WASHINGTON -- Your friends use it. Your colleagues and kids do, too. But for the federal government, TWITTER is a phenomenon. It's a prized opportunity to communicate in brief, efficient, 140-character morsels. And, unlike the millions of tax dollars needed to communicate by phone, television and radio, TWITTER is free of charge.

The only problem: They haven't gotten the hang of it yet.

A study unveiled by University of Maryland researchers shows Congress' TWITTER use does little to improve government transparency or constituent services. Their report says 80 percent of posts to TWITTER by members of Congress are links to news articles and press releases or descriptions of meetings, meals and workout regimens.

The project's lead researcher, Jennifer Golbeck, said, "There's this huge power that TWITTER provides to Congress and they're not really taking advantage of it. Why post information they can get from other sources?"

Golbeck said one possible reason for the uninspiring posts: Congressional leaders are worried about straying "off-message" and suffering political blowback. Another possible cause is "ghost writing" -- the tendency among government leaders to have staffers write the posts for them.

KFOXTV.COM reviewed multiple posts by members of Congress. A large number of those tweets offered schedule updates or boilerplate news about travel.

Sen. Tom Udall - I'm working to reform the Patriot Act.

Sen. John Cornyn - Be on Fox and Friends around 8;30 am EST

Rep. Ben Lujan - In Las Vegas for the parade

Other posts, from leaders outside our area include some unexpected material. Sen. John McCain tweeted this week, "I'm a huge fan of Mad Men!", an allusion to the popular, Emmy winning TV show.

Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, posted, "stopped for a quick bite to eat at Sting-Rays in Cape Charles."

Congressional staffers who spoke with KFOXTV.COM said TWITTER remains an "experimental" communications tool.

Marissa Padilla, spokeswoman for New Mexico Democratic Sen. Tom Udall told KFOXTV.COM, "His philosophy for using Twitter is to keep it focused on the work that he’s doing in the U.S. Senate and try to provide followers with extra insight into his work, beyond what they might be seeing in the media."

The University of Maryland research reports Republicans are far more likely to use TWITTER than their Democratic colleagues in Congress. Golbeck said the ratio of Republican to Democratic usage is "nearly 2 to 1." Congressional staffers told KFOXTV.COM the minority party in Congress is often the most likely to experiment with new communications tools, because "message creation" is a larger share of the minority's party work.