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Life in the Fast Lane: Transportation Department goes blogging

April 29, 2008

Is there a federal agency out there that doesn’t have a blog? The U.S. Transportation jumped into the blogosphere today with a site called Fast Lane that promises postings from none other than Secretary Mary Peters and other senior officials.

“Fast Lane will allow me and others here at the Department to speak directly with interested citizens, members of the transportation community and the blogosphere to engage in an earnest conversation about our nation’s transportation future,” Secretary Peters said in a prepared statement.

My reaction? The department’s idea of blogging isn’t necessarily the same idea you or I might have. The first few entries that have been posted are just repurposed press releases and one really dry guest blog posting by Chicago Mayor Richard Dailey.

Oh well, you can’t judge a blog based on just three entries. But I like the idea of having a relatively open forum where citizens can interact with these high-level officials. That can only be positive.

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5 comments

  • don

    Gee – looking at the website, the list of contributors on the left navigation bar, and the wonderful posed photos on the right side, I wonder how many taxpayer dollars are being spent to glorify Secretary Peters?

  • http://talesfromtheroad.southernliving.com/tales_from_the_road/ Matt

    As a former Windy Citizen, I’m interested to see how well Daley’s plan for a new bus system goes over.

    As much as I griped about the CTA while living in Chicago, it does pretty well for itself, all things considered.

  • Jasper

    Nice name. Copycat though. From the US govt. Fastlane is also the name of the electronic submission program of the National Science Foundation. Nice to see these guys steal each other’s names.

  • Joe Farrell

    All government agencies blogging is are press releases changed in focus and author. There is NEVER any back and froth, NEVER any effort made to actually respond to anyone. Government blogging is designed solely to give people a chance to vent and the agency a chance to blow puff pieces up your rear.

    Go read ANY of the TSA blogs – people blog about serious topics, describe serious breaches not only of security procedures, but of common sense and human decency, and set forth instance after instance of a bureaucracy which gives ZERO empowerment ot its staff and thus gets no intelligence back. TSA is an unwieldy agency locked in rules when human observation and initiative is how to thwart terrorism and crime, not being locked in rules designed for the least intelligent TSA officer.

    TSA’s blog has deteriorated into travelers pointing out serious TSA issues and the bloggers from TSA whining about how misunderstood they are and that yes, there is intelligence at TSA, but, like ALL law enforcement agencies, THEY and their PEOPLE are NEVER EVER wrong, its the procedures that invented themselves which need to be ‘re-examined.’

  • http://www.fsbizcollect.com/ Transportation Collection Agency

    This is a great idea, but I don’t see it getting anywhere. Anyone that wants to help change TSA, should look elsewhere because the blog will not help these changes. The TSA does not want to get left behind, so they feel like they have to have a blog.

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