Check out the new government on-line store at Apps.Gov , a new GSA hosted website, offering no less than 22 software applications for federal agencies who want to adopt the latest in social networking applications. Applications are designed to support this administration's push to federal government to engage the public in policy discussions, work across all levels of government, and provide services and information to the public the way that the public communicates.

A premise of opening up government this way is that government doesn't have all the answers and that participation by constituents in the governing process actually improves the quality of this process.

GSA has arranged an array of  application choices are available to assist agencies with:

• Blogs and microblogs
• Bookmarking/sharing
• Displaying multimedia, data and maps
• Sharing documents
• Idea generation/general discussion, in-depth discussion
• Social networks
• Video, photo, audio hosting and sharing
• Wikis

Perhaps the most exciting feature regarding this powerful selection of available applications in these budget conscious times is the price tag, all 22 social networking applications are free. Government has come a long way since January 21^st when his first day in office, President Obama signaled a request for a cultural change within federal agencies through his Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, with requirements for transparency, and participatory and collaborative government. Providing applications to government entities in an easy to use menu, priced right, and relevant to agency delivery of services by accelerating data sharing, generating idea and policy communication, and facilitating collaboration is a great start. Will agencies test the cloud computing waters through use of these Software as a Service social media apps? Will this lead to faster adoption of Software as a Service applications beyond social networking, for business applications ( also included in a section of apps.gov)? Lets hope the answer is a resounding yes. Not only will citizens have better opportunity to knows what's going on in government, and provide their two cents worth, all will benefit from the lower costs that cloud computing promises.