Google turns over goverment information to the public.

It is a common misnomer that "everything is available on the web."  You'll also hear people say that the answer to any question is just a Google search away. Neither of these ideas are true, but hopefully over time they'll become more and more the reality. Today came news that we're one baby step closer to that reality.

Google Inc. announced today their partnerships with Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia to make it easier to search for hard-to-find public information on state government websites.  Much of what exists on government websites has not been opened up to the Google index (thus, not findable in a Google search). Also, the search engines on these sites are of questionable ability, so searching for information at .gov sites can be as frustrating as going to a government office. Well, maybe not as frustrating as a DMV visit, but still far from user-friendly.

Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia said “Our goal is to provide easy, quick and intuitive citizen access to every government resource. Google is helping us to achieve it.” Hopefully, every state is striving towards the same goal. What would help this along?  If Yahoo! and MSN roll out their search technology and partner with other states to increase accessibility. Then we can get some good old-fashioned competition in the field of making government services more transparent. 

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