Thursday Congressman Honda asked, “how can congress take advantage of web 2.0 technologies to transform the relationship between citizens and government?” He noted that “A dramatic shift in perspective is needed before that need can be met. Instead of databases becoming available as a result of Freedom Of Information Act requests, government officials should be required to justify why any public data should not be freely available to the taxpayers who paid for its creation.” He asked for input on what web 2.0 features he should add to his website to take advantage of today’s online world.

The most important feature government web sites can add isn’t really feature at all. But it would absolutely transform the relationship between citizens and government and make an amazing array of public data available. What’s this magic feature?

Make government web sites search engine friendly.

Read more on O’Reilly Radar