Our Gold Mouse evaluations commence today! Our evaluators are beginning the process of reviewing the websites of Congress in order to determine which are deserving of the Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze Mouse Awards. This is a substantial undertaking which allows us to accurately track and analyze how Congress connects to citizens online. Just how big is it? To give you an idea, we present an estimate of the 112th Congress Gold Mouse Project by the numbers:
- 4: institutions involved in developing the evaluation procedures (CMF, University of California-Riverside, Northeastern University, and the Ohio State University)
- 6: number of evaluators
- 625: number of Member, committee, and leadership websites
- 104: average number of sites each evaluator will analyze
- 94: number of criteria for each member website evaluation
- 120: cumulative hours spent training evaluators
- 50: average number of minutes to evaluate one site
- 521: number of cumulative hours studying Congress’ online communications
For more about the project, read our FAQ and visit our Building a Better Website page.
