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Skype, ooVoo videoconferencing finally makes its way to Congress

Congress members and their staff can now video conference with constituents …

Hold onto your hats: Congress has finally discovered Skype. The US House of Representatives Committee on Administration announced on Tuesday that its WiFi network officially supports the use of Skype and ooVoo, which is meant to enable Congress members and staffers to video conference with constituents while saving money on travel costs. The agreement has apparently been in the works for months, and has now come to fruition after smoothing out the House's security concerns.

“During a time when Congress must do more with less, we believe that these low-cost, real-time communication tools will be an effective way to inform and solicit feedback from constituents," Committee on House Administration Chairman Dan Lungren (R-CA) and House Technology Operations Team Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said in a statement. "We thank the CAO for ensuring that Members and staff can utilize these services while maintaining the necessary level of IT security within the House network, and look forward to identifying additional technological solutions to communication and transparency roadblocks.”

According to the Skype Blog, lawmakers will use Skype to hold meetings with those who can't travel to the Congressional office, participate in virtual town meetings, and "collaborate more effectively with other Members on important legislative efforts."

As far as security goes, Skype says that each Congressional office will be able to configure its own settings with a Skype Manager account, and reassures us that no one will be Skype-spying on the Congressional offices without their permission: "Skype software allows people to accept or block a contact, and it never 'answers' a call unless instructed to do so by the user. In other words, Skype video calls are initiated only when users at all ends of the call make the affirmative choice to enable video calling."

ooVoo went into slightly more detail about the process that led to the agreement. "ooVoo is making available to House Members our Professional version which offers cloud-based SSL data encryption," ooVoo spokesperson Bryan Brown told Ars via e-mail. "Over a period of months, the House Technology Operations team reviewed ooVoo's architecture and security throughout the process. The team understood the cloud-driven nature of ooVoo as a differentiator in terms of security and user experience."

In a way, it's surprising that Congress members couldn't previously use videoconferencing services to communicate with constituents—after all, many already use e-mail to do so—but security was the main concern that held back the adoption of more feature-rich technologies. Chaffetz had previously told The Hill that the Technology Operations Team was worried about broadcasting classified items and wanted to ensure that the cameras couldn't be remotely activated. According to Lungren, however, those concerns have been resolved and all members and staff will need to accept "House-specific agreements" in order to "maximize protection" for all involved.

Channel Ars Technica