Sunday, December 21, 2008

Government Coming Alive

I'm terribly excited about all the stuff going on at change.gov. He's so engaged, it feels like he's our president already -- even more so than our previous presidents, who felt distant even when they were in office. Much has been said about the democratic nature of the Web; it's great to see it being applied to our government.

Here in Seattle, in the midst of a week of snowstorms, I've discovered some of that great government Web energy at the local level: the Washington State Department of Transportation has a blog, a Twitter feed, and a Flickr stream. The blog is remarkably friendly, the twitter feed is highly engaged (filled with responses to other people's questions and comments), and all of the Flickr photos are Creative Commons. Pretty amazing, and wonderful to see... it's got a lot of people talking, excited about government for the first time in, well, a mighty long time.