The White House is leading a first-class discussion on Open Government.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the White House has been blogging about and moderating a public conversation about Open Government for a few weeks, and they recently put out a great summary of the discussion about Collaboration proposals....

Utah.gov is quite an impressive site!

The best part is that Utah.gov isn't just innovative and sexy, but also well-organized and easy to use....

Regulations.gov is setting a fine example through Regulations.gov Exchange.

On the Regulations.gov Exchange, users can discuss upcoming design changes on Regulations.gov. This is an excellent idea to get user feedback, and a step in the right direction, but there are actually three ways to improve the system even further....

If you care about government openness, transparency, and participation, now is the time to plug into the White House's Science & Technology Blog. The White House is holding a high-level discussion on this blog over the next week where readers can contribute to open government principles....

It is a good time to be a Federal web professional.

When I began this blog a few years ago, the innovative spirit of the Federal web community was greatly restrained by the staid attitudes of Federal executives and Administration appointees.

This is changing fast—and in favor of innovation....

It is rare to find a government executive who will take a risk, but Marcus Peacock is one.

Mr. Peacock is the Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and he has shown real leadership with his push to use blogging to support EPA's mission. In July 2007 (coincidentally, when DotGovWatch also began) he began The Flow of the River. It created the momentum to establish EPA's newer, larger blog: Greenversations, which Mr. Peacock now writes for.

There has been a good deal of discussion among federal web managers regarding the pros and cons of blogging. But in general, government managers are afraid…afraid of criticism....

We need to rethink government websites as we know them. This is the conclusion of four Princeton academics: Robins, Yu, Zeller, and Felten. Their points have merit, but the approach needs tweaking.

In summary, Government Data and the Invisible Hand argues that federal websites should:...

Chlorine gas in a D.C. park and airborne lead compounds beside historic Old Town Alexandria—these are just two toxic air emissions among thousands reported in EPA's Toxic Release Inventory.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory is a great example of government data made available for others to make mashups. Last week I coded a simple mashup using EPA's data that makes it easy to find toxic air emissions in your own backyard. Please explore it and let me know what you think! (It is optimized for Firefox browsers.)...

Government officials are receiving some much-needed schooling on how to use the web to improve lawmaking.

The Sunlight Foundation just launched PublicMarkup.org, the first site to collaboratively and publicly "markup" a bill before it becomes law. Markup is when a bill is discussed, debated, and revised by lawmakers, but in this case anyone may participate.

Through this markup process, PublicMarkup.org allows many-to-many communications. It allows concerned citizens to discuss the pros, the cons, the alternatives, and to build off of others' ideas. It is what participatory democracy is supposed to be.

Meanwhile, it is widely-accepted that the federal government's attempt to use the internet for regulations commenting (Regulations.gov) has been a failure....

The story of the decade in the civil service is the impending wave of retirements.

The brain drain at most agencies has already begun and is accelerating yearly. We all know the ultimate solution is to successfully recruit and retain a new generation of civil servants. But how is this possible in a civil service culture that either fears change, young people, or both?

I have already documented the federal government's counterproductive intolerance of Web 2.0 technologies.

But the government's "generation gaffe" is becoming clearer to this blogger....