Angell tapped into Washington's "great hidden information market," said
David Price, director of content for Nexis, the news division of online
information powerhouse Lexis-Nexis. "There's really a core of customers
for whom it is very important to get to the 'bare metal' of information,
the very words that the [lawmakers] speak."

A Foot in the Door

Angell's first step was forming a partnership with Chris Chapin, a
longtime friend and successful business consultant, and Bivings Woodell
Inc., a District-based Internet design and consulting firm.

Then Angell's new company had to gain membership to the House and Senate
Press Gallery and access to all of Congress's 192 committees and
subcommittees, which share 44 hearing rooms in the House and 25 in the
Senate. With a little bit of lobbying, Angell convinced a gallery
committee that HearingRoom.com's Web-based approach to delivering
information made it a valuable public resource, the necessary
prerequisite for gallery membership.

Angell next had to find the cash necessary to install a private, fully
digital network in every hearing room.

Over half of the initial start-up cost--a relatively small $750,000--was
provided by the owners. The rest came from Columbia Financial Advisors
in a private placement. To date, that is the only capital the company
has raised, but it is negotiating for a second round of venture capital
investment.

The next critical step was creating the software interface that makes
the whole thing work, and securing proprietary rights so others won't be
able to simply resell the information Hearing-Room.com gathers.

"It's a marriage of existing technology, proprietary modifications of
that technology and new applications which have never been taken to the
market before," Angell said. 

Consultants from Bivings Woodell worked with a range of partners
specializing in audio and text streaming, speech recognition and
voice-writing. The combination results in a system that delivers a
synchronized stream of text and audio with 95 percent accuracy and on
just a five- to 10-minute delay.

The system relies on the skills of a voice writer, someone trained in
dictating speech into a specialized microphone called a stenomask.
Highly specialized, voice writers are normally employed to transcribe
legal proceedings. With the aid of voice-recognition software,
HearingRoom's voice writers can accurately transcribe the multitude of
voices in a congressional hearing and deliver the result quickly.

HearingRoom.com does not plan to fully launch until June 12, when the
wiring to the committee and subcommittee chambers is completed. Angell
said he believes HearingRoom can be profitable in its first year of
operation. Subscribers to the service can expect to pay
handsomely--between $5,000 and $15,000 per year, depending on the level
of service. Hearing-Room.com's clients already include such well-known
names as Patton Boggs, Arnold & Porter, Hill & Knowlton, Hogan and
Hartson, Monsanto and Gallaudet University.

Angell said he is unable to put a dollar figure on the market for
Hearing-Room's product, but believes that reaching beyond the core
lobbying community is where the company's future really lies. He
believes a whole host of groups without direct access to hearings will
want the information: law firms, trade groups, the news media, unions,
nonprofit organizations and embassies.

Jim McCarthy, marketing director for HearingRoom.com, sums up their
expectations of the market: "It's like dangling a steak over a river.
You can't tell how many crocodiles are going to show up or how much
they're going to eat, but you do know that crocodiles love red meat."

Joseph Villarosa, an independent Internet industry analyst who was hired
by HearingRoom.com to evaluate its service, said, "You have to realize
that text streaming of congressional proceedings is only one of many,
many forums where this company can thrive. They can just as easily be
the first to move into streaming text of conference calls, college
lectures, press conferences and so on."

But HearingRoom.com has competition, and it isn't sitting still. Its two
main rivals, Federal Document Clearing House and Federal News Service,
both offer a limited number of congressional transcripts over the Web,
and say that for certain hearings, they can deliver transcripts in real
time.

Tool for Lobbyists

One of HearingRoom.com's clients is the Wexler Group, a District-based
boutique lobbying firm that has clients in the health care,
transportation and science industries. The firm views HearingRoom as a
tool that will help its lobbyists perform their jobs better and with
greater efficiency. Sena Fitzmaurice, a director at Wexler, appreciates
the time-saving factor that archived hearings and key word alerts
provide. Subscribers enter key words when they order information on a
hearing, and are alerted when those words are spoken during the
proceeding.

"For us, the key word feature really sells it," Fitzmaurice said. "It
allows you to be at your desk, doing other work."

Jay Byrne, director of governmental affairs for Monsanto, has seen
Hearing-Room.com's technology work. While describing it as a "very cool
idea," he said its most effective marketing tool will be its value as a
time saver.

"This tool has kept me out of several airplanes," he said. 

© 2000 The Washington Post Company 
<----------- article ends here------------>

The Congressional Accountability Project works to reform the U.S.
Congress.  For more information about how Congress has failed to place
its most important information on the Internet, see the Congressional
Accountability Project's website at
<http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html>.

Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the
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-- 
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Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406
http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html |
mailto:gary@essential.org |
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