How can I best interact with the Government on the web?

It's an exciting time to be interested in government--and you don't have to be political about it--most citizens just want a better government!

I suggest narrowing your interest to a specific area, for example, if you are interested in what would seem like simple fixes in your town (like fixing a pot hole), check out See Click Fix (http://www.seeclickfix.com). If you want to learn about federal data, poke around the data catalogs of Data.gov and Recovery.gov. Some towns and cities are doing fantastic local efforts, such as the Apps for Democracy contest in Washington, D.C. (http://www.appsfordemocracy.org), and open data catalogs like DataSF in San Francisco (http://www.datasf.org), Toronto (http://www.toronto.ca/open/), and Utah (http://www.utah.gov/data/).

If you live in a city and are a fan of public transportation, many cities are releasing data that developers and designers can use to create apps and visualizations. Some good examples are Boston (http://www.eot.state.ma.us/developers), San Francisco (http://www.bart.gov/...les/developers/), and Portland, OR (http://developer.tri...org/index.shtml)

Also, you can't beat staying informed on what the Sunlight Foundation is doing (http://www.sunlightfoundation.com) as well as The Open Planning Project (http://openplans.org/).

Another great resource is Twitter, search on the #gov20 hashtag and you'll find lots of great references. You can find quite a few members of Congress by going to TweetCongress (http://www.tweetcongress.org) as well as other government agencies on GovTwit (http://www.govtwit.com).

There's also lots going on with reporting of campaign funds. The National Institute on Money in State Politics (http://www.followthemoney.org) and Center for Responsive Politics (http://www.opensecrets.org) track spending. Little Sis (http://littlesis.org/) is "an involuntary facebook of powerful Americans" that helps show connections to various government officials.