Obama's HHS appointee Tom Daschle has taken to the transition website Change.gov to respond to comments about how to cure what ails the American health landscape. But, of course, "interactivity" isn't necessarily limited to the web...By dissecting a single blog post, the Sunlight Foundation's Greg Elin makes the case that, yes, even cautious, handcuffed government can make the web more interactive, more transparent, and even more fun!...[O]ne unnoticed but much welcomed change to Change.gov: blog posts are now signed by their authors -- even retroactively...and more.

What is the perfect information technology solution to coming national security threats?

There isn't one solution to multiple threats. Rather than searching for a single solution, our national security community should adapt its IT procurement strategy to develop many solutions, each addressing a specific threat at the lowest possible cost.

Are you a local elected official looking for advice from your peers on how to make better use of web technologies to relate to your constituents? Or perhaps you're a government IT specialist looking for support in your battles with footdragging higher-ups? Maybe you're looking for perspective from within the system on how government entities are implementing web 2.0 strategies? Or perhaps you are a not-so-tech-obsessed public-minded public servant who is simply looking for mutual support, across the often silo-ed and stultified world of government work?

You can find all of those things and more at GovLoop.com, an eight-month old social network created by Steve Ressler, a twenty-something federal employee living in Tampa, Flordia. Built on the free Ning.com platform, GovLoop has about 4,000 members at present, and is growing, Ressler says, at the rate of about 1,000 a month, almost entirely by word of mouth. The site is getting about 500 to 1,000 unique visitors a day, and about 150 thousand page views a month. Its members come mainly from all over the U.S., working in local, state and federal government jobs, but also include a smattering of good-government public interest types, academics and what Ressler refers to as "government contractors with good intentions." Plus there's an international contingent from English-speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

I had a nice chat with Ressler late Friday afternoon, and he gave me a full rundown on how GovLoop came to be and where he hopes it will go...

Last week, the Silicon Valley technology community enjoyed a visit from the first national Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra. Aneesh spoke at the Computer History Museum for an event put on by the Churchill Club, along with the Center for Democracy and Technology, and TechNet about the promise of innovation in the new administration.

Here's the full video:

The final set of presentations at the Gov 2.0 Expo focused on "Government as a partner." This, hopefully, is where we'll hear about some cutting-edge examples of government opening up to involve citizens as co-creators of better government. (If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I complained earlier in the day that many of the examples being showcased here today were either of government using social media internally to share information--like the intelligence community's A-Space, the TSA's Idea Factory, or NASA's Spacebook; or government using social media to better inform the public--like EPA's MyEnvironment, or CrimeReports.com; but we hadn't yet heard much about government working as a platform to connect citizens to each other to better solve problems with (or without) government.

As with my previous post about today's gathering, what follows are rough, semi-verbatim notes, along with my first impressions and comments. Unless I've put something in quotes, it's a paraphrase.