Government Blogs: Would You Read Them?

Just a few days ago there was a flurry of sarcasm over the launch of DipNote, the comically named, poorly designed and dubiously intentioned new official State Department blog. It's fair to say that its arrival was met in the larger blogosphere with a resounding thud, though whether there might be anything worthwhile content-wise in its existence seems worth going back to check at least a few times.

Now there's another new government blog being launched, with, if you can believe it, an even worse name: GovGab: Your U.S. Government Blog. With the ambitious plan of one blog post a day split up between 5 contributors plus an alternate, GovGab hopes to bring you information about topics ranging from "saving money and visiting National Parks to finding out about government auctions and the latest recalls." Recent posts tell you how you can help find missing kids and what the National Recording Registry does.

Let's try to move on from the fact that one of their contributors is named Sommer, spelled the same way as my name -- trust me, it took me a while, and a confirmation email from the publisher, to believe it was true. The topics covered in GovGab aren't really so atrocious, and it's pretty adorable to see the Office of Citizen Services and Communications at the U.S. General Services Administration try to get hip to the blog scene about four years too late. Mostly, it just looks an infrequently updated site with a dull voice that might, if you're patient enough, reveal one or two interesting things you didn't know over the course of a couple months. Since we have to keep up with these kinds of things, we'll add it, tentatively, to our RSS reader. But would you?