So much government information, so little time

MuseGlobal CEO Kate Noerr published an article in her blog: “Not your Father’s Feds: Taming the Widening Scope of U.S. Government Content Initiatives.” The article speaks to the focus of the Obama administration on open government, Web 2.0, and that this all means information overload to the max. Kate says it well:

So if you were hoping for more openness and access in the U.S. federal government, the good news is that it’s coming in buckets. The bad news is that you have lots and lots of new and changing buckets to sift through to make sense of it all - even, and perhaps especially, if you’re the government.

Kate’s article got me thinking about the many sources of government information and how challenging it is to navigate them or to even know what exists in the big government cyberspace. And then it occurred to me that many of us (Americans at least) are thinking about our government today since tomorrow is tax day. I spent time last night digging up state and federal tax extension forms and estimated tax forms so the government is at least on MY mind. So, to lighten things up a bit on “tax day eve” I came up with a quiz about government resources.

Have fun with it and leave me some comments telling us how you did on the quiz and sharing other interesting government sites to explore.

1. What is FedWorld.gov? What is its relationship with the Department of Commerce?
2. What is USA.gov How is it different from FedWorld.gov? How is USA.gov related to firstgov.gov?
3. What is change.gov? Why is it no longer active? What site has now taken its place?
4. What is recovery.gov?
5. Which site comes up first when you do a Google search for “site:.gov“?
6. What is govloop.com? What role does it serve?
7. What is gpoaccess.gov? Who runs it? For what purpose?
8. Here’s a fun site: What is americaslibrary.gov? Who runs it?

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Tags: federated search