I know. I don't believe it either, but read this story and tell me that this isn't a good thing. My brother works as a leg aide in the California state senate and I've been telling him for a while that he should look at video game development for good ways to communicate with his constituents. Looks like somebody in the DOT plays a little Ever-crack.
Somebody asked me to re-post this going over the high points, so I apologize for breaking rule #3. Anyways, the article basically goes over how the DOT, EPA and several other government agencies are consulting with several large scale (MMOG) game companies to get advice on their upcoming Federal Portal.
Allow me to wax engineer for moment and say that most large scale systems are developed in the same way. The way Windows 2000 was engineered shares a lot in common with the way that the Apollo mission was created. Basically, large systems cannot be entirely understood by one person and need to be broken down into smaller and smaller subpieces. There are only a handful of ways to successfully bring them back together without disaster.
MMOG's are a really good analogue to running a government. There are a set of existing rules that the public has to work within and any changes to the system should be subject to public review and testing before they are implemented. In many ways, MMOG's are very responsive to their citizenry and if the federal agencies are taking a serious look at cutting edge ways to be more efficient, it bodes well for all of us.
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that and bloggable governments are just a cool idea!