Voice message based administration is a method that allows the directed and controlled collection and presentation of numeric and symbolic information between a group leader and a population of group members, thus allowing many previously impossible administration and management functions to be performed, including those commonly associated with Group Decision-Making Support Systems. The preferred embodiment is implemented as an extension to a Voice Message System. A group leader subscriber account is defined by the Voice Message system administrator. This account type has certain privileges not available to other subscribers. The group leader subscriber defines lists of other subscribers who become group members, the group leader also controls the access to and the content of data tables. The group leader initiates a "Session" on a topic with the group members. A variety of Session types are supported. Each session is made up of a set of items that contain a voice description and numeric or symbolic data. In data collection sessions, group member numeric or symbolic responses are collected and tallied for the leader, in some cases the individual responses are kept secret so that voting and confidential surveys can be performed. In data presentation sessions, numeric or symbolic data is prepared by the leader and can be examined by the members.