Paid "Classified" Sections on Government Websites 

Tag this idea as crazy. Or maybe not.

Allow government websites to have appropriate paid classifieds for materially related goods and services. These classifieds would be organized like a yellow book where basic listings are free or affordable and larger adds cost more.

Personally, I find it silly that government web sites are hesitant to link to non-government websites lest there is the appearance of endorsing a third party.

Currently, the Federal Government--and the taxpayer--has poured trillions of dollars into the private sector to protect specific companies and private assets. Ostensibly, this is being done to help the entire economy. But there is no questions that certain companies, industries, and private citizens are benefiting.

Moreover, the United States has auctioned spectrum and leased land to private parties for grazing, mining, and right of way. Our tax dollars go to build roads for main street business, and sometimes for roads that benefit only a few commercial interests. Government makes puts out bids and makes purchases from software to airplanes that makes (or breaks) whole companies. And I'm not even touching on government subsidies or earmarks.

Considering all this, it is rather parochial to be concerned about government web site links to third parties web sites creating an unethical endorsement. Pshaw. The web itself is about linking. Moreover, it is many times easier (and costless) to rotate different links to make any particularly prime piece of web real-estate (or ordering) equitably available. Ordering could even be changed with each user coming to the page.

Another way to make things equitable, not to mention revenue positive, is to charge for placement along the lines of classified ads. Each agency website could have a "directory" or "classified" section clearly labeled. Vendors listed on the site would be contractually required to not describe such listing as an endorsement.

Ultimately, this is a service for citizen. If I'm on the IRS site and I have a specific tax issue, why shouldn't the IRS point me in the direction of licensed, qualified individuals in my area? If I'm on CDC's site, why shouldn't I be able to find out vaccine locations? If I'm on Recovery.gov, why shouldn't I learn about other websites providing information about stimulus spending?

Collaboration, especially on the web, is bi-directional. When the government spends trillions to support private financial interests, it is silly we preserve our ethics by avoiding web links.

Greg Elin
http://twitter.com/gregelin

Website for Publicly Thanking Specific Civil Servants 

We need a website where citizens can publicly thank civil servants for taking the extra step.

Citizens who had a good or outstanding experience with a civil servant (or elected official) would be able to go to the site and put in a commendation. The commendation would automatically route (as appropriate) to the individual as well as the individual's supervisor.

In addition to creating incentives for government employees, such a site would both model expectations for others and share success stories that would improve confidence in government.

Standardize URL conventions to standard portions goverment websites. 

OMB's Recovery guidance that agency handling Recovery dollars create pages at "agency.gov/recovery" was widely adopted not only by the 28 relevant agencies, but by many states and local governments, too.

Accepted conventions around various URLs would be very helpful. Many agencies offer similar functions. Imagine the following:

agency.gov/data
agency.gov/documents or agency.gov/forms
agency.gov/foia
agency.gov/accessibility or agency.gov/508
agency.gov/budget
agency.gov/feeds
agency.gov/contact
agency.gov/socialmedia
agency.gov/jobs
agency.gov/stratml
agency.gov/people
agency.gov/participate
agency.gov/calendar or agency.gov events

Other standardization could include:
- certain elements in a fat footer.
- adoption of a open calendar format for events

Provide Public Access/Re-use of Central Contractor Registry (CCR.gov) 

As a database developer and open government advocate, few things are as frustrating to the development of robust data sets and accountability tools as the lack of access to reliable, unique identifiers for government contractors.

To solve this problem, the Central Contractor Registration Database should be made immediately available to the public, including DUNS numbers and DUNS corporate ownership relationship. Having a taxpayer supported database of corporate contractors unavailable to the public and using proprietary vendor IT system is untenable in 2009.

A DUNS Number is a corporate identifier assigned by the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. It is like a corporate social security number and is the private and public sector to make it easier to track credit worthiness. While any business can get a DUNS Number for free, it costs money to gain access to Dun & Bradstreet database of DUNS Number. (This database also contains information regarding the relationship among DUNS Numbers, e.g. corporate ownership of subsidiaries, facilities, etc.) D&B claims this database as the companies own intellectual property.

The problem is not that D&B claims this database as their property. The problem is that D&B has government-sponsored monopoly on the IDs the government uses for tracking corporate government vendors...and the public cannot gain access to this piece of the D&B DUNS Number database even though we pay for it.

Since 2003, the federal Office of Budget and Management has required all government contractors to have a "DUNS Number" assigned via Central Contractor Registration (CCR.gov). I'm fairly certain this contract (http://bit.ly/12zeSU) relates to an expansion of the CCR/DUNS work.

Because the public does not have unfettered access to this database of unique identifiers is not possible for third parties, particularly non-profits, academics, and citizens to leverage this identifier in their own workings with data. A government data set might include a corporations DUNS Number, but without the corporate relationship information, the relationships among corporations and basic disambiguation of entities must be manually re-done time and time again.

Making the DUNS Number for corporate contractors available to all, or better, available in a RESTFUL manner on CCR.gov (example: ccr.gov/id/xxxxxxx) would provide the same functionality that Amazon URLs do for books and IMDB.com does for movies.

Alternatively, the US government should stop using proprietary identifiers and simply leverage Web URLs from CCR.gov to provide the same information. A vendor such as Dun & Bradstreet could be employed to manage the system, but the system itself for tracking government contractors with unique identifiers should be public and non proprietary.