Miss Jane Doe
Webmaster
Ministry of Government Affairs
Government of Freedonia

September 15, 2001

Dear Miss Doe,

With a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 1997, researchers at the University of Arizona, George Mason University in Virginia, and the University of Roskilde in Denmark established the Cyberspace Policy Research Group (CyPRG) to study the diffusion and use of the World Wide Web into public agencies across the world. 

CyPRGís main research interest is how electronic government is shaping the nature of administration and politics in the 21st century. A description of the project is available at our project website:  http://www.arizona.cyprg.edu.

In particular, CyPRG researchers are interested to learn whether public managers can use the Web to make their organizations more transparent, or more efficient, or both, and how managers can better implement the Web in highly complex political and administrative organizations. 

An important part of the research is hearing directly from webmasters and others involved with established and running agency web operations.  As a member of the team, I would very much appreciate conducting a short personal interview with you to learn how your Web activities got started, how they are progressing, what challenges you face, and what the prospects are for your web operation in the future. Our group has interviewed over 100 webmasters in Europe and the United States. 

We have also evaluated all the national websites in your country, including that of your organization.  We would be happy to share our findings from both our interviews and our website evaluations with you.

My e-mail address is tlaporte@xyz.edu.  I can also be reached at (202) 555-1212.  I will call you to follow up and try to find a convenient time to meet.

Sincerely,

Todd La Porte