At a recent Federal web manager conference, several key staff from the White House came to discuss how important the web is to supporting the American people in their daily lives. Vivek Kundra, the first Federal Chief Information Officer, said this clearly, "The public sector doesn't have to lag behind in technology. We reject that view."

This message coming from the White House should be celebrated by anyone who relies on government information, services, or support.

The previous Administration largely ignored the web and information technology, because they saw it as little more than a commodity to reduce the cost of. However, with new leadership in D.C. there have already been too many web-related innovations to list.

One innovation worthy of special mention is how the U.S. Government portal, USA.gov, has already improved reliability and flexibility while simultaneously reducing its infrastructure costs by 90%!

Author Jeff Jarvis also had a message for Federal web managers, that innovation requires some mistakes. But, in the spirit of how Google innovates, when you make a mistake, "Fail fast."

This is the right attitude to achieve innovation, but it was impossible for executives paralyzed by fear to adopt this attitude. Federal executives now have permission from the very top to innovate, which means permission to fail fast, improve, and ultimately deliver a great product.

If the White House continues to give the Federal web community and Federal executives this permission, then we are indeed entering a Federal Web Renaissance!