By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Friday, July 19, 2002; 6:16 PM
After more than four years of planning, the U.S. Senate is finally replacing its 12-year-old e-mail system, an antiquated communications tool that staffers say has given new meaning to the term "snail mail."
"With the old system, it could take anywhere from 15 minutes to sometimes days for an e-mail to get to its recipient," said Matt Payne-Funk, a systems administrator for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), whose Washington office is among the first to migrate to the Microsoft Outlook-based e-mail system that will replace the old system.
With the exception of a few minor glitches, the transition has so far been a successful, Payne-Funk said, with most messages now processed "almost instantaneously."
Since 1990, senators' 100 Capitol Hill offices and 400 collective field
offices have sent and received e-mail through "cc:Mail," a program
introduced by Lotus in 1985. Last year, however, the Senate was
finally forced to switch to a new e-mail system after Lotus stopped
selling and supporting the program.
Payne-Funk's office mates are still marveling at the new systems'
ability to send e-mails that include Web pages - a feature that was
largely unnecessary in the pre-World Wide Web era of cc:Mail.
Technologically speaking, the Senate is several product cycles
behind the House of Representatives, which began transitioning
to an earlier version of Microsoft's e-mail software in 1996.
While most Senate offices now boast relatively new and powerful
computers and high-speed Internet access, the Senate's e-mail
service remains painfully slow, said one of many Senate staffers
who asked not to be identified for this story.
"If I really want to get a message to someone quickly, I'll use my
Web mail account through Yahoo," the staffer said.
Andy Davis, spokesman for Senate Commerce Committee
Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.), said he was encouraged
by the prospect of a more efficient and reliable system.
"Hopefully it'll be one that won't have quite as many glitches as
we've experienced in the past," he said.
It seems that nearly every Senate office has its own horror story
about the old e-mail system.
