Joab Jackson at Government Computer News has, for the second year in a row, pulled together a compendium of 10 government Web sites that he says are embracing both social networking tools and transparency. (He produced his first list last August). This year's list includes sites that embrace the Web's full potential, Jackson writes, and they can offer ideas for other agencies seeking to improve their own sites.

Governmental agencies have realized that a Web presence is essential, since most citizens are now beginning to interact with government online. "By and large, agencies have responded to that demand by creating richer, more interactive sites," Jackson wrote. He quotes Sheila Campbell, co-chair of the Federal Web Managers Council, saying agencies are starting to see that they need to social media revolution and its larger information ecosystem. "Managing the Web isn't just managing the Web site. It means putting the content out where people are on the Web."

Making Jackson's list are:

Data.gov for fundamentally shifting how government interacts with the Web.

Forge.mil which provides an online meeting place for military agencies to build software in a collaborative fashion.

San Francisco's Trasit.511.org combines the schedules of dozens of subway, light-rail, trolley and bus systems to provide a one-stop shop that can help users plan a route from doorstep to doorstep.

The State Department's State.gov for using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other social media tools to get the word out about the agency's activities.

Government Printing Office's Federal Digital System offers public access to documents from all three branches of government through a single portal. "It is a Web site of sweeping scope," Jackson writes.

The State of Utah's Web site for pulling off what "is perhaps the most amazing trick of all: not looking like a state-run Web site."

Science.gov, out of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information within the Energy Department, presents information and makes it accessible by subject matter rather than by the office or agency that generated the information.

The U.S. Postal Service's site for making it possible to do online about 80 percent of everything you can do by taking a trip to the post office.

The Department of Health and Human Services' two sites Women's Health/Girl's Health that uses plain, easy-to-understand language, to address more than 800 topics related to women's health, such as fitness, nutrition, breastfeeding, pregnancy and reproductive health.

Federal Web Managers Council's WebContent.gov provides most of the information Web managers need to bring "uniformity and quiet sophistication" for federal Web sites.

It's highly encouraging to see government agencies responding to the public's demand for more helpful and easy-to-use online tools.

Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:

David Herbert with the National Journal (subscription required) wrote about the grades new media experts from across the political spectrum gave the Obama administration’s Web presence. The experts gave WhiteHouse.gov an average grade of C+. Although they mostly see it as an improvement from the previous administration's site, many noted that it remained a one-way forum and suggested it be opened to allow comments and other interactive features. Herbert quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, "This occasional use of interactive tools" is impressive, but "90 percent of the time the site is pretty straightforward, as it was under [George W.] Bush." Recovery.gov, the administration’s site where citizens can monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds, fared even worse in the Journal's poll, averaging a C. The most common gripe about the site, Herbert writes, is that it's "the view from 30,000 feet," as Micah Sifry, senior technology advisor for Sunlight and Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) co-founder, told him. Without providing on-the-the ground details, Recovery.gov offers taxpayers few tools for staying on top of where their money is going, reviewers said. Recovery.gov has competition in the form of privately-operated Recovery.org, which has "more granular data and a real search tool, which one assumes we'll eventually see on Recovery.gov," Micah explains. "I don't think it's fair to compare this site to other Web sites yet, as it's just weeks old," Micah added. "Let's take another look in three to six months, OK?"

Chris Lefkow with Agence France-Presse gained a different take by interviewing academics, technology analysts and nonpartisan groups on the administration's technology efforts. Lefkow writes that they all said the first "tech president" is off to a good start. Lefkow quotes John Wonderlich, Sunlight’s policy director, "their first pronouncements are very encouraging,” and added that the challenge, however, is going to be the implementation. Andrew Resiej, Sunlight’s other senior technology advisor and PDF co-founder, said the administration been doing as much as it can to fulfill its promises in regards to transparency and technological innovation. “However they've been constrained by decades of industrial-age rules and regulations and procurement protocols that are handicapping the speed at which they can implement that vision," he said.

Declan McCullagh at CBS News' "Political Hotsheet" blog also wrote about how President Obama's follow through on his transparency vow is receiving mixed reviews. In the post McCullagh highlights how Sunlight's Our Open Government List is allowing users to vote on what's most important to see in the 120-day review. McCullagh reports that the winner so far is formal data standards, which would allow programmers to extract government databases to be incorporated in their own applications. McCullagh also mentions that Sunlight hosted TransparencyCamp.

Dan Eggen at The Washington Post wrote about how some of the nation's largest defense contractors, labor unions and trade groups are forging an alliance to try to stop the Obama administration from cutting certain weapons programs. They are arguing that the proposed cuts would threaten 100,000 or more jobs. Eggen cites Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) data to show the defense sector’s influence in Washington, where it gave nearly $26 million to congressional candidates last year and spending $150 million on lobbying.

The New York Times republished Robin Bravender’s piece from Greenwire exploring President Obama’s regulatory actions taken during his first 100 days in office. Bravender quotes Gary Bass, OMB Watch’s executive director, "In most instances, the administration has moved away from a presumption of government secrecy to one of government openness, and Obama has scrapped some of the most damaging revisions of the regulatory process that Bush and his team imposed on the nation." The article highlighted OMB Watch’s “Advancing the Public Interest through Regulatory Reform” report (pdf), which is one of two reports, both released on Tuesday, assessing the Obama administration’s work on government transparency and regulatory reform at the 100-day mark. The second report, titled “21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda” (pdf) looked at the administration’s follow through on transparency and openness. Overall, the reports state that the president and his team have made significant progress in both the right-to-know and regulatory areas, but much more work needs to be done.

Carol D. Leonnig with The Washington Post reported that U.S. Rep. John Murtha (Pa.), chair of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, got the Pentagon to spend about $30 million on “the little-used airport named for him so it can handle behemoth military aircraft and store combat equipment for rapid deployment to foreign battlefields.” Most of the improvement, Leonnig writes, were funded through appropriations approved by Murtha's subcommittee, and have not been used for their intended purpose. The article includes comments by Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.  "Nobody wants to say no to Congressman Murtha or make him mad because he controls defense appropriations," she said. "Murtha wanted an airport, and he knew he could get one. It's like he's a billionaire, except it's not his money."

Robert O'Harrow Jr., writing at The Washington Post's "Government Inc." blog, writes about a new report from the Inspector General for TARP, which says the bailout is growing more complex and costly, and is operating with no clear leadership. O'Harrow highlights and extensively quotes from Anu Narayanswamy’s Real Time Investigations report that found the program is shrouded in secrecy, making it difficult to determine who is managing it.

USA Today published an editorial about how the federal government, when faced with the option of making information public or hiding it, is predisposed toward concealment. Federal Web sites are usually full of data, the editorial says, but are also notoriously hard to navigate. It mentions Google's new tool, Google Public Data, it launched this week to make it easier to search federal sites. Congressional sites can be even more inscrutable, they write, and mentions and links to Sunlight’s Senior Fellow Bill Allison's Real Time Investigations report regarding U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers disclosing their earmark requests, and how many responded by burying the links or posting unreadable pdf files. Kim Hart with The Washington Post also wrote about Google’s new tool, and quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs director, saying he’s encouraged by it.

Joab Jackson with Government Computer News wrote about how through mashups and Web apps, third parties are remixing and making innovative use of government agencies' information. Jackson quotes Clay as saying there are a lot of developers who are eager to get access to government data. "The nongovernmental sector will likely always have more talent and artistic capability than inside the government," Clay said. The article discusses Sunlight Labs' Apps for America contest, as well as Sunlight’s role in developing OpenCongress.org, OMB Watch’s FedSpending.org, CRP’s OpenSecrets.org and EarmarkWatch.org. Jackson also highlights Josh Tauberer's work at GovTrack.

Federal News Radio interviewed Clay about Data.gov, new federal CIO Vivek Kundra's soon to launch central repository for government data and research, and links to Sunlight Labs' mock up of the site.

Thanks, and see you next Friday!

It’s an understatement to say that us open government advocates have placed great hope on Vivek Kundra. We take President Obama’s chief information officer at his word when he says he wants to radically change the way the federal government communicates with citizens, and vice versa. "We're going to be publishing government data and [operating on] a default assumption that information should be [available] to the people, not with the default assumption that information should not be in the public domain," he said during a speech he gave last month in Washington.

On Thursday, Government Computer News published a fascinating article by Joab Jackson, GCN’s senior technology editor, that looks at two main themes that have emerged regarding Kundra’s approach. Jackson also looks back illustratively at Kundra’s brilliant tenure as chief technology officer for Washington, D.C., as a guide as how he will approach his new role with the feds.

Jackson writes that cloud computing is first on Kundra’s list, the idea of taking advantage of services already available on the internet. He envisions putting government images on Flickr, videos on YouTube and having government offices using Google Apps. Jackson points out that this is the exact approach Vivek took for the D.C. government, cutting the cost of buying new software and allowing District employees to interact with each other. No doubt challenges exist that would have to overcome, such as setting up private clouds for sensitive data and changing bureaucratic aversion from opening up and fear of losing control.

Kundra says he will follow through on Obama’s promise of opening up government data, calling it a “key agenda item that we’re going to be pushing in this administration.” Again, Jackson looks back at his time with D.C. government. Not only did Kundra put on the Web 240 data feeds from District government internal systems (everything from bus and subway train schedules to crime statistics), he set up a contest to have developers design applications from government data. Apps for Democracy motivated volunteers to build 47 new apps for the Web and hand-held devices. Kundra also plans to build Data.gov, which he promises will be the go-to site for government data feeds.

Not only does Kundra promise to open up the data, he wants to make it much easier to use by increasing the power of government servers and making sure it’s accessible in formats that are nonproprietary and don’t require a computer science degree to use and understand.

This is getting really exciting.

Here’s an exciting development! Last week, I blogged about an encouraging report by Doug Belzer at Federal Computer Week, where he wrote about how Twitter, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools are revolutionizing government business. The General Services Administration had determined that Twitter’s standard terms of service is compatible with federal use.

Two days ago, Doug has another exciting article, this time in Government Computer News, about GSA announcing that it has signed agreements with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and blip.tv that will allow federal agencies to use new-media tools. Agencies can now begin using these tools to better communicate, network and share information via the Web.

Chris Snyder at Wired's Epicenter blog termed the move, "Web 2.0, meet dot-gov. Dot-gov, this is Web 2.0." He's right in calling it a "big step" for agencies attempting to become more transparent and interactive with citizens. "Now that the bureaucratic brush has been cleared, government agencies will be free, for example, to embed videos and create photo widgets that citizens can embed into their MySpace or Facebook pages," he writes. An example of a government agency already using Web 2.0 tools successfully is the Centers for Disease Control alerting the public about the recent peanut better product recall.

Chris quotes Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and Sunlight's senior technology advisor, as saying it's another example of why it really matters who’s president of the United States. "Because we have the country's first tech president, the speed at which the government can catch up with the private sector and use of technology is exponential."

Each individual agency will determine their own guidelines for how their employees can use the tools. “The new agreements make it easier for the government to provide official information to citizens via their method of choice,” according to GSA’s administrator, who is in discussions with other new-media providers. They started with these four because of their popularity and large number of users.

We're excited about this development. You should be too.